painting

i got a nice email the other day from an administrator at gallatin gateway school. she was letting me know that students in the art classes at the school were using the 'folk dog style' to paint portraits of their own pets. what fun! the image at the right is by morgan, who is in 8th grade. nice work!

since that email, i've had a chance to correspond with the gallatin gateway art teacher, and she invited me to come to the school to talk to the students in art class. this is something i've never done before, and i'm really excited. my art teachers were really important to me when i was in school; in one way or another, all of them have something to do with turning me into an artist. i don't remember having local artists come to our classes to talk to us, but i know i would have loved it. plus, it makes me feel great that the folk dogs are encouraging and inspiring kids to stay interested in art.

coincidentally, i was in contact with yet another school administrator this week, about donating to a fundraiser the school will have this fall. all of this has me thinking about being more involved with art in schools programs. i'm not really sure what's out there, but i'm going to poke around and see what i can find out. yay for art!

i'm gearing up for a show at a local gallery, tart, in march. this means i'm in the middle of a painting frenzy in which i try to generate about 30 folk dogs. that's about 4-5 paintings a week. youch.

so, i've been going through dog magazine and catalogs, looking for dogs to paint. i came across a brown-and-white spaniel-looking little guy and thought he'd make a good folk dog.

but you know what he made? a good folk goat:

see what i mean?

bah-aaa-aaaah.

i don't usually sketch out dogs on the canvas before i paint them. i just sort of, well, start painting. occasionally, though, someone asks me to paint a specific breed of dog, and for the life of me i cannot conjure up what the heck that kind of dog looks like.
 

case in point: irish setter.
 

i started shuffling through the catalog of dogs in my brain: not the wolfhound; not a spaniel; not terrier ... irish? what the?
 

i must have run through 15 breeds before i caved and googled it. lo and behold, irish setters sort of look like frida. i know for sure she's half golden retriever, but the other half is anyone's guess. certainly she exhibits the paranoid personality some sites attribute to the irish setter.

anyway, i found a good image, quickly sketched it on a notepad – complete with not-very-detailed notes – and started painting. i think i didn't get the ears quite right, but at least i know what an irish setter looks like now.
 
this little guy will go up in the march show at tart in the emerson.

more folk dog anatomies coming in the future! and happy new year, everyone!

well, i’m not quite finished painting my house, but it’s an amazing transition, and totally worth all the time and effort. i’m an early riser, usually up before the sun, and this morning i noticed that the new house color, which is a sort of redwood/red/brown, makes the light inside the house seem warmer at sunrise. i don’t know if it’s the way the new color absorbs the sunlight, or if it’s some kind of refraction or reflection, or if it’s just my imagination, but it’s really nice, and i like it.

it reminds me of an email i got from a woman who commissioned a painting. i’m behind in my commissions, due to the unexpected onset of barkwheats (no complaints, only cheers!), but i’m about to get back on track with them. i’d emailed this particular client a couple of weeks ago to ask what kind of background she was thinking about for the painting of her two awesome dogs. i sent her to my gallery page so she could get an idea of what colors she might be interested in. her response was so beautiful that i’m posting a bunch of it here:

“I’m … looking at all your backgrounds of all your dogs on the website.  One sticks in my mind.  If you go 9 rows down on the gallery page the one in the middle (2nd one from left)– there’s a yellow-ish guy with flopped over ears.  The background is magenta-ish, with some nice depth to it, and looks like a cloudy sunset just before rain.  The Navajo have a ceremony called the Blessing Way that starts like this:

In the house made of dawn
In the house made of sunset light
In the house made of rain clouds…
With beauty before us, we walk
That yellow dog’s background reminds me of that imagery.

What do you think?  Would it work with our knucklehead twins and their colors?  Be honest.  I just dream; you paint what it is you dream.”

this blew me away. what a lady. i can’t WAIT to paint her dogs.

i’ve been painting my house. the outside of it. let me tell you, **that** is a capital-C Chore. it’s a biggish house …. and i need a 20-foot extension ladder to get to the tallest parts. so when i say ‘i’ve been painting my house’ what i really mean is ‘i’ve been running up and down ladders all the live-long day.’ the house is not quite 1/2 finished, but i am pleased with today’s progress. plus, i super-heart the new color — a brownish redwood-ish reddish warm hue.

during the little random rainstorm we had, i managed to get the outline done on barkwheats painting #3. paintings #1 and #2 are both nearly done, and i’m really happy with both of them. i’m not going to post them until the People In Charge Of Barkwheats have posted them on their own site … so no spoilers here. i’ll make more progress on #3 tonight, after it’s too dark to run up and down ladders. it’s entirely possible that my hands will morph into paintbrushes, given how much time i seem to be holding one lately.

also i’m still learning how to work this blog thing. so, you know, it might change. or i might mess it up. who knows? like, if anyone reading this knows how i can get the dumb footer off of this thing, let me know. (edit: no dumb footer thanks to new content management system!)