Thursday, February 18, 2010

English Springer Spaniel doing Agility Test

Okay, here's my painting for today - and I think I've loosened up a lot in my painting.  I really love the motion, the "painterliness" of this one.  I didn't draw in every single hair and be slavishly driven by the photo of the dog.  I used the images of this dog to create what I feel is an exciting, colorful, filled-with-personality painting.  I hope (fingers crossed!!!) I can continue in this direction!!!

This painting is for sale, by the way.  It's an 8x10" on wood panel, unframed.  It sells for $125, and I'll frame it for you for an extra $15.  Of course, as usual, prints, pendants, and clocks are available on my website, http://www.wildwildthings.com/.

A Cordon Bleu Fince painting

Here's my little painting from yesterday:  A little finch with a fancy name:  Cordon Bleu finch.  I enjoyed painting it. 

Now, today I must do another dog painting.  I'm slowing returning to dogs but am still going to continue to paint other subjects, too.  Wish me luck!

Monday, February 15, 2010

A Macaw painted by my daughter, Lara Aguilera-Mogensen

Here's a painting done by my daughter, Lara, recently.  She doesn't have a blog yet, so I'm taking the liberty of listing a few of her paintings on my blog until she does - so I can show off her work, of course!

This is a parrot, obviously, a macaw, I think.  We had for many, many years another kind of parrot, a blue-fronted Amazon, named Jolie.  She was a sweetheart with a voice that would break crystal!  But we loved her very, very much.  She left us, though, and went to live with some neighbors who had several Amazons, with whom she immediately bonded.  Fickle bird!  No, really, she was much happier because she was alone, with only us as companions, and she's much happier now with all the other parrots.  We were really boring, I think, and didn't appreciate her fine voice nearly as much as her other bird-friends did.  Here's Lara's website address:  http://marezidoats.com/.  The name of the site is a cute one, by the way:  Lara also teaches horseback riding (dressage specifically), and the name "marezidoats" stems from a song that my mother sang to me when I was small and that I subsequently sang to her:  It starts like this (written much, much more clearly than it's sung) Mares eat oats and does eat oats, and little lambs eat ivy.  A kid'll eat ivy, too, wouldn't you?"
(It sounds more like marezidoats 'n doesidoats, 'n liddlelamseadivy.  A kid'lleadivy,too,wouldn't you?)

Chinook Dog, Sled Dog, with Helicoptor Ears

I love dogs with helicoptor ears!  This is a painting I did from photos that were submitted to me by a person I met at the recent Rose City Classic Dog Show, here in Portland, OR.  I think their ears are generally upright, and I'll eventually get one painted in that orientation.  But this one I just couldn't resist.  She, his mom, calls him "silly Willy" in this painting.

She gave me a bit of info about Chinooks, too.  They're quite rare and really are sled dogs and I think are located mostly in the Northwest US - and maybe Canada.  They're really beautiful, I think.

By the way, this painting is one I decided to do while in the midst of my painting anything-but-dogs phase.  I'm pleased with the results -- and I think it is looser, not so serious, and was just a lot more fun to paint!  So those of you waiting to have me do a commissioned painting for you, the wait will be worth it!  I can tell!

Some Other Paintings I've been doing lately and haven't had time to post!

A precious little pygmy goat I painted a few days ago.  Believe it or not, I'm actually painting a "one-a-day" now -- well, I've done it for one week.  We'll see if it holds long-term.  By the way, don't let this little guy's sweet, innocent face fool you:  I've had many goats over the years, and they are just as precious as they look -- but at the same time, are real terrors!  One I had, I caught dancing on my pride-and-joy car at the time, a bright ruby red Porsche 944!  (I came close to changing my vegetarian ways over that one!  Only joking, of course -- well, kind of.)     
Three geese.  These were actually a pet goose my daughter had, and I just took multiple photos of her and combined them together into this composition.  (Geese all look alike anyway, right?)  Like the goat above, she was a terror, too -- but she was actually mean!  In the left two images of her in the painting, she was threatening to bite me (probably thinking about it in the right one, too, now that I think about it), and she actually did attack me before I could finish taking more photos.  And geese bite hard!  I finally learned not to run from her but to face her head-on and grab her mean little beak when she bit at me and just hold it until she calmed down.  Finally, she didn't like to chase me anymore and chose other victims instead.



This is a painting I did recently and forgot to post of a couple of cows.  I don't really know what kind they are (a jersey and a holstein possibly?)  I think cows are sweet looking, though, whatever kind they are, and always seem interested in me and curious about what I'm doing.  I'm not afraid of cows.  Probably because I don't know any better, now that I think of it, though.

Black-winged Stilt, or Avocet - another non-dog painting! Yay!!

I'm sorry; I know many of you follow my work because of my dog paintings, but I'm having a really, really good time taking a break from dogs for a while.  I know it was prompted by my total overload at the recent Rose City Classic Dog Show I did here in Portland, but it was also just something I knew I needed to do for a long time and didn't really have the nerve to try.  I know it's going to allow me to paint dogs with a fresh perspective - and I and my customers and followers will be happier for it.  

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

borzoi profile painting

This is an 8x10 Borzoi painting I finished last week before I started my "other-animals-than-dogs" painting sidetrack.  I love it, and it's more what I'm after than the too-tight work I had begun to do before I decided to take my break.  It's the last dog I painted before my self-imposed break from dog paintings.  I hope to have more in a similar style when I return to dogs.  The original is still for sale.

Friday, February 5, 2010

Oops! I forgot to list my rooster that I painted yesterday!

I don't know what kind of rooster this is.  I only know I found him to be very beautiful.   We used to have chickens (for eggs only) and this one poor, lonely rooster, who had the most sickly-sounding crow that we felt sorry for him.  Plus, we kept him locked out of the hens' house, so he was a pretty sad figure -- but so very beautiful!  Anyway, this is another of my recent non-dog paintings that I wanted to share with you.  Hope you're enjoying my "entr'acte."   I'll be back to dogs before too long.

a Jersey Cow - Holy Cow! Where am I going with this??? Having fun, tho'

Wow, I needed this!!  It is soooooo refreshing to be able to paint something besides my beloved dogs.  Please don't get me wrong:  I still love painting dogs, and I love dogs.  I just was in desperate need of a break! 

It also shows me how very hard dogs are to paint -- in my humble opinion, that is.  They have awfully complicated faces, with very distinct bone structures, which in addition to hair color, length, degree of straightness, etc., vary  from dog breed to dog breed.  But, hey, they're beautiful beings, whom I love dearly. 

I don't know yet what I'll be painting tomorrow, whether it'll be a dog or yet another farm animal.  But, again, I promise I'll be getting back to dogs soon.

Thursday, February 4, 2010

A Toggenburg Goat! I needed a break from dog paintings for a while!

Okay, I know it's a goat, not a dog!  It's different, but I really needed a break.  It'll be good for me.  With all the commissions I've been doing, I've been working tighter and tighter, and it's not a good direction for me.  This being an artist is always supposed to be fun - because it's what I love doing more than any other "job" I've ever had in my whole life!  I was reaching a point where I dreaded going to work each day.  So it's time for just some fun, loose, no-stress (well, a little bit of stress still), non-threatening types of paintings.  So look for more non-dog paintings for the next week or two.  Then I'll get back with a fresh, clear, eager mind to painting dogs again. 

All you people, by the way, that I met at the Rose City Classic Dog show -- all those of you that either allowed me to photograph your dogs or that sent some of your own dog's photos to me ------ thank you, thank you, thank you!  It was wonderful to meet and talk to you all, and I promise I'll do my very best to get every one of your beloved dogs' paintings done.  So please bear with me while I clear my mind, loosen my brush strokes.  We'll all be happier for the wait, I promise.