A Ewe and her two babies, A mother sheep and her two lambs

Mother Ewe and her two baby Lambs

This is a painting I finished very recently.  I created it from photos kindly lent to me by a sheep and goat farmer who lives near me.  I'm not mentioning her name because I didn't ask for permission.  But I do thank her.

I've finally started doing many of my paintings in oil.  I love how it flows, but I'm still having a problem with messing areas I've already painted because it dries much more slowly than acrylic paints do.  I think, too, that the colors are more true after the painting has dried.

Brown Cashmere Goat Painting

Here's our second cashmere goat that I've painted.  I think she's a beautiful animal, and I really enjoyed painting her -- especially that foreshortened ear above her eye!  That was fun!  Hope you like her.  I've forgotten her name, so I'll add it later.

Due to a lack of interest currently in my goat paintings, I'm going to hold off painting the other, grey, adult goat and get on to some other paintings that I've been getting requests for.

The next one I'll be doing is a painting of a Holstein cow (I'll have to go search for one around here because I don't think there's one in the field across the road) lying in front of the beautiful old barn across the road.  Obviously, I'll have to combine the two of them onto one canvas, which is always a bit difficult for me because I have to get the perspective done perfectly, or it doesn't work.  We'll see . . . .

As Promised, Here's the first of the Cashmere Goat Paintings

Here's "Snowflake."  My granddaughter very aptly named her, I think.  And she's adorable, too, along with the other three:  another white baby, a tan-and-brown one, and a light grey one.

The original acrylic painting is on a 16x20x1/2" stretched canvas, already wired on the back so ready for hanging.

Either the grey or the brown goat will be the next to be painted.  Also, I've come across a beautiful, beautiful Jersey cow, with those enormous, gorgeous eyes, in a field nearby, so I'll be doing a painting of her, too, very soon.

I'm settling in to our new country place, and it feels great to be back painting again.

A Dark Red Cow at Sunset

Sorry, I don't know what breed this cow is.  Perhaps a Salers?  I've titled it "Just before Sunset."  I love the strong contrasts between the sunlit side and the darkly shadowed side.

I painted this cow painting, acrylic, on 11x14 hardboard, using a photo submitted by Gail Klett. Thanks! It was a pleasure to paint it.

Rooster Painting! Something Bright and Fun!

This is a really fun rooster painting I just finished today.  He's going to grace my own kitchen until he sells because I love him.  He makes me smile; he'll definitely wake me up in the morning even before I've had my first cup of coffee; and he was a lot of fun to paint! 

The original painting is on 16x20x3/4" stretched canvas, with the sides painted the same color as the background.  The background shows up in the photo as a  bit blue, but it's more of a greenish grey actually.  I'm selling both prints and the original.

Now I absolutely have to start on my next custom painting, which as I think I've already mentioned, is another beautiful cat.

Really Cute Cow Painting

I just finished this sweetie today, and I love it.  It's a fun painting to me, and I think his/her eyes are so sweet looking.  I have both the original and prints listed online if you're interested in having this sweetie hanging on your wall.

The original is acrylic painted on an 11x14x3/4" stretched canvas, no staples on the sides, and it already has a hanging wire on the back so can be hung up just as soon as you receive it.

My next painting is a custom I've been working on for a few days.  It's another cat and a beautiful one, too.  I'm really enjoying doing the painting.

Holstein Cow, Standing, on Blue Background

This is a sweet painting I just finished yesterday afternoon.  She's a Holstein cow that I saw on my neighbor's field when I lived in Denmark last summer.  I couldn't decide on a background, and I love this color of blue that I had put down just to eliminate the white canvas color as I painted, so I decided to enhance it and keep it.  I like the look, modern but classical.

The painting is acrylic, on a stretched 16x20x3/4" canvas, and has been sold.

Little Duckling Portrait

Okay, this is the other one I just finished, a sweet little baby duck portrait.  It, too, was a lot of fun.  What more can I say.

Fortunately, summer has finally arrived, so now, instead of staying indoors for large parts of the day to avoid the cold and rain, I have to stay indoors because it's so stinkin' hot!!  I'm not complaining, though; I love it.  It's been a long, long, long winter, and finally, with the rest of the country sweltering, summer has arrived in Oregon!  Horray!

Three Little Piggies

This is a sweet little painting I finished yesterday.  It's just three little pigs, hanging around.  I did it just for fun, and it was fun!  I'm finishing another one today that I did for fun, too, and it'll be listed just after this one.  I think I'm on a farm kick.  But then I have to get back and finish a few promised paintings, too.  I'm painting again!  That makes me really happy.

This painting is, by the way, an acrylic painting on a 16x20x3/4" stretched canvas and has been sold.

Pygmy Goat on Green Field Painting

This is a painting I finished yesterday.  It's a pygmy goat, who I'm sure is thinking about what she's going to eat next -- the newly planted flowers or the beautiful small pink dogwood tree that I loved so much.  I've had a few of these little adorable and frustrating creatures back when I had a horse farm and lived out in the country, and every day I altered from wanting to make them wear a sign that said, "Free, take me," to hugging them for making me laugh so hard.  And, yes, the one we had the very longest, Sophie, really did eat my poor little dogwood down to a stump -- and my forsythia and all my flowers -- and then went and danced on my beloved Porsche.  And that was all in just one day!

Anyway, the painting is acrylic on an 11x14x3/4" stretched canvas, with the sides painted green, so is ready to hang with or without a frame.  It's available at my website, http://www.dottiedracos.com.  I really like this painting and enjoyed doing it.  Hope you do, too.

Hereford Cow at Tillamook, OR

This is a small cow painting I just finished today of a Hereford cow that I photographed in Tillamook, OR, near the cheese factory there.  It was a fun, beautiful day, and I photographed a lot of farm animals, many of which I've already painted.  This girl was really suspicious of me and my camera but curious enough that I managed to get a few shots of her before she took off to a safe distance.

I'm going back to the Coast next week, so I'll be getting some more good images to be painting.

Holstein Cow on Blue, No. 14 of 30 Daily Paintings

The following paragraph is by my sweet son-in-law, Mark, who is helping me out a bit with my online work so I can spend more time painting!

"This is a painting of a Holstein Cow, which originated in the Netherlands. It is today the most efficient dairy producing animal in the world, and in my opinion, also one of the cutest!
Holsteins have been known to be all black, all white, a mix of the two, or even red and white, which is slightly less common than the traditional black and white mix. Their reason for import to the US was due to disease spreading amongst the cattle, and 8800 Holstein cows were imported to the new world, where they, obviously, flourished to become the most efficient species of dairy cows currently in existence."

I think he did a great job - and he's helping me immensely!  Mark, if you read this, thanks so much!

The painting is a small one, 8x10" on stretched canvas, with 3/4" sides, painted blue.  The back is wired, so the painting is ready to hang, either framed or unframed.  This cow is another one I got sketches and photos of on my fairly recent trip to the dairy farms around Tillamook, Oregon, on the Pacific Coast -- well, a bit inland, I guess, but you can certainly feel the sea air around there.  It's available for sale on my website, and here's the link for it - and other farm animal paintings I've done:  http://wildwildthings.com/originalsgalleryFARM.html.

I'm now working on a larger painting, which is going to take at least three days to finish.  I'm really enjoying it so far.  It's an Australian shepherd, a tricolor, sent to me by a dog-lover.  He has several Aussies and I'm going to try to paint all of them over time.  I'll post the painting in just a few more days.

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.

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.

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.