Sandhill Cranes in Flight Study

Despite the lack of posts here, I am indeed alive and well!

  I'm thinking of doing a much larger painting of this crane study, hoping to convey their grace in flight, not details.

Stormy: 'Oh, won't you please play with me...'

Coming soon...

a completed painting of Remy,

pictures of our very own egg production team,

and the reopening of my etsy.com store.

Great Blue Heron and Cypresses

5x7" pastel on sanded paper

This is worked from a photo I admired (from ronnieb) at morgueFile, a reference photo site.  I was drawn to the light, cool colors of the bird on the contrasting cypress trunks.

Sometimes it is refreshing to use the photos of others (which are being clearly offered for common use...almost all photos online are copyrighted, including mine on this blog).  The ones I choose are usually subjects I'm very familiar with but just have a certain something I personally haven't captured digitally.

A bit of subtle house cat drama, subtle interaction being the exception with these guys...

while sunbathing below a bright skylight...Stormy, the bathed, narrates.

*****

wait, i'm not so sure i want tis...

well.......okay

 now don't stop...

*****

Fun With Pastels

5x7" pastel on sanded paper -  a marsh just north of Norton Pond in Lincolnville, ME.  Utilizing fiction can be very useful, or at least fun (!) when painting and the colors I wanted to use say 'spring' more than the reference (poor photo below).  Painting bright yellows, reds, & oranges didn't appeal to me at the time. 

Here's a picture of the world's best dog (because he mostly acts like a cat ;) 

Pilgrim Goose Pair

8x10 acrylic on linen board, contact me for availability

Mystic Prairie Eco-Farm in Wisconsin breeds Pilgrim geese (and more) and takes lovely pictures and videos of them.   They have given me permission to use their photos as references for which I'm very grateful.  Pilgrim males are white but the females are white and buff/gray.  Do they look in love to you?.

Acrylic paint is challenging since I like to paint slowly and blend-blend-blend, and it dries FAST!   I'm trying to adjust my expectations to the medium...and work with its advantages, texture can be one.  I could have gone back on this one and grayed down some of the saturation and played soft/hard adjustment with the edges but I decided against it...

I turned a certain age this year and in keeping with my pledge to myself to regularly step outside my comfort zone, I present my first ever canning project:  volunteer jalapenos from my husband's garden.  Also, I've canned tomatoes and knitted a few dishcloths/potholder thingies (another first).  

'Trio II' and 'Lakenvelder'

'Trio II'

Acrylic on board 5x7, black frame available

A generic trio free-ranging about.

'The Lakenvelder'

Pastel on sanded paper (approx 4x6")   SOLD

Several years ago at my first poultry show I was taken by the grace and striking black and white of this very nervous rooster.  I took some blurred pictures of him as he paced his small show cage.  

I'm so happy, I have a new camera now and will be posting often.

'The Trio'

Pastel on sanded pastel paper - like the geese above, this piece is < 5x7" and framed under a white mat in a black frame.  SOLD  


'A trio of what?' another chicken lover like myself might ask, but I don't have a good answer.  These 'chooks' are an imagined composition of a somewhat Icelandic rooster with generic black and white hens.  


Here's a few of the kids I've had the pleasure to hang out with recently...

'Buff Geese'

I adore geese and want a pair badly, but for now I will paint them.  These are intended to be American Buff geese which are a rare domestic breed that are indeed a buff color, not white, with lighter and darker accents.  Here's the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy page on them with a few pictures  http://albc-usa.org/cpl/waterfowl/buffgoose.html
This breed and the Pilgrim have a much quieter and calmer disposition than the more common breeds that have given domestic geese a bad reputation.

This small painting (< 5x7") consists of an underpainting of acrylic on gessoed, heavy watercolor paper, with pastels on top (hence framed under glass).  Switching around with different mediums, vs. sticking with my beloved oil paints always and forever, is refreshing; and I have a closet full of acrylic and pastel supplies!

Work and Cats

The cats relax...they are an everyday pleasure to behold.

My crazy love for them brightens my days and they always say, in their way of saying things,  'relax'.  Working helps me relax, each day I create at least a tiny bit of work.  I'll share some soon.  

“The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.”
― Mary Oliver

“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.”
― Mary Oliver, Wild Geese

“To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.” 

― Mary Oliver

New Year, New Kitty, New Painting

This painting is inspired by photos from Maine lakes we enjoy.  This is my first try at using a fully gray sky, which naturally results in gray water...

'Lake Reflections'  8x6 oil on stretched canvas

When you are a cat person few things could start off a year better than an additional cat in the family.  Meet Moby.  He is a very big boy, at least 18 lbs., double my other little guy.

Happy Thanksgiving wishes & 'Black Dog'

Finally a new painting posted!

This is not my black dog, Remy, but Jon Katz's dog Lenore, or rather my loosely rendered work from his photo of her.  Anyway, his entertaining and inspiring blog, Bedlam Farm Journal  is one of my favorites (and he offered the personal use of his photos).

I tried to get a similar photo of my dog for fun (it it was not fun) but ended up with my much-more-easily-photographed little best friend Stormy instead.

I have a lot to be thankful for this year and I hope you do too!

Artist Adventures

One of Julie Cameron's tools in her book The Artist's Way is the Artist Date: a weekly, solo adventure into something or someplace that interests you.  Well, I've decided I'm on an extended one of those...my muse should be fully replenished and capable of helping me actually FINISH a painting some day...before too long.  In the mean time, here are some more pictures.

Playing on rocks with the dogs, Studies in progress, and We are expecting!

“We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.”

George Bernard Shaw

I've done a few tulip studies and have a cat study going but they are rough and not ready for posting.  Why tulips when they are out of season?  Tulips are my favorite flower but I never see them planted, only in Publix supermarket, so they are always out of season for me :( (most fleshy/bulb  flowers don't survive Florida's harsh sun nor like the sandy soil). I'm working on some new ideas, slowly, too slowly.  

In other news,  my goat Phoebe has been bred and if all goes well I will have my first kid/s in late January's chill.  I'm excited about the kid and about having my own goat milk.  It all seems like it should be so natural and easy, but this new experience will involve a number of challenges.  My other doe will be bred soon too.  Once I have my own milk I think we will invest in a small fridge I can dedicate to aging cheeses so I can go beyond the fresh ones.

'The Dowitchers'

'The Dowitchers', surprise, more birds (8x8 oil on stretched canvas).

And Stormy at his sweetest, asleep.

Palms and Salt Marsh, Husband's handy-work

8x8 oil on canvas

Another painting of the Gulf Coast salt marshes with palm and cedar hammocks (Crystal River/Chassahowitzka area).

Last week my husband had a significant birthday and in his honor and in gratitude I am posting some of his handy-work (which was built for my birthday).   He built fences, gates, 2 benches (for sleeping & jumping), a 'summer' barn, milk stand, and hay manger for my goats...

At night I lock them in the smaller pen where, I slightly hesitate here to admit, I have a baby monitor to listen for any overnight issues like coyotes or loose dogs.  Our dogs are house dogs and no help as livestock guardians.  

Everyone who has goats has a story about dog attacks with injuries and often deaths (sadly I'm not exaggerating).  I don't want to let these girls down...would you?

Phoebe & Fame

drip....drip..drip and Schmid's color charts

Two gallons of chevre and one of feta dripping away their whey.  If anyone is interested in home cheese making but unsure where to start or just curious about it, this is the place to go...Ricki Carroll's blog, with links to her online supply store  

My fingers are crossed for this first try at feta.  Yesterday I did mozzarella two different ways with one good and one mediocre result.  The good news about that is I got the easy 30-minute way to work after a failure a few weeks ago.   Soooo I can discard the longer traditional mozzarella method I had been using.

In his book Alla Prima, Richard Schmid strongly suggests this rather exhaustive color chart exercise I have begun.  It may be nothing magical but I'm hoping it will help me fall back in love with become again intimate with my oil paints whom I have not spent enough time with recently, clear from recent posts.  Here I've started with one of my favorite color's chart, viridian (a blue-green, in its pure state in the left column, then mixed with yellows so far).   This requires a lot of drafting tape, time, and paint but beyond immediate therapy, I can refer back to them for many years.

Yearlings playing 'king of the hill'

Part play, part competition the yearlings (year-and-a-halflings really) are acting like kids.  Sorry about the fencing but if I go inside they stop and come see me.  These were taken from my kitchen window.

p.s. this blog will include art again...but just photography again today.

Gold (Phoebe) and silver (Fame) medalists take their positions..

Distractions from painting...

If making goat cheese from someone else's goats' milk and selling a bit of it were not enough of a distraction from painting, these new arrivals are more.  They are attention sponges.

(I'll take that spanish moss!)

'Brown Tabby'

'Brown Tabby' 6x8 oil painting

Brown and gray tabbies are among the most common of cats but they are all special individuals with their own personalities.  This small girl is from a picture I found in the creative commons but I really liked her profile.  Another in the cat series...to be continued.

The cats may be followed soon by a goats!  I'm about to get two of my own; I'm very excited and a bit nervous.   Dairy goats are not animals you fence in the brush and forget about, far from that.  Much more than you want to hear on this to come.

'Grey' Cat Painting

6x8 oil painting, available at Earth Pets Organic Feed and Garden.

Painting who and what I love!

'Love is work made visible. '    Kahlil Gibran

Fire plans, knitting, and goat cheese

This quote sort of  explains my personal experience with the Melrose paint-out this year...


"When a picture isn't realized, you pitch it in the fire and start another." (Paul Cezanne) 


I've hung one from Melrose but I don't like it enough to post it...maybe it should really burn...it will be a very long time before I paint palm trees again.


However I have a painting of my cat that I will indeed post soon.  He is such a cutie it is hard to mess him up, or so it seems so far.  What do you think?

If you are by chance like me and admire fluffy dogs, but don't yet live with one, here is something you should know...Chow and his winter coat...and this is only pile #1, pile #2 was almost as big.  He is a really great dog and we do love him very much!

Happenings in our 1 acre, spring bird scene:  Carolina Wrens fledged 4 little short-tailed cuties from the shoe box we taped in the rafters of our pole barn/carport, Bluebirds are feeding chicks, 3 Purple Martins have moved into the gourds,  Chickadees chicks are in 2 boxes, the non-stop-coach-like whistle of a Great Crested Flycatcher make our yard sound like a playing field,  murder of 6 crows visits regularly looking for hand-outs, Northern Parulas are our tinyest and cutest bird-bath-bathers.


Oh yes, looking back at the (draft's) title,  I have learned to knit, albeit haphazardly...and have started making goat cheese which is currently, as of today, available for sale at Earth Pets Organic Feed and Garden in downtown Gainesville 'For Pet Consumption Only'.

Melrose 'Paint Out'

I'm working outside this week at the Melrose Open Air Arts event.  If you are in the area stop by the info tent to find out where we are painting.  Click here to go to the online catalog, flip it open and you will see a detailed schedule.