A Pretty Cat I'm nearly finished with

Sorry about the quality of the photo, but I think you can get an idea of what the painting is about:  She's a pretty little tuxedo kitten that I'm doing a custom painting of.  Her name is Bea, and she's lying on her favorite blanket.  I'll be finishing it today, so I'll post a photo of the finished painting later on today or tomorrow. 

Okay, off to work now.  Just wanted to show her off because I think black-and-white ("tuxedo") cats are so adorable, and she's a particularly pretty one.

I've been away a while because I've been awfully sick with a really, really bad cold.  It's almost conquered now!!  I'm such a wimp sometimes!

Five Cows

This is a painting I finished a few days ago.  Now I wish I had done it in a larger format.  It's five cows on only an 11x14 canvas, so I had to use really, really tiny brushes for too many of the details.  However, it is finished, and prints are available.  As the original painting is in oil, it is not ready to put up for sale.  It should be dry enough in a couple more weeks.  Hope you like it.  I don't think I'm going to do more than two or three cows to a painting in the future . . .

Bracco Italiano Completed

Sorry I didn't post any interim shots; I worked straight through to the end after my last post.  He's finished, but I still may tweak him a bit, of course.  I always do until they go out the door. 

Anyway, the original is for sale, and it'll be listed on Etsy, along with prints, in the next day or so.  The oil painting is on 11x14x3/4" stretched canvas, with the sides painted the same dark green as shown in the background.  I'm pretty happy with him. 

Oil paint is so much easier to use than acrylics and the colors are just amazing, so clear, clean, and bright when I need them to be and dark when I need dark.  But I am having a bit of difficulty with the medium I'm using with the oil paints.  I've been getting headaches, burning nose, itchy hands, and runny eyes.  However, I believe I have already come up with a solution:  a diluent/medium/brush cleaner by Gamblin that supposedly has no toxicity.  I'll see how it works for my next painting, which I think may be of some adorable little Oregon juncos that were at our feeder just outside the window during our recent heavy snow storm.  We got some really good photos of them, so I may give one a try for my next painting.  There are many other paintings I should be doing, but one of these little birds will give me a bit of a break from the really heavy paintings.

French Language Studies Progress

I've been seeing pretty good progress in my French language studies, and it's really encouraging.  I'm taking classes at Alliance Francaise and really enjoying those.   Every novel I read - and I am always, always reading, every single evening for at least an hour - is in French.  That helps immensely with my vocabulary.  I might add, also, that except for one two-month beginner class in French, many years ago, I had no knowledge of the language at all.  Even then, after taking the single summer two-month class at the University of Wyoming, I began struggling with reading novels in French.  And it was a struggle, too:  I read with my book in one hand and the dictionary in the other.  I didn't even have any comprehension at all of sentence structure, my vocabulary was in the low hundreds of words -- well, you get the picture.  It was bad.  But I really, really wanted to learn the language, and I could at least get the basic gist of whatever it was I was attempting to read.

When I went to live in France the first time, in the 1990's, that's the level at which I was 'NOT' speaking.  In other words, I was completely helpless and pretty much understood nothing and could only say sentences like "my name is . . .," and "where is. .. ." - but I couldn't understand the answers.  So in the very beginning, the person talking to me and I did a lot of hand gestures.  More than one person speaking, forget it; I understood nothing and found my mind wandering elsewhere.  But I kept struggling, and by the time I left, around a year and a half or so later, I was at least slightly communicating -- getting by, in other words.  While there, I studied a French grammar book every evening, kept flash cards with me at all times, very, very shyly tried to speak with people I worked with, and had to speak with service people in shops, etc.  It was tough, tough.

Over the intervening years, my interest in studying French has waxed and waned -- and is fiery hot now, of course.  And I've finally found one thing that really is seeming to work for me now:  at the suggestion of my Alliance Francaise instructor, I subscribed to the French language TV channel (TV 5 Monde), and I've started doing some paintings in my bedroom - where my TV is located - as I've mentioned before.  While I paint, I have the TV going constantly, where I'm totally immersed in hearing the language, even if I'm not really paying attention.  I find myself later, however, telling my daughter about something interesting I heard on the TV during my painting times.

As anyone who has studied another language knows, the last thing to come is speaking, and that's the case with me.  My vocabulary is very extensive now, I hear and understand most everything, but I'm still very hesitant about speaking.  My Alliance Francaise classes help with that a lot because that's what they emphasize, is speaking.  And with that and with hearing the TV French constantly, I'm beginning to speak more freely now, too.  There is hope, in other words.

Bracco Italiano pup painting in progress

Sorry, this photo is a bit blurred and has some real lighting issues (I'm painting this one in my bedroom instead of in my studio, and the lighting isn't as good in here.)  Why in my bedroom?  Two main reasons:  One, I do mostly acrylic paintings in my studio at this time, and I don't like to have the two media in the same place.)  Two, I like to have a painting nearby sometimes so I can see it even when I'm not actually working on it; I look at it as I do other things during the day and see things that need working on.  I don't do this all the time because it becomes a bit of an obsession.  I study it before going to bed and will actually jump out of bed, turn on the lights, and fix whatever I saw wrong with it.  Not at all good for getting a good night's sleep!   But sometimes I like to do it.

Below this in-progress photo is the photo I'm working from.  Yes, I do get a bit "photographic" in my paintings sometimes, but it's a bit fun to do so from time to time.

I'll try to take a photo at the end of every couple of sessions so you can see the progress (I hope!)

Okay, got it! ... in a way -- Again, "Two Cows Revisited"

Google Chrome is giving me problems again.  I love it, but it really has a lot of bugs, especially in the last few months.  I'm writing this time from Windows Explorer.

Some time ago I painted these two beautiful girls on just an 8x10" panel.  I've always loved the painting, but the original was just too small.  (It has sold, by the way.)  So I decided to do another similar painting, but this time it's a 16x20" on stretched canvas.  It is at this time for sale, along with prints in various sizes.

I'm also working now on a precious Italiano Bracco puppy painting.  I'm working from photos given to me by someone who was showing this particular puppy at the Rose City Classic dog show a few years ago.  If you are that person or know that person, I'm so sorry, but I said I would contact you when the painting was done, and I have lost your name.  I know it's been years, but I do eventually get to most all the paintings I have told people I would paint.  I'll be doing a progress series of shots on the painting, I've decided; but I have already gotten a bit into the painting before I decided to do so, so there won't be a whole of progress to show.  The process is just too beautiful not to share on this particular painting, though.  (Hope I don't jinx myself!)  The pup is beautiful, the photograph is excellent, and for some reason, I'm working well -- that's a bit of a change from the difficulties I've been having on some other paintings lately that aren't ready to see the light of day yet!  I'll post the pics very soon of this little guy.

Two Cows - Revisited

NSomething is wrong with Blogger.  I can't see a word that II'm typing, and there's no way to upload a photo.  I guess I'll have to check with Google.  I need this blog.  I noticed afew ddays ago (sorry if I'm flubbing up; I really can't see a single thing I'm typing)  I noticed, again, a few days ago that when I tried to post, I couldn't.  I thought it was a passing thing.  Now I'm really concerned.  I'll see what I can do; don't know if this is posting or not.

Chocolate Labrador Retriever in Forest Painting

This is a painting of a commissioned chocolate lab I recently finished.  She is a beautiful dog, and the photos were well shot, so it was a great pleasure to be able to do the painting.

As this was a commissioned painting, the original has sold, but prints are available for purchase in various sizes.

I lost my precious cat Mattie yesterday

I just had to say that I lost a beloved pet yesterday.  She was a most precious cat that we adopted about three years ago, and we loved her so very, very much.   Her name was rather complicated.  I'll explain:

We, my daughter and I, found her in a backwoods area in Central Florida when we were out on a walk in an area we probably shouldn't have been.  She was underweight, flea-bitten, mangy, and had only three legs.  We took care of the first three problems, found no information on why she only had three legs, but she seemed to get along fine without the missing one, and she immediately settled in as the best cat I've ever had.  She was proud, noble, no-nonsense, and very affectionate -- but not too much so!  She was perfect.

Anyway, I decided to name her Matilda for I guess a kind of coarse reason.  There's an old song, most popularly known in Australia, called "Waltzing Maltida."  Well, Mattie had three out of four legs, and waltzes are in 3/4 time, so -- well, you get the rest.  

We noticed about a week ago that she was hiding out a lot.  Then I noticed that she was thin.  Apparently, without my noticing for probably a week or two she had simply stopped eating.  The vet could find no cause, only symptoms, which he was unable to reverse -- and all his attempts at saving her were futile.  She died very quietly yesterday morning at home in her favorite sleeping place.

This is why I keep painting pets who are gone.  I only wish I had done one of her while I had a chance.  There's an empty spot in my heart today; I'm so very sad.

Happy New Year

2013 turned out to be my best year in a very long time professionally, but it left me exhausted!  The very short break after Christmas was a very welcome relief.  What surprised me most is that my ceramic pieces kept a pretty even pace with my paintings and prints -- and even surpassed them near the end of the month.

I'm going to have to figure out a way to make the ceramic artwork be just a little more efficiently done, though, because I'm spending way, way too much time in doing custom work for which I haven't been asking any premium -- they take more than twice as long to do as a piece that I create without custom input from a customer, and they're usually not as much fun to make.  So, as soon as I figure out how to do it, I'll be asking a little more for custom work but will be having a lot more pieces available that I've done for the sheer pleasure of making them.  Plus, there has been a large interest in the little bowls and dishes I've mostly been making and giving away to relatives and friends, so they'll be for sale as well.  So much to figure out!!!

Woe to the poor artist/craftsperson who thinks that they can make a product, a great product, and the world will beat a path to their door to buy it -- at a fair price!!  There is so much "behind-the-scenes" work to make any of the artwork ever be seen by you, the potential buyer.  Sometimes it leaves barely enough time to get my actual artwork done!  And that's working seven days a week.  Yes, being self-employed, getting to be creative every single day, is a very rewarding way to make a living -- but it's a whole lot more work than anyone working for someone else can possibly imagine.  Keeps me young, though!  And fresh!  My ideas come much faster than I can possibly bring them to reality.

My plans for moving/going (can't decide, so I'll take it one step at a time) to La France are still in progress, and I'm just thrilled with how rapidly my ability to speak fluent French is becoming a reality.  Will I ever speak as a native Frenchwoman?  No way.  Think of all the jillions of expressions, memories, shared cultural info, trivia, etc., that are a part of an English-speaking American's vocabulary -- that we've been absorbing since we first started to speak, and that can give you an idea of what one is up against in trying to learn as fluently as possible another language/culture, etc.

My son-in-law is from Denmark; and if you were to hear him speak for a while, you would have no idea that his native language wasn't English -- until he comes to one of our common idiomatic expressions based in probably centuries of history -- then he stumbles and comes out with some statement that doesn't quite mesh with a native speaker's way of speaking.  The only one I can think of now isn't a very good one:  when we state "knock on wood," we all know exactly what it means.  He's got a pretty good idea now, but it's still really odd to him and doesn't "trip off the tongue" as easily for him as it would for a native American English speaker.

Okay, back to work.  Happy New Year again to all, and Peace on Earth to all the world.

Busy, Busy, Busy

It's been crazy busy for me lately -- and I'm happy about it!  I've had a little time to do a few paintings, but mostly I've been busy with the ceramic pieces.  I've even had to stop making them for the rest of this year, in fact.  But they'll be back next year.  The only ones I have in stock now on Etsy are the ones in the "Ceramics Ready to Ship" section.  These aren't "picked-over" pieces but ones from the last couple of batches that I made that I finally got around to listing recently.

I've attached a pic of a recently finished (early December) English bulldog painting I did for a customer -- I took on a couple of custom paintings recently and may do a few next year, too, but only a few custom ones due to other commitments.

Happy Holidays to all.

A Pembroke Welsh Corgi Oil Painting I just Finished

This is an 11x14x3/4" original oil painting I just finished.  It's a Pembroke Welsh Corgi -- or just corgi for most of us.  I feel I've finally gotten the feel of oil paints; and, honestly, I don't think I could ever, ever go back to acrylics now.  I can't begin to describe the sensuousness of moving the oil paintings around on the canvas.  The paints feel almost alive.  It's just the most amazing feeling and experience I've had in art in a very long time.  If you've ever baked your own yeast bread, you know that wonderfully indescribable texture and loft of the perfectly kneaded bread dough.  I know they're two totally different things, oil paints and dough, but I get that same kind sensation with both of them, an aliveness that is exhilarating and awe-inspiring!  Okay, okay, I know I'm getting a bit carried away here, but I'm really enjoying painting with oil paints.  'Nuf said!

Regarding my quest to go to La France, I'm inching forward:  I am signed up for a short course of intense language study in December and am taking a full-length course starting in January.  Yesterday evening, I participated in my first group discussion among mostly Francophones and a couple of Francophiles (me included).  It was a lot of fun; a great group of people.

Finally doing some more Paintings! Jersey Cow

Here she is!  She was standing in a field near Corvallis, OR, along with many other cows, all Jersey milk cows, at a small organic farm.  Like all the other cows I saw that day, she was a sweetheart, very curious about what I was doing out in the field with them.  Both the original and prints are available.  The original is an oil painting on an 11x14x3/4" canvas.

It's good to be back painting again.  I missed it.  And I'm working pretty much only in oils now!  It's been a very slow learning curve, and I have a lot to learn yet, but I'm moving along on it now.

France Travel Update

It's been a while since I've written about moving to France -- not because I'm not doing anything or not thinking about it.  It's what I do constantly.  I read, research, think, read some more, get really anxious, read some more -- well, you get the picture.  I'm having mixed feelings -- for many and varied reasons.  First and foremost, I am afraid.  Yes, it's scary as hell to be thinking about not only moving to France but even going to France -- alone.  Yes, I've been there before, even lived there for a couple of years a couple of decades ago.  But now I'm just past the 65 mark, and I plan to go completely alone, by my own little self.  Can I do it?  I don't know.  The more I read, the more frightened I become.

When I was in undergraduate college back a long time ago, I used to be a very brave (but still frightened) person.  This probably isn't something to brag about, but I'll tell it anyway:  I used to get my student loan every autumn, and off I would go to Europe and travel around (and have the time of my life, even though you can't imagine how scary it was at times) until I ran out of money.  Then I would come back to the US, get a part-time job to pay for school, and go to school and work part-time until I got my next student loan.  I did that every year for at least three years.  Yes, it took me a long to time to get my first bachelor's degree, but I had a lot more fun than all of my peers who went to school the "conventional" way.  And I believe I gained more by having done it the way I did.  And, yes, I think I got a better, albeit non-conventional, education by all my travels, too.

I haven't been writing on here lately because of my fears -- and my uncertainties.  What if I fail?  I feel that I would be letting my very tiny audience here down, my family, especially my little granddaughter who looks up to me so much, down, myself???!! down.  Yes, myself most of all.  And I guess the rest of you don't matter so much, but in a way, you do.  But even if I fail, I feel it's necessary to document my entire experience, succeed or fail.

I think as far as daring to take on new experiences, I have had a great life so far.  I can't let a lot of fear stop me now.  So even though I'm unsure, so very, very afraid, I must force (yes, force, if necessary) myself to go through with it.  I know in my most inner self that I'll never regret doing it.  What I would regret, I am sure, is not doing it.

I will say for now that my plans have somewhat changed (I think):  At this time, I plan to go first of all for three months and figure out where (and if) I want to live, just once again get the feeling of being slightly out of control, with no safety net if I really mess up, but gaining so very much more.  (You would think I'm talking about a trip to the moon and not just to France, wouldn't you?)  Well, everything is relative to something else, and that's where I am.  France, the moon, what's the difference at this point.  I know that's far-fetched, but it's kind of how I feel now.

So I continue to decide where I'll end up in my first foray there, how I'll fill my days!!! without suffering a terrible loneliness (I'm shy and don't strike up acquaintances very easily -- and I'm OLD!  To many of you, anyway, even if I myself don't feel old).  I've been studying my somewhat rusty French non-stop, watching French news every evening, reading only French novels (when I'm not reading about traveling), etc,. etc.

'Til next time . . .

And you thought you were having a bad day! Nothing to do with Anything on My Blog -- But it Really made me Laugh

  Here's the link to the pic:  https://scontent-a-sea.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn2/1383186_10202078148261093_1468319264_n.jpg

I can't stop laughing every time I look at it.  My daughter sent it to me to cheer me up because I was indeed having a bad day -- still getting over a killer cold.

Poor guy, I can just imagine what calamity followed this photo.  Hope he was okay.