Frosty Monday morning

It's been frosty in the mornings lately. It burns off pretty quick, but it sure is pretty while it lasts (cold too!)

This morning I picked up all my work from the shop in Auburn where I took part in a show back in October (the work had to hang for 2 months). I didn't sell a single thing (other than some cards the night of the show) so although the people were very nice I would not be inclined to do that show again. If I don't break even, that pretty well diminishes my desire to do a show again. So now I have a box full of art stuff I need to sell...gah. OMG, I have Christmas ornaments!!! I keep forgetting about those! I need to post them on line and maybe with some luck and a few small miracles I might even sell one or two. Hmm, perhaps I'll try to get to that today....

It's almost time to make the infamous Christmas candy (chocolate dipped peanut butter balls, aka "Buckeye Balls" which cracks me up now because my brother and sis-in-law now have a dog named Buckeye...). It's a recipe I got from my friend K (former roomie) while we were in high school, and I've made them every year since then. I think I will also try a new recipe this year...chocolate peppermint fudge perhaps?

Okay, back to work...

late nights in the studio

I can't believe it's December. I am not ready for this!!

It's been another one of those busy weeks. I'm really making good progress on the chicken illustrations, but still have a whole lot of work ahead of me. It's practically time to start getting ready for the PPBA show. Time is flying...

We got over an inch of rain here yesterday (was that just yesterday?!) so hopefully the pasture grass will start to grow now. Everything has turned to mud, the horses won't be clean again until, oh...April or so. :-)

I got interviewed a couple days ago by a reporter for the Tampa (FL) Tribune. Wow, how cool is that?! He saw my foil sculptures on my website and wanted to talk to me about then for a "humorous" article about what to do with leftover foil (it's for the food section).

I ordered a bunch of frames yesterday for various art pieces. I am *finally* able to send out some of the chicken illustrations, and worked out arrangements with a few sponsors for me to custom frame them, and I gotta say, they are going to look SOOO good. It takes me a very long time to pick out frames and mats at the shop. You can make or break artwork by what you do with the frame and mat, so it's important to pick just the right thing. Framing can be a tough sell. It's expensive, and has really gone up a lot in just the last few years. People who don't buy much artwork don't tend to realize how much it costs, and sometimes it's hard to convince people that is really is worth the expense to get a personalized frame job using the absolute best materials. I'm trying though. I want my Standard drawings to last forever, and I'm more concerned that they look good and are well-preserved than I am about making much income on framing (and yet I wonder why I don't have much money...sheesh). ;-)

I've been spending a lot of late nights drawing. The mornings of course suffer because of this, but I've decided that's okay, it just shifts the day sort of later than "normal hours." I just bundle up at night and turn on the portable heater and I'm good to go. Of course it can get pretty rowdy in here late at night, me and my "co-workers" running around wild. I thought I'd share some pics to show you these crazy co-workers of mine:


Fuzzby toasting her buns by the heater. I don't know how she can handle that. Its gets REALLY HOT that close to that heater. Maybe she's just so darn old she doesn't notice. That's her new favorite spot...


And Olin of course is always the life of any party. We got these new beds for the dogs, and they are still in the front room here where they were unpacked (haven't actually put them into the dog house yet) but Olin has decided they make super great cat beds. They're sized for large dogs, but no matter, they'll do! And I must say, the "composition" in which he is sleeping is incredible! Look at how his front leg and tail and like mirror images! Wow! If you squint your eyes and tilt your head about 45 degrees to the right he's almost perfectly symmetrical!

quickie

I just updated my website. I added new stuff in "art for sale" (pets and poultry), added a section for poultry paintings, and split the cats and dogs into two pages. The website program is telling me that the site is full of invalid links, but darned if I can find them. If you find one, please let me know (leave it as a comment here or send me an email). There may be things that link to the wrong pages, I had to move a lot of stuff around.

That's all I got tonight!

And....

Did you see the clip on the news where a crowd was stampeding into Wal-Mart at opening time the day after Thanksgiving and people were getting knocked down and trampled on??

Oh my.... There are no words.....

I know some stores here opened up at 5am. Yeesh. There are few things in life worth getting up that early for. I can think of maybe one or two, and none of them include shopping. Then again I have a pretty strong aversion to shopping anyway.

Holiday Cheer?!

I love Christmas a much as the next person, and certainly more than some people, but for crying out loud it is November. I think it gets worse every year. I am just not ready for decorations yet, and there are TWO local radio stations now playing ONLY Christmas music. Stand aside, I am going to be ill. When it gets to be mid December I might tune in, but now I frantically skip those stations when I have my headphones on while working. I just think it's all kind of disgusting, and strays so far from the spirit of Christmas.

Yesterday started out gloomy and gray, windy and wet. We need rain though, so that's not a bad thing. Got a little over a quarter of an inch, and I'm hoping that will be enough to kick start some grass in the pastures (the horses are eating way more hay than normal for this time of year). I was looking at pictures I'd taken of Shylah the other day (and pics I took this time last year) and the difference in the pastures is really weird. Right now they are barren, not a green speck in sight, and last year there was a good couple inches of grass already growing. I read in the paper there were something like 12 days over 70 degrees this November, while last year had none. Mind you, the weather has been GORGEOUS and absolutely perfect for horse training and horse riding, but it's weird. The chickens are all out of whack too. This is the screwiest year for molts. Usually they lose and regrow all their feathers between, oh, July and October, depending on the individual, but I think there are some out there that never molted, and quite a few of them just started within the last couple weeks. Very weird.

Anyway, the rain cleared up and the day ended with breeze blowing enormous pink and gold clouds across a sunny sky. Amazing. I love this time of year. Today is sunny, windy, and cool.

I stayed up drawing til 11:45 last night. I really do well at night, which offsets my general lack of productivity in the mornings. And actually I think it's working out pretty well, because now I knowingly give myself "mornings off" to run errands, work the horses, read (I just started a book about art pricing!), etc., and I can still get my hours in by working really late (I may even try to push those hours back more, and go til after midnight...we'll see). Seems to be a good system, and since I pretty much have no life anyway, it's not like it infringes on anything. :-D

I oiled most of my tack today, which took several hours, and I didn't even finish because I ran out of oil half way through the saddle, so I'll have to get more on Monday. Not sure what inspired me to do that today. I was just going to oil the reins because they are still annoyingly stiff, but then I figured I may as well do everything. I guess having nice tack is inspiration enough to take good care of it!

Well, time to go feed the critters.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving everybody!


(my first "poultry art"...done in preschool!)

Pictures Today

Ah yes, another exciting day: got up late, drew chickens, cleaned the storage room, drew chickens, drew chickens, etc. I think I am making some headway on the Cornish...we'll see... I "started" (anywhere from cutting paper to size and gathering reference photos to actually making progress with pencil in hand) eight sketches today I think. None are close to done, but I plan to get all those out asap, and then I have massive amounts of color drawings to do, which is the realllllly sloooooowwww part.

And for your entertainment, I took pictures today:


I think they were expecting something...


The Blue Brassy Back pullet is the most curious bird in that pen. She's cute!


Sun-Bathing Beauty! I would say this is probably the absolute best bird I have (and perhaps the best I've had in a while), catching some rays on a warm November day.


The oldest of the Cuckoo birds (remember these are NOT pure Rosecomb! They are half Dominique, hence the red earlobes and wacky combs). He is the typiest of the males (the others are getting pretty heavy-bodied). He has a horrendous comb.


Another one of the three Cuckoo males. This one has the best ear lobes, but an equally horrendous comb.


More Rosecomb X Dominique birds. That Cuckoo male has the best comb. The black pullets will be useful breeding stock, since they can produce Cuckoo offspring (they are sisters to some of the Cuckoos). That's the Crele pullet in the back. She's totally adorable. None of these birds are showable though, that will take YEARS.


More Cuckoos and blacks and the two Crele males (neither one colored right, but it's a start).


Ha ha, Sampson has a leaf on his head!


"The Look"


Gwen looking cute while scratching an itch.


Shylah, a rare Canadian Yak... :-) She is SO soft and fuzzy, you really can't help but put your hands on her!


Black horses, like black cars, are hard to keep from looking dusty (especially when they make a point to roll in it). Gosh, can you tell which side she rolled on?

another fascinating Saturday

As always it was yet another one of my thrilling and exciting Saturdays. The horses got to go to the vet this morning (thanks W!) for shots, and Gwen had her teeth filed down. If you don't like going to the dentist, be glad you aren't a horse. Horses have to be sedated to have their teeth worked in. Because of the way horses' mouths are shaped (and also depends on individual conformation, diet, age, etc) their teeth can get sharp points on the edges. These have to be filed down. It's pretty interesting to watch, and a sedated horse is really kind of amusing. I swear Gwen has the most flexible ankles. She'll lean and twist into these really uncomfortable looking positions, and so many times I've been sure she'll tip over, but she never has! (whew!)

So after coming home from there I worked on the cafepress store for a while (see post below this one), did some work outside, spent a pretty long time struggling with Large Cornish sketches (what is it about the Cornish!?), started on another set of final color drawings, and then watched "Death of a Salesman" which was depressing.

And what was my day. No doubt tomorrow will be equally exciting!

another cool thing!

Ooooooooh, I just added this. A tile mural!! Is that cool or what? I've seen similar things in catalogs and I like them. I hope other people do too! :-)


Click here for more info.

Some of my early work.

Late last night, I was trying to remember how I used to draw as a kid, like specifically how I used to draw the sky. I remember a scene in some movie where a kid (kindergarten age maybe) painted the whole sky blue (whereas the rest of the class would make one blue stripe at the very top of the paper) and the teachers were just amazed by this kid. I don't remember how I used to do that, and now that really bugs me. I looked through the old drawings I still have and none have a sky or much of any scenery at all (guess I got into my "no background" thing pretty early!). I clearly remember making the sun a quarter-circle in the top corner of the paper, but danged if I remember the sky. Mom says if she had realized I was actually going to end up being an artist she would have kept more of the stuff I did as a kid. There must be a zillion drawings that got thrown away, because I remember drawing all the time...specifically drawing horses all the time. And birds, and rodents. Oh man, I wish I still had all that stuff (note to parents, if your kid seems artistically inclined, KEEP EVERYTHING.)

But I do want to share with you some of my very early work, just for amusement sake. Keep in mind I hardly have any, but every now and then I'll stick one on here.

This is the "first real drawing" that I did, according to my mom, meaning it's the first one that was supposed to look like anything in particular. I can't vouch for that. I do remember drawing it, but I don't remember specifically what I had drawn before that.


"skeleton"
graphite on a piece of note paper (like the kind you'd keep by the phone, pretty small)
age 4 years and 1 month
I remember being very adamant that this was a GIRL skeleton, of course, as you can tell by her lovely hair. :-) And the spiral lines on the body, those were definitely meant to portray the ribs.