Open Studio & Salmon Art

I'm gearing up for another Open Studio event and this time, I'm part of a group of artists in my area. The Newcastle Art Studios Tour debuts on October 13th and 14th. This free tour of 5 locations showcases the work of 12 artists. For more details and a printable map, visit our web site. I'm #4 on the map. I'll have some new watercolor on Yupo paintings and some new scratchboard drawings since my last open studio in May. One of the paintings is of Ernie, the loveable shop dog at Clover and Carriage, my friend's shop in Old Town Auburn.

I'm really enjoying having my own permanent studio space, it's so much easier to set up for an open studio event. I don't have to pull everything out of storage to set up and when I'm finished, I don't have to put the displays away. There is some housekeeping to do: spiderwebs to knock down, some insects to vacuum up, some dusting, but that's a piece of cake compared to major set up and tear down!

On a different note, I completed this drawing of a salmon last week, just barely in time to enter it in the art show at the local "Calling Back the Salmon Celebration". I'm really glad I pushed to get it finished because not only am I very pleased with how it turned out, but it took Second Place in the art show! It will be hanging in a restaurant (Buonarroti) for the month of October, along with the other art show entries. Thanks to Art League of Lincoln for their assistance with the art show and coordinating the display at the restaurant.

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Dogs Helping Dogs

As of about 4 months ago, we have a new dog! His name is Arrow (formerly Scout, formerly Bingo) and he's a terrier mix. He doesn't look much like a terrier, but when he was picked up roaming the streets of Auburn CA, he was with two other dogs that were assumed to be his brothers and they really looked like terriers. I'm pretty sure he also has some chihuahua in him, and who knows what else. The three brothers were picked up by Placer County Animal Services and Bingo was transferred to Auburn Area Animal Rescue Foundation (AAARF) where he became Scout. I saw him on their Facebook page and was smitten.



I had some conversations with his foster mom and we determined his personality and temperament would be a good fit for our nearly 10-year-old female Border Collie, Magpie. "Scout" became "Arrow" because of the dog in "The Point", an animated movie I loved as a kid. I have a list of potential names for pets and "Arrow" has been on it for a long time. It's a perfect name for a buddy-type dog and this new guy fits that mold; he's very sociable and loves going places with me. Magpie would much prefer to stay home, play with her tennis ball and associate only with the handful of people she knows well.



When we adopted Arrow, I made a deal with AAARF - I'd pay part of the adoption fee and donate some art for the balance. The art I donated was a new, original painting of an English Springer Spaniel, Charleen. I took the reference photos of the dog at an AAARF event at Fortezza Winery - Charleen belongs to the owner. The painting was put in a silent auction at another AAARF event and the winery owner bid on it and won. It's a full circle kind of thing and the reason I titled this post "Dogs Helping Dogs" - Charleen is a rescue, Arrow is a rescue and we're all working together to help AAARF in their rescue efforts.


"Charleen - Watercolor on Yupo, 4.5" x 5.5"

One of these days, Arrow will be the subject of a painting and of course, when it sells, I'll donate part of the proceeds to AAARF. I'll be forever grateful that they rescued him. He's a very special dog and I'm thrilled that he's ours!

And while I'm on the subject of rescue "Dogs Helping Dogs", I'll give a mention to Yolo County SPCA, who initially took in my little Bichon/Poodle friend Sammy Bourke. I did a portrait of him a while back and had promised Sammy's Kind Friend (owner) that I'd donate part of the sale of that painting to the YCSPCA.

"Sammy - Watercolor, Ink & Color Pencil on Art Board, 4" x 4"

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A Big, Shaggy Dog

Brogan is an Irish Wolfhound and he's huge! Irish Wolfhounds are the tallest breed of dog. He may be big, but he's an easy-going sweetheart and handsome too. I've posted in-progress scans of this portrait previously, and now it's finished. Both dogs are Brogan - the upper right is him when he was younger with a lighter coat and the lower left is him after he'd matured and his coat became more grey.

"Brogan" - 7" x 9" on 9" x 12" Aquabord. Ink, Watercolor & Color Pencil

This painting is on Ampersand's Aquabord, a textured, clay-coated board. I like to use it for full-color realistic portraits like this one. The surface takes watercolor well and I can also scratch into it. It's much harder to scratch than the Claybord I use for other drawings, so that can be a bit challenging, but it works. It's also a pain to scan, because the texture (many bumps) is picked up by my scanner, so I have to do a lot of cleanup on the background of the scan.

Here are a couple of details of the portrait:




And an animation:


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Materials used:
Ampersand Aquabord
India Ink
Technical Pen
Daniel Smith Watercolors
Prismacolor Colored Pencils
X-Acto Knife with #16 Blade

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Australian "Comfort" Dog - New Portrait

This is Redbone (Red for short), an Australian Cattle Dog that my friend Sandy adopted from an ACD rescue group about nine years ago. He's a handsome boy with a great "head tilt" which I used to my advantage for this portrait. Sandy has had a number of ACDs over the years and they all have exhibited a great love for napping on the couch, hence the term "Australian Comfort Dog". They have plenty of energy when the Frisbee is calling, but after that, rest and relaxation is very important.


"Red" - 4" x4", Mixed Media on Watercolor Art Board


Reference photo for Red's portrait

I scanned the portrait twice while I was working on it. At this stage, I had inked parts of it with black & brown Micron pens, painted the background with watercolor, lightly shaded the background with color pencil, and started with watercolor washes on Red.


Here I've completed most of the watercolor work. I did a little bit more detailing with watercolor and then completed the portrait with color pencil.


This is a detail of the portrait. Notice that I also used just a bit of lavender color pencil on top of the orange as accent. It doesn't show very well, but there's also a bit of orange on his nose.

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Materials used for "Red":
Watercolor Art Board
Micron Pens (black & brown ink)
Daniel Smith Watercolors
Prismacolor Colored Pencils
Krylon UV Resistant Clear Spray

You can find merchandise featuring Red on Zazzle and CafePress.

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Dog Portraits in Progress

All of my pet portrait subjects are special - they have people who really love them and want their likenesses captured as art - but these two subjects are special to me personally. The first one is Red, an Australian Cattle Dog (ACD - aka Australian Comfort Dog) who belongs to my good friend Sandy. She adopted him from an ACD rescue group and I was with her when she picked him up many years ago. Red's a handsome, photogenic guy and I've been wanting to do a portrait of him for Sandy for a long time.





The other dog is Sammy, another rescue who had a really, really rough start, but now lives with his Kind Friend who loves him dearly and has done an amazing job teaching him that a dog's life is supposed to be a good one. Sammy, his Kind Friend and his Best Friend (a standard poodle) have been out to our place a few times, most recently to my art show. I started the portrait just prior to the show and Sandy took this photo of Sammy and his portrait.




I've made a little more progress since the show.



Sammy has an enchanting blog - read about his adventures and what his early days with his Kind Friend were like. Click here to read Sammy's blog post about one of their visits to our place.

Both of these portraits are on the 4" x 4" watercolor Art Board panels. For what you see here, I've used ink (just black on Sammy's; black, sepia & brown on Red's) and watercolor. After I finish with the watercolor, I'll add final detail with color pencil. On Sammy's I also used white color pencil around the edges to preserve the wisps of hair so that I didn't have to be super careful to paint around them with the blue background. Where blue paint did overlap the white, I was easily able to lift it off the waxy pencil with a damp brush.

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Beau - Standard Poodle Portrait

"Beau" - 8" x 8"

This handsome, happy guy is Beau, a black standard poodle. My clients liked my photo with his mouth open, but they also liked another photo where his ears were windblown, so I combined the two - pulling the windblown parts of his ears from another photo.





With all his curly and wavy hair, this portrait in watercolor on Yupo was an interesting one to tackle. I knew I'd be able to figure out a way to render his texture, but didn't really have a plan until I jumped in and started. I also knew it would be impossible to get all that detail into this looser style of painting, so from the start, my plan was to "interpret" Beau's texture. I took a few photos of the process along the way.


I painted the background first, as I usually do with this type of portrait. With a damp brush, I cleaned up the edges of the dog and started to lift out tendrils of hair as well. The white area is the unpainted Yupo; the hard edges of green on the upper half are edges I haven't cleaned up yet.


A close-up of the tendrils on the ear.


I filled in the ears with paint, not worrying about any detail, I just wanted a base layer. You can see that on the right side. On the left side, I've started to add detail by lifting and dragging paint. I've also painted into the tendrils at the edge that I'd lifted out previously.


A detail of the previous photo.


A detail of the finished portrait.


Another detail of the finished portrait.

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Sammy - Yorkshire Terrier Portrait

"Sammy" - Yorkshire Terrier, 4" x 4"
Ink, watercolor & color pencil

Another painting on the Art Board surface (Cold Press Watercolor Panel). This is a companion portrait to Sydney's (see my last post) and Bailey's (see this post) portraits.




I didn't make a full series of in-progress scans for this portrait, but I do have a scan and a photo I took during the process:


Watercolor (background) and ink (eyes, nose, mouth)
He looks so disapproving at this stage!


Watercolor washes added to Sammy.
The next stage involved adding more watercolor for detail.
That's the stage I didn't scan.

For merchandise featuring Sammy, visit my CafePress and Zazzle shops.

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Jack & Red Horse

My latest painting is of Jack, an Australian Cattle Dog and Red Horse - a toy he's not really supposed to play with. Jack belongs to someone I used to work with and either he or another friend (we all worked together) e-mailed the photo to me a while back. When I saw that photo, I just knew I had to do a painting of it! That look on Jack's face is priceless - resignation with an undercurrent of mischief in the making. Red Horse is a beloved toy given to Jack's owner when he was a child. As Jack's owner said: it's a love-hate relationship with Jack and Red Horse.

In situations like this, where the painting isn't a commission, but I use someone else's photo, the photographer/pet owner has first option to purchase the piece. If they opt not to buy the original, I'll give them a print and some note cards of the art. Happily, Jack's owner has purchased this painting.


"Jack & Red Horse" - 10" x 5.5" (this image is cropped horizontally) - watercolor and a touch of color pencil on Yupo



As you can see, I took some artistic license. I changed the proportions by adding more couch on the bottom. The original is actually wider as well, but I cropped the scan for a better proportion for reproductions. As for the colors - I knew right off that the horse would be red and Jack would be purple and orange, but had to think about the couch and background colors. After a little pondering, blue and blue-green made sense. I didn't want a lot of detail in the couch, so I let the paint do most of the work. I pushed it around a bit while it was still wet to get a hint of wrinkles in the fabric. Then after the paint was dry, I used color pencil to accent a few of the wrinkles and added some subtle cross hatching in places.



The background is simply a mix of blue and turquoise allowed to dry, although I hit it with a mist of water at some point during the drying process. The background has more blue than what shows here, similar to the lighter shades of the couch. Color correcting these brightly colored paintings is often a challenge and at some point, I have to throw in the towel and be satisfied!

The neat thing about working on Yupo - letting it "do its thing" - results in some really interesting patterns and textures. Iit all depends on the amount of water, paint and the colors I use. Each color reacts a bit differently to/with other colors. More water gives softer effects (as in this background), more paint (aka juicy paint) results in swirls and patterns (see the background of Julep in the previous post).

Reproductions of this painting (a matted print or note cards) are available in my Bonanzle booth and a portion of the proceeds will benefit the Placer SPCA.

Magnets, t-shirts, mugs, mousepads and more are available from CafePress.

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Trying Something New

If you've been following my blog, you know I have art available at a variety of on-line locations: Bonanza, Etsy, eBay, ArtFire, CafePress & Zazzle. I'm still trying to figure out the best combination of traffic and expense that will continue to result in (and boost!) sales - it's complicated and there are an overwhelming number of options. As I mentioned a few posts back, I'm closing my eBay store and moving that art over to Bonanzle, so that's one decision I've made in this process.

At the moment, I'm not as focused on bringing in pet portrait commissions, as I have a backlog I'd like to conquer, but while I'm working on those, it would be nice for art that's already available to sell and bring in money to buy paint and brushes (and dog food and hay and to pay my ISP, etc.)!

Well, now I'm adding another tool to my arsenal. PayPal has made it quite easy to create "Buy Now" buttons to be put on web sites, blogs, etc. I've already set up a little store on my web site with lots of "Add to Cart" buttons, but this is geared toward the sale of a single specific item. I'm not going to inundate the blog with items for sale, but when I have a new piece of art, I now have the option to offer it for direct purchase here.

So, here's my first test. A painting I call "Julep" - I was searching for a name and the minty green shade of the pup inspired my husband to say "Mint Julep?". This painting of a Jack Russell terrier was one of my first watercolor on Yupo paintings (there's a bit of color pencil on it too). It's also one of my favorites and I use the image frequently in my marketing materials. It IS for sale though, and has been since I created it. I'm not sure why it hasn't sold, but I wish it would - I'd love to see it find a great home. Yes, much like real critters, artists feel a connection to our works and hope they will end up in places where they will be cherished.

The art measures 4" x 4" and it's already framed to 8" x 10" - with a white mat in a matte (frosted) silver metal frame. The second image shows the proportions of the mat/frame. It's $95 plus $9 for postage/handling and insurance. Add in sales tax of 8.25% if you're in California. I'll mail it USPS Priority. For now, this painting is only available to US buyers through the Buy Now button, but if you're from another country and are interested in "Julep", please don't hesitate to contact me.





Nov. 2012 NOTE - This painting has sold. To see other available works, please visit my "Available Art" album on Facebook.

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More Purple Dogs

These charismatic girls are Juna & Luna, pit bull/lab mix sisters. Each portrait measures 6" x 6". I typically don't include pets' collars in their portraits, but Juna & Luna's owners searched far and wide for the perfect collars for their girls and we all agreed that the collars should be in the portraits. It also made the background color choices a no-brainer.









You may have noticed that my last few watercolor dog portraits have been purple. I have a simple explanation for that. The latest batch of portrait commissions have included black, dark brown or steel grey dogs. For my watercolor Petzazz portraits, I like to use vibrant and/or bright colors instead of the critters' natural coloring. I still try to use colors that represent the pet's natural coloring though. So I've found that purple is a perfect color for black or dark dogs. It "reads" as a dark color but it's vibrant and interesting.

I don't use purple straight out of the tube either, I like to mix the colors. I usually use ultramarine blue, rose of ultramarine and carbazole violet (Daniel Smith watercolors). Sometimes I'll throw in a little quinacridone rose. Mixing these colors results in more variety of shades/colors on the portrait.

You can see in this detail of Juna's portrait how the colors separate on the Yupo and add to the unique look of this style of portrait. The darkest areas that appear black are just a thick mix of the colors I use to make purple.

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"Alabama Ripple" - New Pet Portrait

I met the client who commissioned Ripple at the Auburn Old Town Gallery one day. She's from Alabama, but was in Auburn visiting her daughter and they both came in to see the art. We had a wonderful conversation about dogs and the charity in Alabama for which she volunteers - Hand in Paw. Really, I'm not at the Gallery all the time, but I work there 2 afternoons a month, and since it's only a few minutes from home, I stop in often. So it was still serendipitous that we were all there at the same time. She mentioned that her sister had a very beloved poodle mix and she'd get back to me about commissioning a portrait as a surprise gift. She may well have contacted my by e-mail even if she hadn't met me that day, but I know that the face to face conversation helped her learn more about me and my portraits and was probably the reason she choose me for the commission. That personal touch is so very important!

At first she wanted a detailed scratchboard portrait, but when I saw the photos she'd been able to "sneak" and e-mail, I told her they were less than ideal, but I'd be willing to give it a try. Over time and with subsequent visits back to Auburn and the Gallery (where she was able to see my various styles of portraits) and e-mail discussions with me, she opted for a portrait in my Petzazz style. We're both very glad she went that route. The Petzazz paintings are looser and more interpretive, so it was much easier to work in that style for Ripple's portrait.


This was the most useful of the photos - showing a great expression and head angle, even if a bit blurry. You can see how it would have been challenging to pull a detailed scratchboard portrait out of that.


I cropped the photo to focus on Ripple's head.



I had a lot of fun with this portrait - the Yupo surface allows me to push paint around and lift it to create all the interesting texture in Ripple's fur. I also "turned back the clock" a bit - getting rid of his cataracts and making him appear less grey. I also chose not to show his back on the left, making it look more like he was sitting instead of standing.


A detail of the portrait


Even more detail of the portrait

PS - I didn't know until today how Ripple's owner felt about the surprise gift of the portrait, but now I do and I'm so pleased that she is happy with it! See the comment below.

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