A Chicken 2-Piece Jar I Built

 

An Adorable Chicken Jar I Created

https://dottiedracos.etsy.com/listing/4590697470/handmade-chicken-jar-red-orange

Checkers the Rooster!

This is one of my daughter's chickens, an adorable rooster that my granddaughter named "Checkers" for some unknown reason.  But Checkers it is!  I spent around an hour with him last week, taking photos and making sketches, and here's the painting that resulted from our little visit.  It's an acrylic painting on a stretched 16x20x3/4" canvas and is for sale on Etsy, along with prints of the painting.

I just love how feisty he is, and I think I may have to do at least one more painting of him.

I also redid the sunflower painting again, and I really like it better now.   It's much happier looking!

Guernsey girl on soft, light blue background

This is a beautiful Guernsey cow painting I just finished.  I really like it and have it hanging in my kitchen until it sells.  I have the original, an acrylic painting on 16x20x3/4" stretched canvas for sale (as well as prints of it) in my Etsy shop.

I've been seeing a lot of farm animal art showing up in very modern kitchens lately, and I really like the look, so I'm going to continue with it for a while.  Plus, I just love painting farm animals, too, so that helps a lot.

I just took quite a few photos of some of our own "chickens" a few days ago and will be painting at least one of them, one of the "chickens" who turned out to be a rooster!  He's quite saucy and sassy, and the photos I took just scream to be painted.

I'm also doing just a few custom paintings for a while, too; so if you're interested in getting in before I take another break, now is the time.  I'll probably stop taking custom orders around early September.  There's a page here that gives you all the particulars if you're interested.

I'll also be listing some in-progress paintings I've been working on lately, too, including the completed ones as soon as I get around to finishing them.  I've got so much going on lately that it's time to start finishing up a few projects.                                                                                                                                                        

This is the same cow but with white markings on her back.

An absolutely beautiful Holstein cow painting I just finished

Holstein Cow Lying in Field Original Acrylic Painting 16x20x0.75"

I have been working on this girl fairly steadily - and lovingly for a change - since I was in France, where I roughed her in.  But today, I finally finished her.  She was such a great pleasure to paint; every paint stroke was well thought out and deliberate.  I am quite proud of her and hope I can continue to work in such a comfortable and relaxed manner.  (Well, I can't call this painting "work." It was too much fun.)

Hope you like her.  I'm still on a farm animal kick, so I'll be adding even more new paintings over the next couple of months.

And I also let in a couple of custom paintings to regular, long-term customers, so I'll be showing those, too, in the next few weeks.

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.

Another of my Seven Cow Paintings

This is another of the cow paintings that kept me busy all through the month of April.  There are five more I'll be showing.  This is a Jersey cow.  The original was 30x40 inches and has been sold.

Following this past month's marathon, I figured this is a good time to take a new direction in my artwork.  So in addition to still doing custom animal paintings, and the occasional animal painting from my own photographs, I am making two very (for me) big changes in my artwork:  I am going to be painting primarily landscapes from now on (suggestions welcome!), and I'm switching from acrylics to oils as my medium.

I've been practicing both the new medium and the new subject matter, and there's going to have to be a pretty sharp learning curve for me.  It's a whole new field (no pun intended!), and I'm really excited about it.  Please, if you've followed me mostly because I have painted animals for years, stay with me and see how my new work is going.  Wish me luck on this new chapter in my painting career.

One more thing:  For those of you who know of my past ceramic artwork, I am once again making some ceramic animal masks and will be listing them on Etsy within the following few months.  There will only be a few each month, approximately 10 per month, because I don't want to make them full-time anymore.  But I must admit that I am enjoying the several hours a week I've been spending in my clay studio; it's a welcome break from "my day job."  If you have mask requests, let me know and I'll do my best to create something like what you want.  I am going to be doing a few different types of animals this time:  In addition to the usual dogs and cats (and possibly a few fish), I'm going to be making some cow and rooster masks.  Should be interesting.

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.

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.

A change of subject - for today at least

Here's a painting I did last week.  It was enjoyable but difficult at the same time -- I know dogs; I do not know roosters!  But we all need to do something at least a little different from time to time, right?  He's bright and cheery, though; I have him hanging in my kitchen for the time being.  He's going to be for sale in just a few hours at my website, http://www.dottiedracos.com.

And now back to dogs.  I have one promised painting to do, a gift for a dear friend, a chocolate-colored minpin named Kaiser, but I want to do a couple of "warm-up" dog paintings before I get started on it.  It's been a bit too long of a painting break for me.  (I still feel like one of the most fortunate of people to have a career that I love so much!!)

And I hope you all have a great, great 2012.   Happy New Year.

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.