I completed Lola’s portrait very late yesterday, and without the natural sunlight I opted to wait until today to publish it here for you to see. Just a few colors on my palette for this painting; white, indigo, olive, raw umber, magenta, french ultramarine and yellow ochre. I enhanced her fur a bit more in her portrait than her photo really dictated because she’s got a really pretty coat and I wanted to show that off a bit.

Click here to view the work in progress, if you’d like to see it all together.

I’ve taken a side photo of the panel so you can see the dimension as well.

I just got my internet connection (cable) back about an hour ago, apparently it’s been down all night (thank God I was sleeping, I may have very well chewed off my fingernails waiting for it to come back up!!) I did manage to get a couple of other projects underway while I was waiting this morning.

Hope you’re having a good week!

This post is from Leanne Wildermuth : Artist by Nature.

Lola : Silver Lab Portrait Complete

Hahaha! Okay stop laughing, I said.

Last year, I lost a whopping 20′ish pounds strictly eating core foods from the WW core food list. Of course, in standard girly girl fashion, I went shopping. I tried on a pair of Lee Jeans. I loved ‘em. I even wrote about them.

Fast forward to this year. It’s jean season again, and I’m just a smidge frustrated that uh, well, my jeans from last fall don’t fit so good.

I would say that’s cool, cause I get to go shopping again, but honestly? I’d rather save my money for a personal trainer and a fridge full of core food.

Heaven must have heard that.

I woke up one morning to an e-mail with an offer to try out a pair of Lee Jeans. All I needed to do was pick out a style and a size. Seriously? How often does this happen? Not often enough, I say! Here’s the cool thing - now it can happen to you!

I’ve been given 10 pair - yes TEN PAIR of jeans to give away. The style I chose is a little hip because I wanted to try something different. The wrap waist, button pockets and low rise might not suit everyone, but I really dig them. The style I’m wearing is “Cristina” if you’re out and about and want to pick them up.

In an effort to be a little more conservative with the jeans I chose to put up for grabs, however, I’ve selected a more traditional style for ten lucky winners:

The One True Fit premium bootcut comes in four different washes: Union Blue, Blackdigo, Shadow Blue, and Galaxy blue. Union and Blackdigo are darker and Shadow and Galaxy are more of what you think of when you think “blue jeans.” These are available in sizes from 2-16, short, medium or long. The plus size scale ranges from 16w to 26w, available in short or medium. For this jean, there is also a petite scale from 2-16.

These are the jeans I’ve chosen for ten of you.

Want to enter to win a pair? Leave a comment. Want to increase your chances? Here are a few ways to do that:

1. One extra entry: Subscribe to my blog via e-mail or via RSS. (if you’re already subscribed, THANK YOU! You will need to choose another method to earn extra entries.)
2. One extra entry: Share it on twitter, facebook or another social networking site.
3. Two extra entries: Mention it on your blog and link back here.

Please leave a separate comment for each extra entry, as I’ll draw using random numbers from comments.

Drawing will be held December 1st. Good luck!!

This post is from Leanne Wildermuth : Artist by Nature.

Lee Jeans Giveaway

Over the years, I’ve made and received many beautiful, unique gifts around Christmas. From ornaments to framed needleworks, I have always been extraordinarily touched by the thoughtfulness and time that goes into a personal, handcrafted gift. I encourage you this year to be personal with your gift giving. If it’s coming from the heart, make it with your hands - whenever possible.

If you choose to participate, I will ask you for three things. Your favorite color, your favorite textile (this includes all fiber based products including canvas, papers and fabrics), and your favorite season. This will help me partner you with someone, as well as help that person send you a gift that you will treasure.

Would you like to join in? Here are the guidelines:

• Gifts should be handmade by you, or a handmade item can be purchased on Etsy or purchased at a craft fair, as long as you’re certain the item is handmade. Maximum gift/supply cost should be $20, not including shipping.
• Leave a comment that you would like to participate no later than November 30th.
• Plan to ship gifts no later than December 14, this gives you two weeks to create or purchase a handmade item.

I will accept participants through November 30th, then match people together and send everyone their partners information by December 5th.

That’s it! Please feel free to grab my badge and put it on your blog, the more the merrier!!

This post is from Leanne Wildermuth : Artist by Nature.

Handmade Gift Exchange

I’ve completed Lola’s underpainting - it’s pretty rough but you can see now how the coloring all pulls together and her eyes just pop! Love her collar design too, it’s a really girlie pattern.

I’ll put the fan on her portrait and it’ll take a couple of days for this layer to dry. I’ll be working on some other projects for the rest of this week and pick Lola back up on Monday to finalize her portrait.

This post is from Leanne Wildermuth : Artist by Nature.

Lola : Silver Lab Portrait WIP #3

I’ve finished Lola’s background color. It’s very similar to Kona’s portrait, though I’ve lightened it up a bit using Naples Yellow Light with a touch of Yellow Ochre to pull the light mint and gold in her eyes out into the background. The darks will balance the olive in her collar, with the deep fuchsia base in her collar the combination will be really beautiful.

You can see that I’ve printed several reference photos. Larger for accuracy in color, smaller for accuracy in detail. Her coat color is quite varied in the three photos, the most naturally lit is the puppy photo on the left (c’mon everybody say “awwwww“) so that will be my primary reference for her silver coat color.

I’ll work the eyes/underpainting tomorrow so you’ll see how the colors come together.

This post is from Leanne Wildermuth : Artist by Nature.

Lola : Silver Lab Portrait WIP #2

I’ve sketched out Lola this afternoon, she’s a beauuuutiful silver lab (reminds me of a Weimaraner). She’s only about 7 months old. A couple of her reference photos show her in this same collar just a couple of months old, and boy has she grown into it! What a beautiful breed, though - honestly I’d never even seen a silver lab until Lola - and now I’ll be keeping my eyes peeled for them!

My client (you can read her blog here) found my Etsy shop and ordered her custom portrait through my shop. Funny thing - I designed her blog for her about a year ago! So cool to get to work with her again. I’m just tickled. :)

I’ll be working on Lola’s background tomorrow.

This post is from Leanne Wildermuth : Artist by Nature.

Lola : Silver Lab Portrait WIP #1

This post is from Leanne Wildermuth : Artist by Nature.

Buy Handmade

Do you see what I see? Snow. It’s been snowing today. I know, I know. It’s snowed up north, it’s snowed down south. It’s even snowed out east already. For us here in the Quad Cities, this is our first snow of the season. I think this officially marks the beginning of the winter season across the country.

Snow, people.

My schedule for the Christmas season is filling up rapidly, and I’ve spent the last few days working a bit on a photographer site design as well as moving my own site to another server (again).

When I launched my site restructure recently, I did it on an entirely different server with a new host. Well, it didn’t take more than 3 weeks to find out that host did NOT provide the service that I’ve come to expect from Blogs About, and I found myself missing them and appreciating them more than ever. It’s amazing, as a site and web-based business owner, how your hosting provider becomes such an integral part of your every day life. If the service is poor, it effects everything you do. If you have a lopsided hosting package, you quickly find out how limited you are and how backhanded hosting companies can be in an effort to squeeze those extra dollars from their clients. I’m so glad to be back with BA and relieved to know that my business won’t be disrupted by a simple influx of traffic.

Enough with the geek speak (but if you want to know more, just ask)!

I pulled my back out last Sunday morning, so I decided that while I was in pain and couldn’t twist at the waist or breathe deeply, that it was a perfect day for rearranging my bedroom! I hung some room darkening window treatments and Catybug helped me rotate the bed onto another wall. Later in the evening, I took some Aleve and she gave me a nice massage, and my pain subsided by Monday evening.

(You see how my week started.)

Then, the election. That’s all I’m going to say about that.

So, the last couple of days I’ve been restless and having nightmares. I’ve been trying (really hard!!!) to get my site moved over all while yawning and trying to keep my forehead off my desk.

I decided yesterday that I needed a pick-me-up, so I went and got my hair cut. I spoiled myself a little bit with a color, too. Then I came home, dressed up my eyes a little bit and had Chickeymonkey snap a few pics of my new do.

I’m finally happy with it - no more Princess Leah earmuff hair bob thing! It falls so nicely and the thickness that made me crazy has been greatly reduced.

It’s the little things, isn’t it?

This morning I felt like I had to pick my outfit based on my haircut. After talking with my BFF Paige (I love saying that) she said the same thing happened to her, so now I might need to go clothes shopping again. I couldn’t find a THING to wear that matched my hip new hairstyle! Of course I lie. I still have the sweater she bought me from Casual Corner back in 1986/87 when we bought matchy stuff in different colors to wear to school. And yes, I still wear it, too. (Paige, that’s where we got ‘em. Casual Corner!!!) Like I need new clothes.

haha.

Yes, well, give me a day or two to get all this crazy girl stuff out of my head and maybe, perhaps, you’ll have me back in the blogosphere, friends. I’ve missed you. I really have. I owe several of you links and awards, I have not forgotten.

I also need to update my blogroll, which is seriously outdated. Please let me know if you’re on it and if the link is good and/or if you’re not on it so I can get you on there.

Me, I’m going to go throw a sweater on, turn up the furnace a couple of degrees, and get back to work!

This post is from Leanne Wildermuth : Artist by Nature.

Sn…oh no. I’m not ready.

The drive was not as long as I thought it would be, about 6 hours from my house to Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. The scenery? UN-believable. What a beautiful time of year for that road trip! Illinois was boring until we got to Peoria, then boring again until we hit the St. Louis area. Thankfully, I had my mom in the car with me so I had plenty of entertainment! ha!!

We arrived Wednesday, late afternoon, and checked in to our hotels. I had chosen a dive, based on a completely misrepresented photo online - so reservationist beware. It cost me some bucks to cancel, and I did some begging for a room at a nicer place. I even got the military discount, without having my ID card. Whew! Thank God for small favors!

Much of my family made the trip, as well. Mark’s leave was canceled so he wasn’t able to come, but my Dad and his wife, my Mom, my sister and her family — and my brother all drove down to Missouri to see Brandi graduate from basic training. We met at a diner for dinner and yacked it up for a bit before heading back to get some sleep. We were up at Zero-Dark-Thirty (6AM, military style) to get together and yack more over coffee before heading to the base to wander around before the Graduation Ceremony.

Arriving on base, I had my camera in my lap and took as many photos as I could. I even have two or three videos of half-cadences, if I get to converting them to a normal media format I’ll post those as well. A cadence, for anyone who doesn’t know, are the songs that our men and women in uniform march to. Some are hilarious, some are sweet, most are snarky. I have a couple of them stuck in my head. I just don’t have the rhythm to march to them!

Funny and scary thing happened, when pulling through the gate a MP spotted our cameras. She asked if we took any photos of the gate area. I said no — I took a photo of my dad in his rear view, and I offered to show it to her. (See? I’m a total attention whore. LOOK AT MY PHOTOS! I don’t care if I’m in trouble, just LOOK!) She then poked her head in and asked Catybug the same question. She was about terrified that they were going to confiscate her camera! “Um, no, *big eyes* just the welcome above the gate, is that okay? Should I delete it? *terrified* Here I’ll show you…” And the MP told her that was alright. Phew! Ahem. Let’s get there before we end up in the brig, alright? Dang.

This is my big brother. I know. You didn’t even know I HAD a big brother. He’s like an invisible brother. Now you see him, now you don’t for five years. You know those kind? He’s magical, but I still love him. He looks a little “Top Gun” in this photo so I had to share. He’ll probably hunt me down or hack into my computer to get it off my system. He’s smart like that.

We parked and had a lot of time to kill, so we took a little walk around the base. It was FREEZING! I borrowed my dad’s gargantuan sweatshirt and gave my coat to Catybug. Chickeymonkey, the smart one, came prepared. She also came with strep throat, and antibiotics - but that’s another story.

Here are the girls in front of a tank, doesn’t Catybug look great in my new coat?

Here’s me and my sis, Tommi in front of the tank. Don’t I look great as a marshmallow?

Me and my momma. Awww.

Me and my girls. Double Awwww.

Me and my Dad. Gasp. SERIOUSLY. That’s my dad. I think I may laminate this one.

Catybug and my Dad walking back up to go to the Ceremony. Sweet.

Catybug in front of the tank. She was seriously digging the tank.

No group of photos on my blog would be the same without wildlife, eh?

Here’s my sisters platoon standing at attention at the back of the stadium, preparing for the Ceremony. Front row, fifth from the right (her right) — looking at the pic, she is fifth from the left side of the pic.

During the ceremony, she had to bite down on the inside of her cheek really hard to stop from smiling once she saw us. She was in serious pain, and she looked MAD. She really isn’t ticked off. Or maybe she was, thinking “get the he** away from me with that camera before I bust a giggle”. She would never admit that, though. I wonder how long it will take for the inside of her cheek to heal?

The Ceremony rocked. I cried, and passed out Kleenex because everyone else was crying too. Dang. The girls were totally captivated by the whole thing, which is why I wanted them to see it. There’s a certain pride and love of Country that wells up from deep inside when you see over a hundred people in one place willing to give their lives for any one of us. Having grown up Military style myself and having been married to the Military for 20 years, this is the kind of experience you want your kids to feel for themselves.

Once the ceremony was over, we went to pick up my sis and check her out for the afternoon. When we finally got to her, Mom had first dibs.

Proud Momma.

Congratulations, Private Belrichard. You look pretty dang spiffy!

Family photo at the hotel, before a late lunch.
(Yes, I brought my tripod. No one is missing! Yay!)

We went to a steakhouse for lunch. The outback was painted all over the walls.
I couldn’t help myself, and Catybug was a good sport!!

We hung out with my sis for the afternoon, not doing much - well, okay, we went to WalMart. We just hung out and yacked and shared pics and stuff. Brandi had to report back to base by 9PM so we returned to base early and she showed us around some places where she trained. It was very cool.

We said our goodbye’s Thursday evening. She’s starting AIT (Advanced Infantry Training) now and has 12 more weeks to go. I have to say, I am so proud of her. There are a certain percentage of every group of people that enter Basic Training that fall out because they are just not meant for it. It’s not easy, and you need to have a special kind of endurance to get through it. I am proud to be able to say that she’s got what it takes!

My mom, sister and niece saw us off yesterday morning. We had breakfast and chatted before heading home, and I got one more pic of me and my fam before we hit the road.

Me, Tommi, Rayne (my niece), Mom, Catybug & Chickeymonkey.

We drove through St. Louis on the way home so the girls could see the Arch. The traffic made me crazy so we didn’t stop, but I-44 goes right past it so we did get a good view. We also stopped just outside of Fort Leonard Wood to get a pic of Catybug by a rock wall. It didn’t look that big when we were driving past it - but dang! It certainly dwarfs her doesn’t it?

It was a great trip, a beautiful trip, a proud trip. And I’m glad to be home.

This post is from Leanne Wildermuth : Artist by Nature.

Army Graduation Photos