If you live in or near Seattle and love art, please join us for a Pecha Kucha night about kitsch and art. Pecha Kucha 20x20 is a simple presentation format where one shows 20 images, each for 20 seconds. There will be several presenters ranging from a chocolatier to a scientist; from garden gnomes to, of course, DOG ART!
Isn't every dog a work of art?
Happy clients, happy dog, in front of the painting I delivered yesterday.
A truly wonderful feature of the Brushes app on the iPad is the playback. There are eight layers in this painting: the initial sketch, one for each dog, and two background layers. Each layer can be transformed, resized, and moved around, which you can watch happening in this playback. I was working from a bunch of photos I laid out on a table. Not much planning involved, I just started sketching and it developed. Now to turn it into a painting with real, not virtual, brushes and paint!
More playing with the iPad making preliminary color sketches for paintings. These two include the human companions, a cat, and one horse.
I have been using the iPad application "Brushes" to create preliminary color sketches of paintings coming up. These are two versions of a painting for a book project that I am working on with a writer/photographer. I've started the painting, and so far it's not either of these arrangements. I've yet to see how useful the iPad will be as a tool. It would be perfect if the layers could be moved around and re-sized. Anyone know of an iPad application that allows for more manipulation of individual layers? I can move the image to Photoshop, but would love to do it all in one application.
I just donated a print to a Delta Australian Shepherd Rescue fundraiser in central California. Love those working dogs! Though Tillie spends no time around barnyard animals, she is always alert for any humans or cats that might need herding.
May 2013 be a year of fulfilled dreams for you! Happy New Year.
Caption the Holiday card! Winning caption will receive a box of dog art greeting cards. Woof!
"All I want for Christmas is you." AAB
"Have a wonder ruff Christmas!" CW
"A 'forever home' AND a present! I....I....am so happy!!!!" DC
"I love you too" DP
"Is it present time yet?" MQ
"Let's see, it starts with a 'B' ? I'm thinking Bone, Biscuit......BALL, IS IT A BALL???" VAK
"But I ate your couch...." Exactly the look I got from my Basenji after she did just that and I love her just the same. MJW
"I hope it's (not?) a kitten!" HJ
"Is there enough for Bonnie too?" LM
"This is so nice I could cry." LM
"So you haven't noticed the cat is missing??? Good!" RM
"Please, please, please....can I open it? Can I?" KLG
"The dog ate the gift I had for you." SS
"If the world will come to an end, now is the perfect time to open my gift." JD
"Aww...and I didn't get you anything..." SM
"Would you help me open my present?... I'm all paws..." GWS
"I hope you like it!" JC
If you are a frequent flyer at All the Best Pet Care in Seattle, you'll be receiving a gift bag with goodies for your dog or cat, featuring Vincent, one of my early dog portraits on one side, and Sydney and Lindsey the cats, on the other. Full of tempting treats for Pablo, but he was truly fascinated with the sock monkey and claimed it as his own after the first squeak.
From my mother's little red book, where she kept addresses, poems, and quotes that she fancied. I have no idea where she got this, as she made no distinction between things she had written and those written by someone else. Ode to Dogs
"Dogs are welcome in this hotel. We never had a dog that smoked in bed, set a fire to the blankets, stole our towels, played the TV too loud, or had a noisy fight with his traveling companion. We never had a dog that got drunk and broke up the furniture. So if your dog can vouch for you, you are welcome, too."
Just got an iPad, specifically to use as a sketchbook. First experiment w colors and brushes. Many hours ahead learning this new device, but I'm thrilled at having a compact, color capable, take-it-anywhere painting set up. 
Pablo, my Chihuahua, greets me after a ten day separation while I was visiting family. I missed my dog and he missed me! Rainy Seattle, wiggly Chihuahua.
A previous client commissioned a painting of her two dogs based upon a painting I did a couple of years ago, but with "b-a-a-a-a-d" Cavalier King Charles Spaniels this time.
Allie, aka "Brown Boss" Nine years old now, Allie was five weeks when she was dropped at Everett Animal Shelter, all alone, with no siblings and no mother. Julie took Allie home to foster her, as Allie's prospects were grim at that age without a mama. The intent was to raise her to an age at which she could be adopted, but Allie developed Parvo after a month, and needed special care. Allie survived, and after going through that together, Julie decided they were meant for each other. Allie stayed. But she was "the puppy from hell", who had learned no socialization skills from interactions with siblings and mama. She bit hard and scratched fiercely, was headstrong and independent, but gradually became the sweet girl she is now. She is the first to greet someone and first out the door, and it is understood that she rules amongst the dogs, but she never shows aggression. She does handle herself with assertiveness in her body language, which is enough. She likes to tease and has a sense of humor- she knows what pushes buttons on the other dogs and will do it just for a joke, actually standing over them, laughing. She loves children, stuffed animals, and car rides. She hates fireworks.
From Julie, Allie's person: "You captured her so totally! If I saw this painting anywhere and didn't know anything about it, I would know that it is Allie- her body language, her expression, her "in your face" pose- all Allie. I love it!"
On the eve of the election, this seemed like an appropriate image. May the best man win, and I think he will. Re-elect the Prez!
Happy Halloween!
The painting is a combination of images from Ron and Woofie's home environment, plus images related to what I know about their lives; love of the desert, traveling, life in Seattle by the water. When I asked Ron for symbolic imagery about his life, he said "visualize and then manifest the vision". OK, I'm working on that. The painting is moving along but I have still not found the place for Ron in this painting. He had a place but it wasn't working. He will reappear, but I'll have to sit and stare at the painting and wait for it to speak to me about where Ron belongs. Maybe this is what "visualizing and manifesting the vision" is.
Often people are uncomfortable with a painting of themselves, so finding the perfect pose for the human which is still representational but not ego glorifying, is tricky. That is the biggest challenge of a portrait, to be a pleasing but not something that is too much about them, or they won't put it on the wall. So Woofie remains the primary subject, and Ron is still to come.
In this painting of Peapod, the feline, and Bella, the Bernie, the structural composition is pretty well decided, but the color composition is still unresolved and the painting is still very much in progress. When I'm working on a painting, I am not so much seeing a scene as I am seeing various shapes of various colors in an arrangement. There must be both tension and balance- harmony and conflict. Color shapes interact with one another to create this energy dynamic and cause the eye to "dance" on the painting. I am seeking this balance of energies in the colors now, using Photoshop to try out different color shapes and try to find this moment when it all gels together like a symphony. The first image in this group is the painting where it is at the moment I am writing. Soon it will be different. But the difference will go where?
The three images following are trials of different color themes, all applied with a Photoshop paint bucket, not an actual brush. Now I must decide what color composition "works" in the painting, an elusive goal but always the goal.
Very often my initial idea is transformed in the painting process. The painting takes over and starts telling me what to do. I have to just give up control and let it lead me. I don't know where this painting is going. It is suppose to be a double portrait, so Ron will reappear at some point, somewhere. I now just try to do what the painting tells me. Sometimes I never figure it out. Sometimes I am taken places I couldn't imagine. I am hoping this one continues to speak to me.
It may look like we are sunbathing on the deck of the studio, but I am, in fact, fiercely considering how to resolve some problems with a painting. Really. I mean it. Last sunny days of summer in Seattle. Rain in the forecast for tomorrow, and the next 7 months.
Now back to painting.
nancy@dogloverart.com 206 941 9663
