ATTITUDE

It's been a LONG month with absolutely no painting at all, but tomorrow looks promising for picking up my brushes finally. I can't remember ever having such a long stretch of no paint time...
This is one of the last paintings I did during the holidays as a demo for a class, to show how to paint looser with watercolor. He should have been posted over the holidays, but here he is now.

It's lots of fun to paint animals, especially ones with an attitude. You can just imagine what he's thinking.

After spending about ten minutes free handing the drawing, I painted quickly, using lots of juicy colors, allowing them to mix on the paper as much as possible. Accuracy wasn't my concern. Rather, I hoped to capture the sense of boredom and disdain shown by this beautiful Great Dane.

Although he looks black, no black was used. By mixing the darker colors from my palette, I was able to make some luscious blacks. His name is Jade.

"JADE" Transparent Watercolor on 140#CP Arches 12 x 17" COLLECTED

SPECIAL CREATURES

Though I seldom choose to paint commissions, the time spent painting this beautiful dog was special. Lynne commissioned me to paint it for her daughter, and there was no way I could say 'no,' especially after seeing the great photo choices that she provided. Painting animals is always fun for me. Thanks, Lynne, for asking me to paint this and for the excellent photography to work from.

"TOAD" Transparent Watercolor on 140# Arches 22 x 17" COLLECTED

GIFTS

Giving a painting as a gift is always risky unless you REALLY know the recipient's taste in art. Today this painting is headed to Indianapolis where our younger son lives. We think he'll be surprised with the painting, which is for his birthday today. Duke is on the right, and Daisy is the partially cross eyed Siamese mix on the left.

Getting the right photo to work from for pets is often challenging. Once I have a good photo and a good drawing, the painting is fairly simple to do. Paint the shapes with the right values and establish the proper edge for the shape. Miskit fur edges that are too hard to paint around, and don't paint any 'fur' hairs until the very end, painting them sparingly only where needed to suggest the softness of the fur. Color choices are not nearly as critical as getting the correct values of lights and darks. In fact, the purple, coral, orange, blues, and teal were fun to use for shadows.

My husband was surprised when I started this painting on Friday night. He asked when I'd get it done. Actual painting time was under three and a half hours, but the drawing and miskiting time took longer than that. If I count the time it took to get the right photos, too, the preparation time before putting paint in my brush is more than double the painting time. For me, the preparation, planning, and drawing are critical for a good painting, and I enjoy all the planning just as much as I love the painting time.

Painting size is approximately 17 x 22", making the cats life size. Happy birthday, MATT!

LONG STORY

The computer is pretty much okay now, but there's lots to adjust - and find. Plus, I can't use Adobe Photoshop yet. Bummer.

Here's another painting created quite a few years ago of one of my favorite animals. She was quite a beauty that day at the Colorado Rocky Mountain Zoo. While painting her, I used lots of teal, turquoise, blue, red, coral, purple, and yellows, but no browns, for the fur.

I do hope to post fresh work soon, along with the paintings from the YUPO workshop last month. It's good to have a working computer again:-D

"LONG STORY" Transparent Watercolor on 140# CP Fabriano Artistico 14 x 22" COLLECTED

IN LIKE A LION.......

Yesterday's weather was a little 'lion like.' Our mom always told us that if March came in like a lion, she'd go out like a lamb, and I'm counting on it. Spring can't get here soon enough.

This lion actually lives at a zoo with a great view of Lake Michigan, and although he doesn't look too ferocious here, he can really, REALLY ROAR! He was created over eight years ago on YUPO paper, when I was just learning to control the paint on that slippery YUPO surface. Some of the darker detail has been painted with 'tip tapping' brush strokes, which I don't seem to use as much anymore.

The lion looks old and sad, and a little too human, maybe because of the long winters on the lake. Or perhaps he's really the lion in the Wizard of Oz?!?

He was a beautiful and majestic animal and did live with a lovely lioness in his large, serengeti-like confinement. The YUPO painting of her was posted a while ago.

"LIKE A LION..." Transparent Watercolor on YUPO 13 x 18"

MICHIGAN MOLLIE

Mollie is a Belgian Sheepdog and one of the most beautiful creatures I've ever seen. The painting was to be a surprise for Mollie's owner, and she was surprised when she saw this along with the portrait of Mollie's head.

It's so much fun to try to capture the personality of any animal, and especially one that's so animated and lively like Mollie. Since she's got a shiny black coat, I knew I'd be using lots of color to make that rich black be luminous. And, I also knew I would not use black paint.

To mix dark colors, check your palette wells. If the paint looks dark in the well, it'll work as one of the paints to mix for making black. I think the key is to let the paints 'mix themselves' on the paper, rather than mixing up a big puddle of darks in the palette.

Make separate puddles with lots of water, but add enough pigment to get each puddle really dark in value. Then add a brushful of color in part of the area to be black. Don't rinse your brush unless you remove the excess water in it. That extra water will dilute the next puddle, making it too light. Now add another color- get a juicy amount in your brush - and let the two colors charge together on their own. Touch in a third or fourth color but avoid stirring up the paint on the paper.

Keep your brush out of the way as much as possible and let the excess moisture of the paint do the mixing. Use your brush to control and create soft and hard edges as needed.

If the colors aren't mixing on their own, use more moisture from the puddles. Make it do what watercolor does so well - flow. Let the colors slowly move on their own with just a little help from your brush. Just a little. Sometimes artists stroke the brush over and over and over in an area, annihilating the fresh look of watercolor.

Mollie's coat had a lot of texture in some of the fur, and other parts of her coat were sleek. In the textured parts, I used granulating pigments like lunar earth or lunar blue to help suggest the texture of her coat. For the sleeker areas, I used phthalos and quinacridones, which have no granulation at all.

I do love painting animals and am so glad I got to paint Mollie.

"MICHIGAN MOLLIE" Transparent Watercolor on 140#CP Fabriano Artistico, 18 x 24" COLLECTED (Smaller portrait to the right is also on Fabriano.)

MAGNIFICENT MOLLIE

Some animals are so beautiful that it's hard to imagine painting them as magnificent as they are. Mollie is like this.

Although she's a sleek black dog, there's no black paint on her. What you see here is lots of Quinacridone Magenta, Ultramarine Turquoise, Phthalo Blue, Quin Burnt Orange, Indanthrone, Cerulean, and Lunar Earth, all from Daniel Smith Company out of Seattle.

I've started painting a full length view of her on a larger sheet of paper, but for now, she looks like this. My hope is to capture how exquisitely gorgeous she is.

"FIRST MOLLIE" Transparent Watercolor on 140CP Arches - 11 x 15"

SAM KITTY

Got home tonight from a great vacation with our 8 yr. old grandson - spent wandering down the coast of Oregon then back up the Cascade
Mountain Range, finishing along the beautiful Columbia River - beautiful, luscious country - so hard to leave behind to come back to the humid, muggy midwest.

Crater Lake was beyond any words! Thanks, Lynn, for telling us about it.

We used to come home from trips to be greeted by this gorgeous old cat named Sam. He's gone now, but I still thought of him when we got back in town.

He was a Maine Coon, and I think, 'part dog.' Our younger son taught him to sit and stand on command! I miss him. This painting was done several years ago, and animals are just about the only commissions I ever accept to paint now.

Looking forward to class tomorrow, but it won't have quite the atmosphere that Dawn and I had as we spent the day at a picnic table in the woods last week painting amidst the Oregon ferns and conifers. Great memories.

"SAM KITTY" Transparent Watercolor on 140#CP Fabriano Artistico 11 x 15"

YUPO - INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY

These creatures look innocent and adorable when they are young, and this one climbed all over my husband's back and shoulders to explore during our visit to Vicki's menagerie. They are overly curious. When we had a landscape business years ago, I was nipped in the leg by one - right after the homeowner told me he wouldn't bite. Wrong.

Raccoons are nightly visitors to our upper deck if I fill the bird feeder there. I enjoyed painting the 'night time' look of this picture on YUPO. Using lots of color, but blending it to make it subdued, I wanted to give the feeling of someone who had just been found out. I think he looks a litle guilty, don't you?

Click on the painting to see an up close of the textures around the tree trunk. Workshop instructor Mary Ann Beckwith showed us how to lay the fibers of 'halloween webbing' down on the wet paint. Once the paint dries, the fibers are removed to reveal textures underneath that couldn't be created any other way.

This is one of my older paintings out of the archives. Tomorrow's post will be another YUPO from the archives .... one of my favorite animal paintings on YUPO.

"PARTY CRASHER" Transparent Watercolor on YUPO 11 x 19" Collected

MORE ANIMALS

Yesterday's blog featured an otter, so today I have to give space to my other favorite creature, the giraffe. When they were younger, our kids got to feed the giraffes at a Colorado zoo and loved placing those crackers on their long, dark purplish blue tongues.

This painting, finished many years ago, started out with a wash of rainbow hues across the whole paper. I'd carefully miskited the whites on the giraffe's face, ear, and neck ahead of time, though. After that colorful glaze dried, I miskited the leaves in front of the neck, then added more darks to the neck and face before painting the spots in.

Special attention was given to the edges of all the dark spots so that they did not look glued on. The edges range from hard to soft to disappearing, lending a 'fur-like' effect to this animal's coat.

I love the casual glance these beautiful creatures can give you as they sweep their long eyelashes down. They're so elegant and stately. And it's been said that you should paint things you really like. I do.

"LET'S DO LUNCH" Transparent Watercolor on 140#CP Fabriano Artisico 11 x 25"

YUPO OTTER BE IRISH

This little guy may be thinking, "Top of the Morning to ya!" Everyone in his hometown of Homer, Alaska calls him "GRANDPA," and I don't think he goes without food too often. He lives in the harbor there and loves to stare you down . . . cute and adorable, too, even though he's capable of eating up to 20 pounds of food a day.

Alaskan otters grow to be almost 5' long, and their fur has well over a half a million hairs per square inch! That's thick hair. They spend almost half their time grooming themselves so that they stay waterproof. (Talk about high maintenance.) Still, they seem so playful. They've been one of my very favorite animals for a long, long time. Happy St. Patrick's Day.

"OSCAR OTTER" Transparent Watercolor on YUPO 19 x 13"

GOING TO THE DOGS

Painting commissions is usually about the LAST thing I want to do, unless it's of an animal. For some reason, I really enjoy painting dogs and cats. Painting them is a lot easier than caring for them, though not as rewarding.

That these three guys each had such unique personalities became very evident even though I only spent an hour taking their pictures. They were all labs, but each looked markedly different. Creating two separate and interesting paintings of the same three animals did present a challenge, though.

I seldom take commissions now because of the inspiration factor. Is there a magic way to 'get inspired' to do a commission other than being broke? I doubt that money motivates very many artists to be creative, and I usually find it to be so difficult to work up an interest in the subject matter of a commission.

"THREE'S A CROWD" 16 x 12" - top painting
"READY, SET, GO!" 30 x 22" - lower painting --- Both done with Transparent Watercolor on 140#CP Arches SOLD

YUPO ADVENTURE AGAIN

Here's another YUPO painting, this time with less control of the paint in many areas. The joy of YUPO is letting the paint go where and how it wants. Amazing things happen when the more sedimentary colors charge under the staining colors and push them out of the way - see results of this in the foreground and background areas.

The colors on YUPO remain so vivid since they have no soft surface to sink into. This European peasant paused just long enough to get his picture taken. His mule dwarfed him, too, and gives a bit of a subtle message to the painting.

"LONG JOURNEY HOME" Transparent Watercolor on heavy weight YUPO 19 x 15"