Unconditional Love

I have heard it said that dogs are about the only creature who give unconditional love.

An internet friend posted a photo of her sister and her dog and I thought it captured that love beautifully.  This is my attempt to translate that feeling into a painting.

Soft pastel on PastelMat.

All the Colors of White

We recently returned from a whirlwind trip to Pensacola, Florida where we went to see my husband's family, primarily his mother who is in her 90's.  Most of the time was spent visiting with family but we did take some time to go to Pensacola Beach and all the way out to Ft. Pickens which is part of our National Parks System (you can read about Ft. Pickens HERE).  The weather on the whole trip was somewhat overcast and on the day we went to Ft. Pickens, it was very cloudy and very windy!  I thought our little baby, CiCi really illustrates the strength of the wind, don't you?  lol

Anyway, I was wanting to take some photos of magnolias for painting references and looked at some under these cloudy conditions.  I didn't end up getting any photos of any but I did really look at the "color" of white in several kinds of flowers and under different conditions.

It's always amazing to me to really study a white object and see all the colors that are actually there.  You can see that our C is a white Maltese but if you click on the photo to enlarge it, you can also see all the reflected colors that show in her fur.  My husband's shirt color is reflected in some areas.  There is both pink skin showing (the groomer clipped her really close this time!) and also some pink reflected from her skin onto her fur.  The pink skin also makes for sort of lavender gray shadows in some areas.  There are even some areas of yellow there!

If you've trained your eye to really see, you can look at any so-called white object and see a multitude of colors residing there!

Showing You Mine

Well!  It's certainly been a while since I've posted here on my blog.  I apologize but probably still wouldn't have a post if it weren't for my blogging friend, Sue, over at PencilPix.  She and I email back and forth some and we were chatting about updating our respective blogs when she issued the challenge saying "you show me yours and I'll show you mine" - well, I decided to take her up on that challenge!

It wasn't that I wanted to neglect my blog but I'm not much for multi-tasking and there's been a lot happening in the past few months.

For one thing, I'm still trying to find and learn a medium which will allow me to produce the paintings I want to do yet not have the paintings be so fragile.

Well, you know pastel is my medium of choice and it's really not so fragile if handled responsibly but it does need to be framed under glass and I'd really like to get away from that.  So, I've been experimenting with gouache, watercolor and acrylic.  I've produced quite a few paintings in one medium or the other but still haven't become really comfortable with any and all have attributes that just don't fit my way of working.

I really like pastel for the spontaneous way I can work in it.  It's always ready to go - no squeezing out paint, searching out brushes, getting water and no mixing on a palette.  That's such a plus for me as I tend to work "a stroke at a time" and it's so easy to lay out the pastels on my work table and work "as the spirit moves me".  There's no mess to clean up after every session and I don't have to worry about painting drying up and becoming unusable.

But, I ship a lot of paintings and I really would like for them to arrive intact, hence the exploration into other media.

I kinda stretched the truth a bit when I said that I had produced quite a few paintings during my blog hiatus.  It's true that I've started many paintings but I haven't really finished many.  I get to that "ugly stage" and just lose interest so they remain unfinished!

However, I did finish (I think it's finished anyway) the portrait of the little Maltese above recently.  It's been painted in acrylics, mainly acrylic ink, and it went fairly well.  I do find that I paint more loosely with a brush than I do with a pastel stick and I don't know if that's good or bad.  I also agonize over brush strokes, color and trying to get that one last stroke that completes the painting without over-doing it.

There wasn't really a reference photo for this little fluff - it's a combination of refs along with looking at our own little one for some of the details.  I would have used our baby exclusively but I really find it hard to paint our own pets.  I just didn't want to add that pressure on top of battling with an unfamiliar medium!

OK, Sue, here's mine - where's yours?

CiCi - Finished? Thank You, Jane!

I think I'm finished with CiCi's portrait but will let it sit around for a few days just in case I see something that needs to be tweaked.  Oh, the colors in this scan show brighter and more pronounced than they are in reality.  Also, the shadow area around her mouth isn't really pink but I used a mauve-y gray there and when I sprayed with SpectraFix, the area became more pink and shows up worse in this scan.  This is the first color change I've had using SpectraFix and I think it's because I used it heavily as Teo 21 suggested in a comment on Poppy.  I didn't get any spots though!

I have to thank my dear friend, Jane, for helping me see why I couldn't paint our babies before.  I'm still not sure about this one, whether it really captures her or not but my husband thinks it does and he's the "customer" in this case!  At least I finally finished a portrait of our fur child so Thank you, Jane!

If you all see anything that could be better, don't hesitate to let me know!

CiCi Again - WIP In Pastel 2

Found a bit of time this afternoon to give CiCi's portrait a few strokes and it's taking shape but it will still be a while before it's finished.

Had some electronic issues so we took advantage of our state's "tax free weekend" last Friday, Saturday and Sunday to get some computer stuff we wanted and needed. 

I had asked some of you about your printers and I thank everyone who gave me input - it helped me decide on the one I felt would be best for us.  I know Teresa at least is curious, so I'll tell you that we got a Canon all-in-one as the price and quality was too good to pass up.  I had pretty much decided on a Canon but didn't want to go with their "professional" model as I don't do my own prints and really don't print a whole lot of anything except the few note cards I give as a "thank you" for those who order portraits and a few note cards that I stock in a local pet food store.  If I need a large amount of them, I have them printed as that's just more economical. 

Anyway, I had decided a regular photo printer would be best for us but no one had any in stock that had the resolution and quality that I'd wanted.  However, this all-in-one had the desired resolution and the test prints looked great (but don't they always!  lol) and it was on sale so I went ahead and bought it.  So far I'm very pleased with it.  I actually think the scanner does a better job than the stand-alone scanner I have.

We also ordered a laptop as they were also on sale.  I thought this would be the year that I could finally get a Mac but my husband insisted on a Dell.  I have a sister who is a die-hard Apple fan and she insists that once I use a Mac, I'll never buy a PC again.  I don't know about that - sometimes I wonder if all the hype about Macs is true or not.  I think PCs have taken great strides in quality in the past few years but I know in the past there were some really junky PC's with high prices out there.  I'm sure Mac users will jump all over me but anymore it seems that Macs would have to be gold-plated and never break down to be worth the price difference.  But, I've never used one so I probably shouldn't say that.

Oh, well, the new laptop is supposed to be here next week and I'm sure it will do very well for us.  I'll let you know how we like it.

And, I'll let you know as soon as I finish C's portrait!

CiCi - WIP in Pastel

All righty folks, step right up and be the witness to a first.  I'm attempting a portrait of our "new" little dog, CiCi, and those of you who have followed me for a while know I've never really done a portrait of one of our own pets.

I always wanted to, and I tried, but they just never looked right.  A dear friend suggested that I couldn't paint our own babies because I knew them in many different moods and many different positions and poses and one static painting just couldn't portray them in my own eyes.  She may be right, and if she is, perhaps that insight will allow me to finally paint one of our own.  Understanding is often the first step in breaking down certain barriers.

So, here goes!  It's pastel on a dark gray Ampersand PastelBord, 8x10 size which is still almost larger than life-size for her!  Right now I'm just laying in some under colors.  I asked my husband if he wanted me to paint her with her tongue in her mouth but we both agreed that it would not be her without her tongue hanging out.  Also, most of the time her tongue just sticks out a little bit but when her head is tilted in that cute way, it does fall out further and we decided to go with that even though she may look slightly demented to other people. lol 

For those of you who don't know her story and the reason why her tongue sticks out, here is the reason why.  We got her from a rescue agency back in May of this year.  They told us that she was probably a purebred Maltese used for breeding, about 4 or 5 years old.  She had been found running down a very busy highway outside of Raleigh, NC.  They said she was dirty, her hair matted, her nails grown into the pads of her paws and her teeth so rotten and infected that they all had to be pulled.

Without teeth, a dog can't keep it's tongue in its mouth very well and that's the reason CiCi's tongue hangs out much of the time.  We don't care about that - she's really sweet and not a yappy little ankle-biter like many small dogs.  She eats soft dog foods but can actually eat just about anything a regular dog can eat if she has enough time to really gum it!  lol  Seriously, she really fits our household well and even if she does look funny with her tongue hanging out, we still love her and besides, just think of all the money we save on teeth cleaning!

But back to the portrait at hand.  There's still a lot to be done and my time is pretty limited right now so I'm posting this wip in hopes you all will hold me accountable.  It's actually going fairly quickly and I hope I'll remember to get photos of the progress.  Sometimes I just get to painting and it's finished before I remember to scan or photograph!

As always, if you see anything that needs adjusting, please let me know!

More on CiCi

Thanks to all of you who have sent us well wishes both on this blog and by email and in person!

CiCi is doing well but she is still a bit on the timid side especially with my husband.  We have a feeling she may not have been treated very well in her past life.  Who knows where she was before she was found, plus, she spent a couple of weeks in a shelter while advertisement was made looking for her owners in case she was lost.  After that, she was placed in foster care with the rescue organization for about 2 weeks.  During that two weeks, she was spayed, had her teeth extracted and got all the immunizations that were needed.  That two weeks also had her on antibiotics which may have made her a little "out of it" and the foster home also had other dogs that may have been intimidating to her.


It's no wonder she's still a bit cautious around us.  Her foster parents were great though and had started socializing her and teaching some basic commands.  She really does very well, she's just very quiet.

Sue asked about what we feed her since she has no teeth.  She gets both a canned soft food and also a freeze-dried bagged food that reconstitutes soft but still with some texture which she seems to like.  It's so funny to go from feeding a 70 + pound dog to one that weighs less than 6 pounds!  We've gone from nearly a heaping food bowl to only a heaping tablespoon of food per feeding! 

I promised to tell you about my husband's reaction to her when we first met her.  It was so funny - we got to meet CiCi and spend a couple of hours with her but it was a week before we could actually have her with us.  During that time, my DH and I were trying to decide what we'd need to buy for her since we had nothing for a dog of her size.  A friend had given us a pet catalog and we also made a trip to PetSmart to look at items.

The first thing my husband wanted to buy for her was the little pink "Princess" bed shown in the photo in the previous post.  Then we looked at collars - he insisted on pink with jewels on it but changed his mind because the gems on it weren't real!  He also conspired with my friend, the pet shop owner, to get little outfits to dress her up in!  (I did object to that!)

What is so odd is that my DH might be considered a redneck in many ways and these actions are sort of out of character for him!  He's a sweet, loving man but not someone I would have expected to go ga-ga over a little "frou-frou" dog!  But, maybe I should have expected this - after all, he's the same man who planted wildflowers in Bonnie's pasture as a living tribute to her!

I'm A Mom Again!

Well, in a way.  After all, very few grandmothers actually become mothers again.  But, we have a adopted a sweet little Maltese named CiCi and have just gotten her home today.  Bless her little heart, she was found wandering down a very busy highway and even after repeated advertising, she wasn't claimed.

The rescue agency where I try to help with pet portraits for fund raising was the rescue who took her in and it's estimated that she's about 4 to 5 years old.  It's assumed that she was a back-yard breeders bitch who was no longer producing and was turned out to fend for herself.  They don't think she was from a puppy mill  as she does have some social skills.  However, all of her teeth had to be pulled as they were all either loose or almost rotted away and she was a little timid at first.

Fortunately for us, she's not a rambunctious little ankle-biter but is very laid back and calm - exactly what we need in our household.


I know, I know - I said we weren't going to get any more animals but she needed us and, well, we needed her even more.

The decision to adopt another dog came about when my husband took a trip to Florida to see his mother and attend his niece's wedding.  These were plans that were made before I lost my beloved Bonnie.  I hadn't planned to go since I thought I'd be needed to stay here to take care of Bon.  Bonnie died just a few days before my DH left so I had no time to prepare to go with him.

During the time he was away, I got really lonesome - lonesome to the point where I "borrowed" a wonderful Golden Retriever from a friend for a night!  When my husband came home, he was full of stories about playing with his niece's dog and stated that we really needed to get another one.  I had to agree!

But, since our last dog weighed over 70 pounds and sometimes got so arthritic that we had to carry him outside to use the bathroom, we decided that a small dog was in order this time.  My friend who lent me her Golden put the word out on her rescue grapevine and it wasn't half an hour after sending her email that possibilities began to arrive in her email!

Little CiCi was the first picture to arrive and I fell in love.  My DH was wary but when we actually met her, he was more entranced with her than I was!  But, that's a story for another day as this is getting too long as it is!

I'll keep you updated on how CiCi is doing and the incredible changes in my husband because of her!