Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Feral/garage Kitties Update & WIP

New Garage Kitties

Before I could get the mommy and her three kitties in for their spay/neuter appointment, mommy had SEVEN new kittens.  Six of them can be seen in the photo above, the seventh is an orage tabby.   Not a situation I am happy to be in, but I am determined to get the mommy in before this happens again.  I do have her eating in the unsprung live trap, but as the little kitties are just starting to waunder, it could be difficult to catch her without trapping them.  I will be working on it though.  It is frightning to have only one chance to catch her, if the life trap springs and does not catch her, it is not likely that she will go in it again, they say.

Below are some photos of the first three, now about five months.  All healthy after their spays and neuter.  They are all tame now.

Growing Up Fast - 1 of Original 3
Wild one Now Loving
Only boy of the first three

Below is a work in progress of my redo of one of my commissioned portraits.

Hopefully this will remind the owner of his dog, Abbey.  I got too caught up in doing what I thought he wanted instead of what I could do best on the first one, lesson learned.

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Commissioned Portraits and Hawk WIP



Above are the last two portraits I did for the seven portrait commission.  Below is the red tailed hawk that I worked on at the art fair.  The hawk is 24 by 18. I like it so far.  I am nervous about getting started on the feathers, but looking forward to seeing if I can get it the way I want it also.  I used mineral spirits to melt colored pencil on the background.  I may modify the bacground some more after I start the feathers.

As I have a portrait commission to redo and a few nonart obligations to get out of the way, I may not get to work on it for a couple of more days.  I try to do the things I don't want to do as much first and use the thing I want to do the most as a reward.  This strategy of disciplining myself does not always work though because sometimes I procrastinate and thus lose time that I could have spent doing what I preferred to do anyway.  I have gotten alot of chores out of the way recently, though,  and may just have to reward myself a little anyway soon, even if all the have to's aren't completely done because I am getting that away from working on art withdrawal/crappy feeling.

Sunday, August 15, 2010

Y-Bridge Art Fair Update

My Booth & WIP
My Booth with People & My Neighbor

Packed
Painting the Fair

I had a great time.  The crowds were alot better than last year. Though I enjoyed numerous positive comments, I did not sell as much as last year, though.    I do have one commission request to follow up on right away.  Many promises -- which do not always materialize.  I did enjoy working on my demo, a close-up of a red tailed hawk.  You can see it a little better if you double click the photo to enlarge it.   It was sometimes too hot to work on it becuase my pencils would start melting, though!

 I made friends with my neighbor, Shirley Lumbatis, an equine artist from Zanesville, whose horses you can see a bit of to the right of my booth.  She had beautiful landscapes, also.  Her work was mainly acrylic paintings, but it had th look of oil paintings.  It was great to have her as a friend during the show and I will be looking her up for lunch soon.

  There was a best presentation award of $500, but I did not get it, though most artists did not set up a complete booth like I did.

The overall quality of the art was great and fun to look at.  I greatly admired the two artists who oil painted during the festival.  In addition to scenes of the fair shown above, they did portraits of people on the spot.

When packing, I can currently fit everything but my tent side walls and top cover into my SUV. Did not need the whole tent for this fair, but I am thinking of adding a carrier on the hitch for these.

Since being back I have been way too busy with finishing my portrait commission,  some tax and social work classes, as well as getting the feral kittens spayed and nuetered.

I delivered the last six portraits Saturday.  I volunteered to redo one of them after the customer feltthat the body (one that was "made up") was not quite like his dog, though he felt the face was right on.

I'll post the last two portraits and my hawk WIP in my next two posts!

Thanks for stopping by!

Friday, August 6, 2010

Art Fair This Weekend

I am off at about noon to the Y-Bridge Art Festival in Zanesville, Ohio.  This is the second annual fair and last year's first fair was also my first art fair.  I have quite a bit to do yet to get ready, so this will be short.  Will post about it when I get back.

Have one more pet portrait to do in my series commission, a cat.  Would have preferred to have finished it before this weekend, but will work double time on it Sunday when I am back.

Monday, August 2, 2010

Trouble with blogger? Pet Portraits WIP cont'd

I have been working on this blog a little everyday. Getting instructions to change my security settings, etc. I can see my blog when I sign in, but all of my gadgets are still at the bottom, even though the design/layout feature says I have them on the side. I have been told tthis blog is not coming up properly when you try it access it. How is it working for you? If you are reading this and can let me know, I would appreciat it.

I am posting Hannah, completed, tho0ugh I may do a little last minute fussing at any time.

Trina WIP.

Hannah and Trina, thus far, are meeting my expectations of how I would like to render these dogs, more than the the earlier portrait. I did save the best reference photos for last, but I don't know if that is the total reason.

I am going to the Y-Bridge Art Festival this weekend. I would like to have all seven portraits done by Wednesday so I can look for a demo I would like to do and get ready. Of course, I will have to do these things even if I don't get the seventh portrait done before the show. It would just be nice to know I am ready to deliver them. The show and also several appointments the following week will be biting into my time quite a bit.

One of the things on my to do list next week is to take all the kitties in for neutering and spaying, I got some help from a feral cat organization with this and have an appointment. However, momma kittie just had, six I think, kittens on Friday.
OMG! I have tamed two of the three original kitties pretty well and still have hope for the third -- put everyone is saying it is near impossible to find cats/kittens homes around here these day.

Moor later. Please let me know how my blog is working for you if you can.

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