Polebridge, Mt Sled Dog

Last year, about this time, Robert was laying awake in the middle of the night, listening to the radio. He heard an announcement about sled dog races at Polebridge, Mt. The Montana Ididarod. He woke me up and asked me if I wanted to go to see the sled dog races, so I said yes, jumped out of bed and we took off!

Polebridge is maybe 250-300 miles away from here. It's the middle of winter, but we had a great trip and I got some wonderful photos of the dogs. I got up early this morning and painted this one. I liked the look on his face.

This is 8X10" on gessoed mat board. It's a watercolor, using only the color of Burnt Sienna.

Thanks for stopping by to see my work, I really appreciate it. I'd love to have you leave a comment....there's an email link below, or you can leave it here.
Donna
Remember, you can find horse art, wildlife art, cow art, and animal paintings, for sale on my website.
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Oil painting "Arthur" is finished

I think I am at the point I can call this one done. I really love fall colors and wanted to use them in this painting. Having backgrounds that are interesting are a challenge for sure. So here is the finished 30 x 40" painting of my beautiful Arthur.

Yvonne Sovereign

I am painting a new dog each day. My daily painting project is titled, originally, "Painting a Dog a Day." The entire project (15 months to date) is chronicled on the project's blog, http://www.paintingadogaday.blogspot.com/ . You can also review project details on it's website, http://www.paintingadogaday.com/ .

"Scooter," 6" x 12", commissioned jack russell terrier pet portrait, acrylic on canvasboard, private collection (THANK YOU!).

This is Scooter, a 12 year old "mama's boy." I used a combination of current and older photos so as to paint Scooter in an ageless fashion - his markings still bright with youth, but his eyes a little wiser from age. And that ever present terrier tenacity as well!

At the risk of coming across as shameless, I thought I might share a snippet of a note from this week's Jack Russell lovin' client (with her permission, of course). In July of 2007 she reserved a full week's worth of dog-a-day portraiture, and has been patiently waiting in the wings for the past 6 months. She sent me this email earlier today.

"....So often in life we plan and look forward to an upcoming experience. The event finally occurs and we sometimes allow ourselves to be let down, as though the anticipation eclipsed the one thing we were looking forward to. I wanted you to know that this was so not the case in regards to these portraits. It was worth the wait...and the wait was worth the end result...."

My wish is that her words will help those of you who are in line for your own dog-a-day paintings stay the course. I am booking portraits for December 2008 and beyond, which seems ridiculous in an odd way. But at least there's the entertainment factor of tuning in to the dog-a-day project in the interim.

Inquiries may always come to me at ksantini@turtledovedesigns.com .

Thanks, as always, for looking and reading and appreciating and sharing and simply being in tune with whatever I happen to be humming each day.
See you tomorrow,
Kim

Kimberly Kelly Santini
http://www.turtledovedesigns.com/
distinctive pet portraits
& 4-legged paintings

http://www.paintingadogaday.com/
come. sit. stay.
enjoy the art.

Founding member of the Canine Art Guild
http://www.canineartguild.com/
the gateway to canine art on the web

New painting in progress

I am working on a large, 30 x 40" painting of one of my own dogs in a landscape. I have some more work to do in the forground as I am not happy with the grasses, and will post the painting when I am finished. In the meantime, here is a closeup of my dog, a whippet named Arthur.

Yvonne Sovereign

www.yvonnesovereign.com

A watercolor of a dog.

I painted this little guy last night. I liked the way he was looking at me.

When I took his photograph, he was in a truck in Choteau, Mt, and he looked like he was the driver. He was a perky little guy!
Donna Ridgway
There's more of my paintings on my blog.

New to this blog

Hi--

Thought I'd better join this excellent group of dog artists. I have been a mosaic artist in the past and did some dog work in that medium, but in the last year or so I've been totally involved in digital photography and working in Photoshop, so I'm now mostly an art photographer. I'm a Boxer person myself, but I do a lot of mini-Dachshund shots as there are several of them in my life, owned by various friends. Actually one of them stays here quite often and keeps my Boxers in line. I'll post one of my favourite shots of little Murphy, owned by my friend and riding instructor, when he was just a baby. One of the Canine Art Guild artists, DeeDee Murry, also found inspiration in this photo and did a wonderful art interpretation of this shot. You'll be seeing Murphy again in this blog on future posts, I'm sure!!

Any of my photos can be ordered for purchase by contacting me. They are available in a variety of sizes and formats.

Best Friends - By Catherin

Best Friends

"Best Friends" is hot off the easel, drawn on canson pastel paper with chalk pastels. Sight hounds breeds are one of my favourites to draw and this piece shows what beautiful natures they have.

Size: 10" x 14" this piece will be for sale shortly.

To inquire about purchasing email Catherin at catherin@animalarthouse.com

Visit Animal Art House http://www.animalarthouse.com/ to view more of Catherin's work.

Jan 10 - Elin Pendleton starts another Dog Day Afternoon...?

I'm starting a painting, another square one, because this image of an agility dog has been in my head since I saw the videos on YouTube. The energy of agility is amazing!

Again, design is king (or queen!) in these new works. Look at the tire shape creating the arc that sweeps the viewer through the canvas, counter-balanced by the other arc of the dog's body and direction of travel. Another arc is the shape of the tunnel behind, and the arcs of the tube tunnel itself.

This is design! -- repetition with variety, which encourages the viewer's eye to travel around the painting, going from arc to arc. Although most viewers aren't aware that is what they are doing, having the repetitions there also creates harmony--this is a GOOD thing. Even without color, the structure of the painting emerges. Structure within a painting is key to making good work. One can have all the color knowledge available, and not making traditional realism fly because the underlying abstract structure is weak. Have you looked over your own work to find the abstract structure?

This will be another entry for the Art Show at the Dog Show in Kansas City. Wish me luck!

On another note, one of my painting shipping boxes ended up in Utah, because of a mis-print on the address on the return shipping label. It is "The Quest" the acrylic done for the acrylic DVD "Acrylic Painting Fast and Loose", which was shown in Chicago. Just a reminder not to reuse shipping boxes so often that there is too much writing on them! I've learned. Ship with Strong Boxes by Airfloat systems. Worth every penny. I didn't use one, and they said the painting was damaged... I will see when it finally gets here how bad it is.

Our hills are greening up now with the rains. Here's an image of the view out our back gate:


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Jan 7 - Elin Pendleton, Round Puppies Finished and Workshop Filled!

Here is the finished painting, photographed digitally and then sent off for slide duplication--this one is going into the Kansas City "Art Show at the Dog Show" competition under the oils category. I hope it gets in!

In finishing this one up, you can see I didn't do all that much more major painting, just refined and detailed out the legs, pats and heads of the two dogs. I paid special attention to the contrast areas on the tails and the gently varying values on the white areas of the right pup ("Sparky").

The added color of the red-violet collar puts the finishing touch of a discord for this analogous color scheme. In Hal Reed's Color Wheel, he shows that there needs to be a dominant hue of the one compliment (in this case the orange) and a much smaller physical area of the partnering complement (in this case, the blues). Hal Reed's Analogous Color Wheel helped me get the correct proportion of hues when I needed it, making my work more pleasing to the eye. Although not part of the Color System I use now, it is useful to have one of these while planning your paintings.

I'm so pleased to report that the first week's workshop in May in Georgia is FULL. I didn't think it would fill THAT fast!!! I'm still taking waitlisted folks in the case someone doesn't make it. So if you want to come to Georgia's second Color Boot Camp, please let me know, as the second week has a few spaces left. Curious? Go here.

You can see the rest of my blog here.

If you need to email me directly, please click here.

Jan 4 - Elin Pendleton - Round Puppies, Second Pass, with design commentary

Oops, got ahead of myself! (I just get so excited about sharing information.) Here's the pup painting at the second stage, where I'm laying in the darks of the dogs' coats and reinforcing the design elements.

Remember what I said about circular design, and Raphael's work? Since you may not have a familiarity with these design concepts, I've added a second image of this stage of the painting below, taken into Photoshop and with what I see as the abstract structure of the design. Those of you who have had a session or two of "yellin' by Elin" know that design and the structure of your paintings are key to good end results.

In the second image, you'll see the most obvious circles in the design (in red), clearly understandable my Mr. or Ms. Everyone. They may not say, "Oooo, nice circles!" but they will say that they like the painting.

Look now at the partial circles (also known as arcs) that are intersecting the picture (done in purple). These are the supporting design players, but every bit as important in their role. These arcs carry the eye through the work, and reinforce the three main circles. Think of them as the band behind the lead singer. They enhance and reinforce the most obvious circles. These purple lines of the design also show the viewer repetition with variety--more design principles worth having in successful paintings. As your eye follows the purple lines, look where they cross areas of the paintings, and see how those areas continue to carry your eyes. What I'm saying is that we as artists don't have to be obvious with our abstract structure, but it ought to be there.

More tomorrow!

Oh, the link for the March workshop: Three Day Mini-Color Boot Camp is here.


You can see my entire blog here.



If you need to email me directly, please click here.

Jan 3 - Elin Pendleton, Lesson Painting, Step One

How fun it is to start the new year, and subsequently start the numbering system for my painting inventories all over again! I've begun the new year with a bang, completing two paintings already, and getting the slides for them for one of the specialty art shows of the year. This one is slated for the Art Show at the Dog Show.

This is an 18 x 18 inche gallery wrap (1.5 inches deep) canvas, on which I'm painting almost life size, the two puppies Onslow and Sparky asleep. The source image for this is in my blog from a couple days ago. You can see it here. (Opens a new window.)

I love the circular design of the image, and have worked to keep those circles and inter-twining arcs going in the painting. Reminds me of a Raphael painting from the Renaissance, since he was known for his circular designs. Here is his "Madonna of the Chair" for your pleasure. Look at all the circles and arcs in his design!
One of my New Year's Resolutions for you is to link what I do in the studio to the history of art, so you can understand that as artists, we are so connected to what has gone before.
One of my resolutions also is to make paintings with CONTENT, or soul, so that I am not just creating a technical exercise with the pigments, but giving more of myself, the story, and the design more emphasis. This looking-down view of the puppies is my first endeavor.

In doing this painting, I am using oils, and made a quick drawing with burnt umber and ultramarine blue (which I forgot to photograph!) and then laid in the washes of Australian Red Gold (Artist's Spectrum) and a new experimental color for me, Green Umber (Lukas Pigments). The combination of warms is really exciting for me, and I can hardly wait to see what will develop. They are both warm in the spectral reflectance arena, so would go in the warm box. But these are "oddballs" so, they'll only visit once in a while!

I've been working on the February Workshop (full) and now am opening the March one to outside artists--there are only five slots left in this workshop here in my studio. Contact me if you are interested in this three-day "Mini-Color Boot Camp"

And I'm opening the May workshops in Georgia in the coming days (been a bit late on this one!) so the five-day Color Boot Camp and the returnees' Boot Camp will be taking registrations by this weekend. You know who you are!!! (They dubbed themselves "repeat offenders!!")

I'll post a direct link in the days to come.

You can see my entire blog here.

If you need to email me directly, please click here.

Art by Dee Dee Murry

I had a lot of fun painting this dog, I thought she was gorgeous with beautiful markings. I love the intense look in her eyes. She is a red tri Aussie. Her portrait is acrylic on 12 x 16 gessoboard. Prints from this portrait, as well as several other dog breeds, can be purchased at http://www.deedeemurry.com/.


And this is my own black and tan longhaired dachshund, Hallie. 11 x 14 graphite on illustration board.