A Pretty Pair of Westies

Another pet portrait! These two belong to an Atlanta couple and their son commissioned a painting from a really bad photo. Once again, Google comes to the rescue. It seems like all hair on Westies looks about the same, so if you can find a good reference image and just use the photo for the basics, like size and shape of eyes you can get a pretty good painting. Well, that's what I tell myself every time I accept one of these less than perfect pictures. I will share the picture just in case you doubt me. :)

They really are darling though...now I want some of these too.

12" x 16" oil on canvas

Things I Learn from Teaching Workshops

I like to look at every experience as an opportunity to learn something new, even when I'm the teacher! It keeps my eyes open to new ways of seeing and my mind thinking about new ways to do things. Last week I taught another workshop on painting animals. Since it was a week-long class I decided to start with a drawing lesson first. I truly believe that you can't be a good painter until you've mastered drawing. Many people take one of my classes and come in with no drawing experience, and they're able to turn out some nice generic landscapes. However, to actually learn and understand how to model three dimensional objects drawing skills are a must.

We started with a cat and learned an easy way to get proportions right by using one standard unit of measure, in this instance the distance from the outside of the cat's left eye to the outside of it's right eye. Then we used that measurement to judge the proportions of everything else when we put our marks down. Even the 12 year olds (the youngest I allowed in the class) seemed to understand this.

We started our acrylic paintings the next day. Everyone tried to paint my little Gold Retriever puppy with the rose, and most of them were successful. A few students wanted to branch out on their own projects and that was OK with me too.

Two people in the class had been creating art for many, many years and to my great surprise these students were the slowest to grasp the concepts I was teaching. I do not think this was a case of not being able to teach an old dog new tricks. I've never believed that anyway. Dogs are smart and they can learn a new trick at any age. What I do believe is that these artists had been doing things in a different way for so many years that they actually BLINDED themselves to the possibility of doing it another way. At some point in their artistic journey their minds had become closed to the possibilities. I don't believe this was intentional. I think it happens whenever you become too focused on the process instead of the results. I have noticed that a lot of artists can tell me what they want to do: paint looser, forget the detail etc.. I'm not sure these artists have every tried to do this on their own though. They wait for someone to come along and SHOW them how, when they should be figuring out on their own how to achieve this, putting in some practice time and then ironing out the details at a workshop. Instead they expect to master the whole concept in one week. It can't be done.

On the other hand, the students who had no idea how to proceed were able to follow along more easily as they had no preconceptions about HOW to achieve the result they wanted. I've included a few pictures of the participants and some of the student's work here. It was an acrylic painting class but I admit to taking my dog home and doctoring him up with my oil paints. :)

Some pears are better than others and then some foods are not good for you at all

We like the Anjou pears because they are versatile and ripen faster. I like to paint them because they are cute and compact. This 6" x 8" painting was done in an hour with a palette knife and the paint that was left on my palette after painting the one below it. So these two foods are kind of like "good" and "evil". Pears are healthy and green, hot dogs are red and artery clogging. Whatever... when you want to paint something food is always available and it comes in a multitude of colors, shapes and sizes. It is not about the subject to me; it is about the arrangement of shapes on the picture plane. Is it interesting or is it too static to be a good painting? I don't always know the answer until the painting is finished. And sometimes not even then...

I had a guy from the Russian Federation email me today asking why I didn't ship to their country. Basically he was saying that I should-- I lost a sale because I didn't. So I have amended my shipping exclusions at eBay Etsy and Bonanza. International sales are good and I needed to be reminded that we Americans are not the only consumers in the world. Two of my most recent sales were to Japanese collectors. It's a global economy!

What effect will the decline of the Euro have on American sales to foreign countries? I would think if the dollar is worth more our goods would become more expensive to people who use other currencies. THAT might not be a good thing.

ANJOU PEARS and ALL AMERICAN LUNCH

Two pet portraits I completed this week

Christmas commissions are slowly but surely being completed. The tabby cat is 8" x 10" and the lab-dobie mix is 11" x 14"