Really? I Can Chase the Sheep?

My "always up for a dog adventure" friend Sandy and I attended a sheep herding clinic last month. We (and her cattle dog Red) were just spectators, but other folks brought their dogs to either have them evaluated for their potential as sheep herding dogs by Ian Caldicott or to actually have some one-on-one instruction time with Ian (a sheepdog trainer).

It was fun to watch the dogs new to sheep herding figure out that it was ok to chase the sheep and was actually encouraged. Of course, if they're going to make a career out of it, they'll need to learn that there's finesse involved! Ian also worked very closely with the owners/handlers (no matter how much experience the dog had) to teach them that they have to help their dogs understand what to do but to also let the dogs do some of their own thinking. It's a difficult balance and the handler really has to understand not just how the dog tends to work but how sheep move. If you've never watched a well-trained sheep dog do its job, you really must - it's mesmerizing.

The clinic was held at Performance Dogs in Action in Pleasant Grove, CA and coordinated by the Doggon Herding meetup group.

Both Sandy and I took lots of photos and I've posted many of mine in my
DotPhoto album.

Here are some of my favorites:

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Down and Dirty

This is what I'll do to get a good photo of a critter:

Fortunately the paddock was dry. I'm not sure I would've done that if it was muddy!

And this is one of the shots I got:

Valentine the Angora Goat
(she was just 3 days old at the time)

About two weeks ago, my good friend Sandy and I visited a local ranch/rescue facility.


Baby - a diabetic Pomeranian


Buddy - a senior Boston Terrier

Sandy and I spent about three hours there, petting dogs, cats, horses, an opinionated pig and Valentine. Of course, we took lots and lots of photos. I've posted a selection of photos here, you can see more on Flickr.

By the time we left that day (in supremely happy moods), the toes of our shoes, knees and elbows were dirty and we smelled like eau de equine. I also had a wet knee because I hadn't noticed a puddle of dog pee in the house before I knelt down to take some photos!

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Samantha Portrait - Just Finished

Finished yesterday, I've just color & contrast-corrected the scan, gotten the client's approval and I'm delivering Samantha's portrait on Friday. This 5 " x 7" drawing was done in India ink & ink wash on white scratchboard.






I took a couple photos of the portrait along the way. Not the greatest photos, but I think you'll get the idea.

This is after the first application of ink (on white scratchboard, not black): I use a brush with full strength India ink for the darkest areas. I set up a palette with three to four strengths of ink wash (dark, medium, light/very light) to block in the rest. The ink washes are simply India ink thinned with water. I also use a Rapidograph pen to put in the fine details and some of the fur texture. I do that first, then fill in the rest with the brush. I'm not worried too much about neatness at this point - I will be doing a lot of scratching on the entire cat to build up detail and soften the transitions between tones. This first step is just to block things in so I know where to go next.

Skip forward a step to this one:

I've already scratched the entire surface of the cat and have added another layer of ink washes. At this stage, I don't use full strength India ink on the brush; for the really dark areas, I use the Rapidograph pen and a dark wash of ink. The scratches I've made are filled in by the new layer of ink washes which adds texture and variety of tone. You can see that this stage is much softer than the first stage. I use an X-Acto #16 blade for scratching - nothing fancy, but it gets the job done.

The next step was to scratch in select areas to tidy things up and define the fur patterns and to add ink washes where needed. Then I scratched in the eye highlights and whiskers. I also used a pencil to add the whiskers and hairs that show up against the white background. The whiskers don't show up in the image I posted, but they're there.

I did a more complete job of documenting the steps of a scratchboard drawing in this post of a golden retriever portrait.

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