I’m working on this graphite portrait for a client for Christmas – he’s a handsome fella, isn’t he? This shot was taken on his wedding day, such a warm loving look on his face – of course he was sharing that look with his bride!

So far I’ve lightly penciled in his features and just started working on his hair. I’ll post more photos as I progress.

 

The ground was clear when we went to bed lastnight.

When we got up, we were covered in white stuff.
The black & white was still set on my camera, so I went with it.

Our snowman isn’t catching any flakes, but looks cool in B/W.

I liked the homey feeling of this shot. Nice big pine tree with branches weighted down by the snow, the dusting on the picket fence. I’m not one to be out in it, but it is beautiful and always has such a nostalgic feel to it when it’s freshly fallen and hasn’t been disrupted by man.

The holiday weekend is almost over, and then the Christmas rush begins. If all goes as planned, I’ll be finishing several projects this week!

I’ve also done pretty well on my Buy Handmade pledge, I went to the annual craft fair yesterday and found quite a few treasures, and I’m excited for my Handmade Gift Exchange to commence so I can send my partner their goodies. (Of course, it will include something hand made by me, too!)

Some of you may already know about my fascination with Johannes Vermeer’s Girl With a Pearl Earring. I even did a tribute to his painting a few years ago. There’s just something about the pose, the girl, the lighting, and the story that draws me into the painting.

Several weeks ago, I came upon a fortunate find – studio lighting. The good stuff. And a backdrop (that I used yesterday in my Girl and her Puppy photo shoot). I was able to pick it all up at an UNBELIEVABLE price, and by that I mean half the price of one brand new light, stand, and umbrella. I was finally able to set it up and try it out this weekend, and though I have a long way to go to get things perfect, I sure am having a lot of fun in the process already.

My cousin Emily was over yesterday, we had a bit of a bakeathon. We made an unhealthy assortment of goodies over the span of 7 hours, and when we were finished we played “dress up and pose”. Of course I really wanted to play with the dramatic side of things, so I posed her similarly to the Girl With a Pear Earring and the results were just gorgeous. Her eyes light up the same way, the same shade of green. The light bounced off of her earring just enough to notice – perfect. I had to share.

Then we had some play time, where I stood up on a chair over her and shot from overhead. This shot is among the favorites, as well:

She’s just adorable, and fun to shoot – and she’s offered to come over any time I want to try out new equipment. What more could a girl ask for?

I have a real live doll to dress up and photograph!

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!

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.

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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.

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.

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 at the Boulder Hair Salon. 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!

aka “How to furry up your bald cat.”

 

 

From my previous work in progress, you can go ahead and admit it – you were frightened. It is hard for some people to envision my finished portrait when they view the underpaintings, and that’s okay. I mean, as long as no one is scared off by it! After sharing the final digital pic of the finished portrait with my client last night, I realized that you really do have to know my work, and in a lot of cases you have to own one of my paintings, in order to overlook the craziness that is one of my underpaintings.

So for Kona’s portrait, I decided to stop every so often and snap a photo, and share my entire work in progress. If you’re an artist, and you want to take this as a “how to paint a cat portrait”, then I do hope this helps you. I’ll try to detail out my thought process through the painting so you can get an idea of how I work.

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