I completed another painting today, she’s the cutest little puppy girl in her little red dress! This one is going to be a birthday gift – so I’m excited for this portrait to reach it’s final final destination.

You can view Baby Buffy’s portrait progress here. Final scan & detail images to come!

I completed Tess today, you can view her painting as it progressed here. I think her mom will be pleased (mom, let me know if you’re not pleased!) – I’ll get the final scan & post details once she’s dry.

I finished up the background lastnight for this monochromatic portrait of Tess (follow the progress here). My palette for this piece is pretty simple – raw umber, indigo (raw those two mixed are the darkest dark), white, naples yellow and raw sienna. I chose this palette because her mom wanted something that would bring out her natural coat color even though it’s a limited palette, and this is going to be just perfect.

I’ll start showing completed pieces by the end of the day Monday. It’s been a busy week – I’m going to go play in my garden for a while!

I finished up the underpaintings for Callie, Annie & Momo’s second portraits, you can follow progress here. These are pretty loose and are meant to cover the canvas and give me the deepest color to build their layers of fur upon.

This is the second stage of Baby Buffy’s custom doggie portrait, the background. My client requested green, so I combined two shades of green in the background and used a touch of cream for a warmer green reflection dropdown on the canvas beneath her feet.

It’s going to be another busy day in the studio, so I’ll get back to it and show you more later on today.

   Before I start mixing up my palette for the day, I wanted to highlight these latest three photos. The first two I took just this morning out my front window – she finally cooperated enough to allow me to photograph her while she fed. The weather must be better for Hummingbirds, they seem to be around much more right now. When it was hot and not so humid, they didn’t stop by until dusk. Now they’re flitting about all day.

The third photo is a House Wren, and I’ve NEVER seen one of these before. If you’re looking to attract more species to your yard, the biggest difference for us this year is that we took branches that fell through the winter and ice storms and chose a corner of the yard to create a brush pile. These critters LOVE that spot. I was out checking the tomatoes when I heard three of these little guys chipping away and scurrying around within that brush pile. Very cool.

Ok, enough blab – more work! Have a great day.

This is Tess – she’s passed over the Rainbow Bridge. Her momma, Pamibe is the one who won my Refer-A-Comment Contest. I’ll be painting Tess in monochromatic oils on an 8×8 canvas panel.

Today is also Pam’s 50th Birthday – so stop over and wish her a Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday, Pam!!

I’ve completed a few more sketches for a few more paintings! You might be familiar with these three, Callie, Annie and Momo belong to Debbie. She’s keeping me in business with all this wonderful work she’s sending my way, first I painted these three in one portrait as a monochromatic oil painting – then she requested me through EWebscapes when she was ready for her new blog design, and now I get to paint these totally cool close up macros of her babies in full color!

I just adore the photos she chose for these portraits. All of them are 4″ x 4″ wrapped canvases, I’ll paint a solid color border on all three and then tackle layer upon layer of fur, in oils.

Aaah – the smell of oils will be strong in my studio over the next couple of weeks, and I’ll be as giddy as a girl in pigtails riding a new pink banana seat bike. Ching-ching!

Meet Baby Buffy, half bichon frise and half havanese, this cute little girl is stylin’ in her little red dress and pink collar. I’ll be painting her in oil on a 4″ x 4″ canvas. I sketched her up yesterday afternoon and will work on her within the next week or two.