One More Moon Bear Drawing

UPDATE - 6/6/09 - the original drawing didn't sell on eBay, so I've moved it to my Bonanzle booth. Click on the image to see the listing.

This ACEO pencil drawing of "Hans" is now available on eBay. Click the image to see the auction listing.


"Hans" - 2.5" x 3.5" pencil drawing

Although it doesn't say in the listing (because eBay is touchy about charity listings, and I don't have an official letter from the charitable organization), I will donate &8 of the final sale price of "Hans" to Animals Asia Foundation to benefit their moon bear rescue efforts. You can read more about AAF in my previous post.

I listed my other moon bear ACEOs (see previous post) on ArtByUs, but I've decided to go back to eBay for this one. Although I like ArtByUs and there are no listing or commission fees, there's also no traffic. My drawing of Rosie has a bid, but that's it - disappointing to say the least. That bid is only because of a moon bear fan who had asked to be notified when that drawing became available. I'm trying to raise money to help the bears, so let's hope this new drawing sees a bit more action. If you'd like to buy other moon bear art, please visit my Bonanzle booth where I have reproductions of my Hans and Rosie drawings and the original Lia drawing.



This is the reference photo of Hans - provided by AAF.

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Art for the Moon Bears - Now Available

NOTE - added 6/11/09 - The Rosie and Lia originals have sold.

These two ACEO drawings of Moon Bears are now available at auction on Art By Us. The auctions run through May 27th (ending at 7pm CST) - click on either image to see the auction listing. I'll donate 50% of the proceeds to Animals Asia Foundation (AAF).


"Rosie", 2.5" x 3.5" mixed media drawing


"Lia", 3.5" x 2.5" scratchboard & watercolor drawing

As I've written in previous posts, I joined the Ursa Freedom Project group to help raise funds for AAF's Moon Bear rescue efforts. All along, I'd planned to create some art of Moon Bears to sell on-line. In addition to these two drawings, I have a pencil drawing nearly finished and I may do a small square painting. I also have note cards and 2 sizes of reproduction print of the Rosie image on Bonanzle.


UFP's purpose is to raise awareness and funds for the bears rescued from bile farms in China & Vietnam. UFP is working directly with AAF to support their efforts to rescue and provide sanctuary for these charismatic bears. Click here for the Press Release from UFP.





If you're not interested in the art, but would still like to help the bears, you can make a donation via PayPal.

Thank you!

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Magic Dog

I finished this portrait of "Orphan" yesterday. Orphan, a rescued shepherd mix, passed away some time ago; she belonged to my client's friend. This client has purchased two other paintings of mine: "Llemon-Llime Llama " (one of my personal favorites) and "Don't Even Think About It" and she contacted me regarding the portrait of Orphan for her friend.

She didn't have any digital photos, just two 5x7 prints of Orphan. She wanted this portrait done in my "Petzazz" style, which was fortunate, because there wasn't enough detail in the photos for me to do anything else. And with Orphan wearing Halloween costumes in both photos, the vibrant, interpretive Petzazz style was definitely in order. Of the two photos, I chose the one that would work best in terms of composition and photo detail & clarity. I scanned both photos at high resolution (the second one as reference, just in case I needed it) and sent them back to my client.


I didn't want to include the entire dog - I wanted to focus on her face, so I scaled up the scanned image and cropped it to 8" x 6" like this:


And here's Orphan's portrait:



I used a limited color palette of blue, orange & purple. To separate Orphan's coloring from the costume's colors, the dog's dark colors are a more blue-ish purple. After I was finished with painting, I sparingly used color pencil to add depth. I do this on most of my Petzazz paintings. In the detail below, you can see that I used orange color pencil over the purple paint in select spots. I also used purple color pencil over orange paint in other areas of the painting.



I also took some artistic license - less detail in the bandanna and the mask is darker so it doesn't look as much like goggles as it does in the photo. At least, it looked like goggles to me.

Here's a tip I'll pass along: just because it's in the photo, doesn't mean it has to be in the painting. I work almost exclusively from photos, but I crop my photos and I decide what to leave in, take out or add. As I near the end of the painting (or drawing) process, I stop looking at the photo and just look at the art to decide what it needs.

As of this posting, Orphan's owner has not seen the portrait. I'll let you know what she thinks when I hear back from my client.

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Canine Visitors

Our well pump went out on Friday. That meant no water all weekend. It was like camping in our own home (but it wasn't fun). We survived with bottled water, hand sanitizer, pizza for dinner and water in 5 gallon buckets from the pond for flushing toilets. On Saturday afternoon, we visited our dads in Sacramento to take showers and do laundry.

Mark of Tri-County Pump got us back up and running early this afternoon. The old pump had lived 20 years - way beyond the expected lifespan - so we now have a brand new pump. And best of all, we have water again. I can wash my hands whenever I want and no more hauling buckets of water into the house!

In addition to his human assistant, Mark brought his two chihuahuas and his young chocolate lab (Luda) with him. The little tan chihuahua sisters were trotting through the carport when I went out to meet Mark. Luda was in a crate in the back of the truck. I heard him whining and asked about him - Mark wondered if it would be ok to let the dog out. Of course it was ok! Luda made a beeline for our pond - as any water-loving lab would. He ran circles around the property - full of bouncy energy and joy - and he splashed around in the pond a few times. I pulled out one of Magpie's tennis balls for him. I kept Magpie in the house, she's not too sure about strangers, so she was better off staying inside.

Never one to miss a photo opp, I grabbed our little digital camera (as opposed to exposing my D-SLR to a wet and enthusiastic dog) and got some nice shots of Luda eyeing the coveted tennis ball.





I only got photos of one of the chihuahuas, but there's a photo of them with Mark and his wife on this page of their web site.

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