I’ve been working on Rusty, and thought I’d share the work in progress. I’m still nowhere near finished with him, but wanted to point out some differences between his underpainting and what I’ve been working on.

You can see from the underpainting that there are obviously none of the final details. The way I work my portraits are such that the first layer of color is a basecoat, and they are the deepest colors that I can see on the photograph I’m working from. On the current work in progress shot, I’ve only worked on his neck behind his ear, the top of his head, I’ve roughed in more of his eye, darkened his nose and layered the next coat of fur around his eyes and muzzle. I haven’t even touched his ear from before, so you can see the difference between what I’ve worked on, and what will be getting another layer of paint. (Actually, there will be two more layers of paint before he’s finished.)

Anyway, I’ve been suffering from a large artistic block, and I’m trying to work through it. They happen, not very often but they do. I motivated myself a little bit today after picking up a new chair from Dick Blick, and praying like crazy before I cranked the tunes in the studio.

I am not working on webcam, sorry folks.

That’s right folks, my baby-makin days are over. Waaaaaaaaaaaaah! (Not really.)

We just got back from the hospital a little while ago. Last spring I was going to have my tubes tied (TMI, anyone?) but freaked out. I read up on it and saw that there can be some wicked hormonal effects from the procedure, and since I’m such a mood-swinger anyway I figured that probably wouldn’t be good. So we talked about it and decided that he’d take some preventative measures since I’ve been doin’ all the hard stuff all along. heh! For any of you guys out there, it’s no big deal. If your wife is askin’ you to do it, just do it. It’s one of those guy things that seems pretty, uh, uncomfortable, but it’s really not as bad as you think it is! (That’s what he’s telling me anyway!)

I’ve got a few things to get done this morning, wait, crap, it’s almost noon. Argh.

It’s supposed to rain for the next few days so I’d like to get a couple of things done outside before I get to painting today. Rainy days are good painting days!! I have Rusty on the table, I’ll finish him next. I’ll update my cam status when I start, or I’ll just pop in later with some eye candies!

Have a good one!

I just completed Adriana’s portrait, I am so much more pleased with this color scheme on her!! Aaah. I’ll post scans after she’s dry.

My palette: Burnt Umber, Flesh, Naples Yellow Light/White

I told you I was painting. See? Here’s Adriana’s head. Wierd lookin’, yes, she has no body. You’d look wierd too if your body was just a sketch. heh.

😛

For all the mom’s out there, I hope you have a nice warm sqwishy hug day today. 🙂

Yesterday was a busy day. I helped our neighbor with her yard for a while. She’s had a lot of construction going on over there for the last few months, the warm weather and huge mess made her pretty ambitious so I offered to help! We cut down one of her small trees (the dogs were working on digging it up for her), and she wanted to get rid of another one of her trees so she had someone dig it up and we moved it over into our yard. It’s a Red Bud tree, we think. Mark has wanted one since our trip home from Florida when we saw them blooming all the way back.

Today I am stiff and sore. I’d like to run down to the home improvement store for a water feature for all of this landscaping we’ve been doing, as well as some more mature plants so we don’t have to wait for everything to grow! We even built up an area for the girls to have their own garden to maintain. Jay planted carrots. I planted snow peas (eat ’em right out of the pod, yummmy!), and Cait planted big ol watermelons. We split the bed in half so there are veggies on one side and they picked out flowers for the other. Now they can water it and check them and watch them grow! Fun stuff.

I’ve got some painting to do, too! Dang I only have a couple of weeks left to finish everything I’ve got going. Then June is clear so far so I’m starting to think of other things I’d like to paint, non-commissioned. Hey, it’s been a while since I painted something non-commissioned huh? My last piece was the Viola, Antoinette. I finished that one back in Februrary.

So much to do, such warm weather to try to ignore….

I hope you’re having awesome summery weather and playing outside in it, too!!

I did it! I’m back from the dentist.

I’m getting a root canal, nah-nee-nah-nee-boo-boo. I know, you’re so jealous! Well I’m just lucky.

Referred pain sucks. When he finished I looked in my mouth and thought ‘huh?’ and asked him why he worked on the wrong tooth, or if he did them all. LOL Well apparently the one I thought was my owie was not my owie. It was just having sympathy pain. My teeth are so empathetic I tell you, even during the procedure my top left was screaming out in agony at the sound of the drill.

Even so, I’m back, I made it out alive, and I’m not in any pain (right now). HAH! So there!

I’ll paint today, I’m not sure when or what yet, but I will paint! (Check the webcam status.)

I’ve just completed making all of the 4×4 paintings patriotic! (That was part of the deal.) I’ll go back and add highlights and lowlights and stuff to give them dimension. Aren’t they fun??

Here’s the mousey background, I’m doing a pretty drastic dropshadow on it cause it’s going to be a very 3-d comin-off-the-canvas kinda mouse!

Here’s the background color scheme for Sissy’s portrait. The darkened right side will balance the shadow on that side of her portrait. I’m not sure I like the drop shadow on the ledge yet, I’ll wait until it dries and see how I like it, probably tweak it more.