Cat Painting Update and Ice Bergs

ice remnants on the lake

 Isn’t it marvelous that Spring is finally here?! The ice went out of our lake yesterday morning when there was a stiff breeze, so now we have open water again. Actually, the ice is usually broken up on a windy day or two in the Spring and just blows east down the lake from us. The marina to the west helps the process by going out in boats to make waves. This year they posted a short video on their Facebook page showing them using a boat as an ice breaker in the marina area. The ice was pretty thin by then so no danger to the boat.

The first photo is of an “ice berg” out in the lake in front of our house. I took the photo early this morning while the lake was still. It won’t last long with the warm temperatures as the lake waters warm up.

I feel so lucky to live on a lovely lake with all of its wildlife!

Now that gardening season is back, I decided that it’s time to get back to exercising; something I’ve managed to neglect all winter. After walking on the treadmill, I did my “legs and back” exercise routine, and later in the day went for a short spin on Scottie. This morning I had a hard time getting out of bed! Ack! But, if I keep it up, the stiffness will go away.

In addition to exercising daily, I’ve set a goal for myself of doing some artwork every day this week, even if only for an hour. This is in hopes that both goals will become established habits if I keep them up long enough.

"Annie", 6x6 gallery wrapped canvas oil painting

I managed just an hour yesterday on the little cat painting I started a while back of our kitty, Annie, when she was young. Most of the time was spent setting up and deciding what colors to use and then mixing paint. So, I was limited to working on just one ear and the forehead markings before it came time to clean up and leave for the barn. Otherwise, I would have painted longer.

Please note my painting setup here. I came up with this brilliant idea a while back when I noticed some scraps of pegboard out in the garage. Even though I’ve looked at those scraps for years, THAT day the thought struck me that they would be perfect to use on the easel to hold small paintings and paintings whose edges need to be painted. I’d been trying to figure out a solution to this problem for a while now since I’ve been working on smaller canvases lately. How DOES one paint the edges of those gallery wrapped canvases without getting your fingers in the paint?

I had my husband cut a couple of pieces to fit on the easel and cleaned off the garage grime. Yesterday, I used one of them to hold the Annie painting, and it worked great! As you can see, the painting is resting on pegboard hooks. It can be moved from side to side to get at the bottom of the canvas, and I can set the painting at a comfortable working height. In fact, I might just expand this for use with larger paintings, too!

Now, why didn’t I think of this sooner!?

I’ve just had a chat with my gallery owner (Adams Madams, Central Lake, Michigan) who has requested that all her artists replace their pieces which have been in the gallery for a long time with new artwork. She is readying the shop for the coming summer season when the summer residents and visitors will be returning. She tells me that she gets visitors from the Horse Shows By The Bay people each summer as they explore the area when they’re not showing. These people have money to burn, so that gives me incentive to get some horse show pieces done to put in the gallery during the four or five weeks of the show. A series of small paintings of horse show dogs would be perfect as well as some leadline class photos of toddlers on cute ponies.

Ah! I’m getting super inspired!

A New Painting and Barn Fairies

I started a brand new painting yesterday. It’s my first since last winter, and I’m quite excited about it. In keeping with my resolve to paint only images which excite me and aren’t too challenging for the time being, I chose to do a little painting of one of our cats when she was a kitten. She was four months old when we rescued her from going to animal control where her chances of being adopted were not good. So, she was pretty much out of the really cute kitten stage but grown up enough to tell that she was going to be a beautiful cat.

Annie came to us round about from a neglectful home. In a word when we got her, she stunk! She had feces caked to her behind and other parts, so as soon as I got her home from the initial vet check the next day, she got a bath. As with so many things, she took this scary adventure in stride and bounced back with kitten-like vigor.

Annie was loaded with personality and energy and curious about everything. She was often naughty but so full of personality that she wiggled her way into our hearts. She grew into a beautiful, long haired cat but suffered from some sort of intestinal malfunction for most of her life. Just before Christmas two years ago, we had her put to sleep because she had declined so much.

I still miss her terribly.

At any rate, this little painting is an oil on 6x6 inch gallery wrapped canvas. I started by toning the canvas with a mixture of yellow ochre and naples yellow and then drew the main features directly on the canvas with burnt umber. That’s the first stage you see here. The main thing was to get everything in proper proportion.

I continued by laying on the first few layers of paint, starting with her eyes and making adjustments as I went. The yellow ochre/naples yellow mixture was painted in as the base for her coat. The darker areas are a mixture of ultramarine blue and burnt umber. When I had the main features fleshed (or furred) out, I quit for the day to let the painting dry before continuing.

What has me particularly enthused about THIS painting is figuring out that I can draw directly on the canvas without a preliminary drawing on paper and have it come out well. I’ve only done one other cat painting in my life, and that was a commission years ago in pastel. This painting has really boosted my confidence, and I should have no problem finishing it in record time.

Last night, I had a really good ride on The Great Pumpkin as Scottie is known in the fall. He was moving out better and managed ground poles with no problem. Since Ann and I were the only ones to ride, we played barn fairies afterward while the horses dried off. She swept the barn aisle while I mucked out Elle’s stall. Or, should I say Miss Piggy’s stall?

This morning I got a call from the vet letting me know that Scottie’s selenium level is very low; just as I suspected. If we up his supplement a little, maybe he won’t be so stiff and muscle sore as he has been for so long.

I’m crossing my fingers!

Curses! Foiled Again!!

Felled by a few grains of pollen! Or was it a few mold spores?

I have severe allergies, and despite allergy medications and shots, periodically I get sick. It's like having the flu; aching all over, lack of energy, sinus headache, scratchy eyes and throat. Oddly enough, I rarely get all stuffed up like most allergy sufferers which might explain why it took 12 years and 5 doctors to correctly diagnose my problems. Some thought I was just depressed and needed to go on anti-depressants, but fortunately I refused.

But, I digress. Last week while madly digging away in the dirt getting my perennials planted, I noticed my energy waning away each day to the point that by Thursday I had none. The consequences of this are that I missed going to Horse Shows By The Bay on Friday and missed the first-ever polo game in NW Michigan! Needless to say, I was disappointed and moped around all evening while the match was going on. But, the news reported that there are plans to make the polo match an annual event, and HSBB will be back again next year. By then, the yard landscaping should be complete, and I will have more time and energy to visit the show. So, all is not lost.

In the meantime, I'll select an image from a previous HSBB to begin a new work of art which will violate my only-three-works-in progress-at-one-time rule, but rules are made to be broken, right? Besides, Bard is close to being finished.

Since I still had a few photos left to shoot on my compact flash card, I decided to take some photos of the cats this weekend to use them up. Annie, our long-haired cat, needs to be clipped again, and her coat is at just the right length to be very photogenic right now. Normally, she grows a large mane, like a lion, and the hair on her sides grows so long that it hangs down making her look like a yak. Since she has digestive problems as it is, a long coat which makes more hairballs is very bad for her. So, I clip her a couple of times a year. Then she looks like a skinned rat for a while, and our other cat hisses at her.

Above is a photo of Annie who is camera shy and gets very self-conscious when photographed, so you have to shoot quick! Below is an interesting shot of Molly. A good title for that one is "Kitty In The Window".

At any rate, the last of the plants and shrubs are now in the ground, and I can get back into the studio while the weather does whatever it wants outside. With only a little bit more mulch to put on a few more beds, the gardens will be in shape to handle the heat and dryness that usually comes with August weather.

Going Green with The Green Team - Belgians

On Friday I had what seemed like a somewhat panicky email from Mary at Horses In Art magazine wondering if I would "please" join the Equine Art Guild group ad in the summer issue since they had only three artists signed up. That issue will be going to The Draft Horse Classic in the fall, so I did a little quick mental figuring and decided that I could use The Green Team for the ad, even though it's not finished, and it would be appropriate for a show of all draft horses. The images in those ads are fairly small after all.

Yesterday morning I was supposed to go riding, visit with my barn friends and then come home to work on "the boys". Didn't happen. The arthritis had really kicked up, and I was hurting a lot. I had worried all night about our cat, Annie, because she hadn't seemed to feel well for the past couple of days. She has digestive system problems, and I wondered if she was taking a turn for the worse and wondered if I should take her to the vet. In the end, I decided to stay home, keep an eye on Annie, and catch up on some reading time after taking an Aleve. The thought of sitting on a moving horse or sitting at the easel held no appeal whatsoever.

By today, the pain had pretty much subsided, but time was short, so instead of laying on a heavier layer of paint, I opted to glaze green over the blue trailer in an attempt to build up some luminosity and depth of color. This time, remembering my difficulties with the Bard portrait a few days ago, I oiled out the canvas first, and the paint went on really smoothly.

After that, I set up the camera on a tripod, shot the painting and adjusted it in Photoshop. Just to be sure, I printed out the image in a nice big size with my Epson 2200 printer and was very pleased with the results. The image is now ready to send to Mary by tomorrow which is the deadline she gave me.

And, just in case you're wondering, Annie seems to be fine now. In fact, she stole a piece of cheese from my dinner not once but twice while I was watching 60 Minutes! It's a good thing that she's very lovable and cute!