American Coopworth Sheep Painting on Green background

This is an 11x14x3/4" acrylic painting of an American Coopworth sheep that I just finished.  Hope you like it.  It's looser than I usually paint, and for me, that's really a good thing.  I think I built up the form of the animal better by seeing and "feeling" the weight of the wool on its body.  It was a good painting day.


The American Coopworth sheep is a breed that was introduced into the USA in the 1970's from its original country of New Zealand. Its wool is especially valued by hand-spinners.  This sheep's portrait, my first painting of a sheep, was a pleasure to paint, and I gave it as much body and weight as I could manage on a two-dimensional surface. I'm looking forward to painting more sheep in the next few weeks. 

Chocolate Miniature Pinscher

Here's a minpin painting I just finished for a friend.  His name is Kaiser, and he's a chocolate and tan miniature pinscher.  I'm pretty satisfied with it, but the photos I had to work from were not very clear, but they were all that were available as Kaiser has passed on.

I'm now working on a painting of a sheep - yes, a sheep.  I'm still trying from time to time to include some farm animals in my repertoire, and I took a trip to several farms around Tillamook, on the Oregon Coast and climbed down embankments and risked getting shocked by hot fences to get photos of these critters, so by golly, I'm going to do some paintings of them.  It was a fun trip, though.  I had no idea that cows and sheep were so varied in their appearances -- it's a whole new educational direction for me.  I'll post it in a few days.

German shorthaired pointer

This is a German shorthaired pointer painting I finished last week.  It's an acrylic painting on an 11x14x3/4" canvas, staples on the back only, and is ready either to frame or to hang as-is (the sides are painted the same color as the background).

German shorthaired pointers are such beautiful dogs to me.  I find the physical shape of dogs to be interesting and beautiful, and GSP's, like all shorthaired dogs, allow me to focus on the form beneath the hair rather than the hair, which often obscures that form.

The most wonderful dog I have ever had (I still can't look at photos of him after almost six years following his death) was a German shorthaired pointer and most likely some kind of hound.  He was the most intelligent, friendliest, most most most beautiful dog I've ever had the fortune to spend a part of my life with.  His name was Dune, and his adoption was quite unique.  I was at an art show, standing in line to buy a cup of coffee, when I saw this most beautiful ever dog, standing in front of me with a young man.  I had to comment on his beauty to the young man, and I jokingly said that if he ever didn't want to keep him (and who wouldn't want to keep such a beautiful dog!!!), that I would take him in a second.  The man thanked me, and we both went our separate ways.

Later in the day, I was still at the show, and the young man approached me with tears in his eyes and asked me if I was serious about my comment in the coffee line.  I was shocked, but I said of course I was.  He explained that he was a college student, living in a small apartment, and that Dune (that's the name he had given him) was a bit more than he could handle in his present situation.  Anyway, you can guess the rest of the story.

Dune and I took a bit of time to bond because he really missed the young man, who contacted me to see how he was doing but thought it best that he not see him again (I agreed with that).  But eventually, we became inseparable.  He even traveled with me when I had to go away on business.  He was a perfect gentleman in the city and a lovable clown in the country, where I lived at the time.  He was admired by all who saw him; and on more than one occasion, but many perfect strangers offered to buy him from me for huge sums of money!

I lost him most awfully.  A few years ago, he and I had traveled together to visit my mother, who unbeknownst to me, had late-stage lung cancer and didn't want me to know until I was with her.  On my arrival, I immediately took over her full-time care, actually living in the hospital with her for her last month and a half of life.  My brother kept my precious Dune in a pen in his yard as he worked full-time and was visiting our mother the rest of the time.

I went to see Dune as often as I could, and it broke my heart to see him because he was so depressed at not being with me for the first time ever.  Well, I lost my mother; and during the funeral arrangements for her, my precious Dune died (from what I don't know) - without me, feeling I'm sure completely abandoned, lost, and all alone.  I've never gotten over it, to have lost them both within such a short period of time.  Well, to this day, my sadness is unspeakable, and this is the first time I've ever written about what happened.  He was ten years old, in excellent health when this nightmare started.  Rest in peace, Mother and Dune.

Getting Back in Stride

Unlike I'm sure many artists, I need to paint every single day to be able to keep my confidence and abilities up to par.  From around the end of October until now, I have not been able to be in my studio enough - and my confidence level has plummeted.   I love my career more than anything else I've ever done -- or ever will do -- in my life.  I live to paint and to learn all I can about painting.  

But as much as I love to paint, there's one thing that overrides even it, and that is my family  - including extended family and even some friends -- and of course my four-legged family members, too.  So that's why I was away from painting these past couple of months.  But now it's time for me to get back to it.  

I started about a week and a half ago with a rooster painting, a bit stylized compared to my usual style, but it was enjoyable, and if felt good to have the brushes wet again.  I've finished it, and now I'm painting a German shorthaired pointer portrait.  I'm fairly happy with the painting so far, but I'm having a bit of trouble with getting just the right color.  Unfortunately, I read the AKC requirements for a GSP's color, which they descibe as pure "liver," not red, not orange, not tan, but "liver."  Well, I'm really struggling to be sure it's exactly the right color in my painting, but with a bit of time I'm sure I'll get it right.

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.

My Bread Recipe

Several friends and family have asked me for my bread recipe, so here it is.  It is adapted from several recipes I have collected over the years.  It's quite simple and difficult to mess up, I promise you.

I am giving you the measurements for two loaves (each around 1.2 pound) and measurements for a single loaf in parentheses.  For economy's sake (and because I most always share the second loaf with someone else, I usually make 2 loaves at a time).  All of the measurements can be approximate, and you'll learn to adjust them to your taste as you continue to make the bread.

3 cups room-temp water (around 70 deg F) (1 1/2 cup)
1 1/2 tbsp yeast  (3/4 tbsp) (I use Red Star Active Dry Yeast because I buy it in bulk at Costco.  Fleischmann's is fine, too)
1 1/2 tbsp salt (3/4 tbsp)
6 1/2 cups flour (3 1/4)
Extra flour as needed such as for kneading and handling

Put water in a large bowl or pot, add yeast and salt, stir to mix.  Add flour and, using a large long-handled spoon, stir until completely moistened (adjust with either water or more flour to get right consistency of a thick doughy mix -- not wet but no dry clumps, either).

NOTE:  If you want to add something to your bread, now is the time to stir it in.  I've added kalamata olive bits to one, garlic and an herb to another, and caraway seeds (one of my favorites ever!) to another.  Let me know if you come up with something really interesting and good, okay?

Cover and let rise for an hour or two (check to see when it has approximately doubled or a little more in volume).  Note:  Here I usually cheat a bit and turn on my oven for literally seconds (around 20), just to raise the temperature a bit higher than my room temp and leave the covered pot in the oven to allow it to rise just a bit faster.  Do NOT make the oven more than a bit warmer than room temp or you'll kill the yeast!

If you're in a hurry, skip down to the "kneading" section below.  If you want a more complex tasting bread, which I do!!, do this next:  After your dough has risen to about double, with your big spoon, smash and stir it down again.  That is, destroy all that nicely risen dough you just created.

Let it rise again.  You'll notice that this time it rises much more quickly, so be careful and check it after around an hour or you'll have what looks like a science experiment gone awry.  (But you can use it anyway; you'll just have to scoop it up off the sides of the pot.)

Kneading:  If you've never kneaded, I'll give a brief description.  And this kneading is very minimal, by the way, and not at all intimidating.  To start to knead, put a bit of flour on your work surface, dump the dough onto it (use a spatula to scrape it out, as it sticks to the sides of the pot pretty firmly.)  You'll notice that the dough at this point has a weird open "lacy" or "stringy" quality to it - that's normal.

Okay, here we go:  Lightly dust your hands with flour (keep a cup beside you to dust your fingers or to sprinkle on your work surface), and grab the dough on the side farthest away from you, and fold it over onto itself, toward you.  Gently press into the pile, pushing away from you, with the heels of your hands.  Turn the dough a quarter turn, and repeat the folding, pushing away, and turning, about five to eight times.  The dough should feel nice and elastic (almost alive-feeling).

Next, if you're making two loaves, cut the lump of dough in half and lightly flour the cut sides.  Then pick up each batch of dough and shape it into either a long loaf shape or a round one, depending on what kind of pan you'll be using (I'll discuss that below).   As you shape each piece, gently handle it, and turn the outside edges downward and inward -- so that all the ugly creases and lumps are on the bottom.  Lightly dust the top of each with a bit of flour, and cover with a  kitchen towel.

Next preheat your oven to 450 deg F and -- very important -- place your pan(s) into the oven to allow them to get hot.  If you want artsy-looking loaves, use something like a thick cookie sheet to cook them on.  If you want more utilitarianly shaped bread, use large bread pans.

When the oven is to 450 deg, carefully remove a pan, one at a time.  (at this point, I give mine a quick spritz with some Pam, but it's not absolutely necessary.)  Set the pan near the dough, lift one dough and dump it into the pan, with the bottom side up, and put the pan immediately back into the oven.  Do the same with the second loaf.

Set a timer for around 15 to 20 minutes.  Then when the timer goes off, turn the temp down to around 435 and cook another 10 to 15 minutes -- check for doneness by a nice brown color.  Remove from the oven, flip loaves out onto a cooling rack (or onto a counter if you don't have one), let them go upside down or sideways.  Rap the bottom of each with your hand and listen for a kind of hollow sound - this indicates thorough doneness.  That's it!  Let it cool until you can cut it (if you can wait that long!!), slather it with butter, and enjoy the first piece -- which is always the best!

Obviously, I wrote this recipe for someone who does not have a lot of  bread-making experience, so sorry if there's too much detail in it for you.  But for those of you who need it, hope this helps.  If you have any questions -- or want to share your bread-making experiences, please write.

Long Story - We're all back in the USA now

This is a bit of a sad post, and I won't say much because it's very upsetting to my family and to me.  We are all back in the USA to live now.  Something went very, very wrong in Denmark regarding other family members there, and we found it necessary to leave.  It was our only choice. 

I won't be saying anything more about Denmark after this post.  It was a beautiful place, we all loved it very much, the people on the island where we lived were wonderful and we miss them.  We were all very, very sad to leave, but we're happy to be back in the USA now, too.

In the future, I'll get back to the original - and more apt - object of this blog, and that is to talk about art and painting and animals, and the beautifully agonizing attempts to capture what I see before me onto a canvas. 

I've not been painting much lately, so I have a lot of catching up to do.  My next project is going to be a chocolate-colored minpin painting for a very special person we met at the airport in Seattle, who went way, way above the duties of his job to help out my daughter and her family as they arrived in the USA with many of their and our pets and as much as they could carry with them.  I'll post the painting just as soon as it's finished.

I've Been Busy - Here's one very recent painting, a Liver-Colored Border Collie

This is a recently completed painting I have done.  It's a liver or red border collie, and it's acrylic painted on an 8x10" mdf wood panel, one of my favorite painting surfaces.  It will need to be framed, but glass isn't necessary.  It's for sale on my website, $60 plus shipping.  Here's the link to the page it's on.  http://wildwildthings.com/pages/originalsgallerydogad.html.  Just scroll down a bit and you'll see it, along with a few other recently finished paintings.

Back in the USA

(Sorry, I don't know why the following is underlined, and I can't change it.)  I'm back in the USA for a while (really, really missing my family in Denmark, though).  While I'm here, I'm trying to catch up on a lot of loose ends, one of which is I have a large number of people who have been requesting new or replacement dog, cat, fish, and other animal ceramic masks.  So I have opened up the studio again and have made my first kilnload, which I have listed on Etsy.  This time, though things are going to be a bit different:  To make inventory control easier for me, this time each mask has its own unique identifying number, and thus each one is one of a kind.  There will be one exception to that format, though, and that is if someone has contacted me about a broken piece that they want to replace, I will do my best to copy the piece as closely as I possibly can -- if you have photos of it.  If not, you can describe it to me as best you can, and I'll try to come up with a close approximation for you.  

Anyway, if you're interested in a new or replacement ceramic mask, be sure either to check out the various places I'll be showing them (each place will have different items - sorry about that, but it's the only way I can think to do it without things getting really confusing.  So the first kilnload, as I said, is on Etsy, and here's the link for those:  http://www.etsy.com/shop/wildwildthings?section_id=10397779.  The second kilnload will be on my website, http://www.dottiedracos.com.  And the third kilnload will be at my Artfire shop, http://www.artfire.com/ext/shop/studio/LarkStudios.  Once I've done all three venues, I'll start over in the same order with the next kilnloads.  Each kilnload is around 15 pieces, and each kilnload takes about two to three weeks to complete.  

Here are a few examples of some of the pieces currently on Etsy.  

Papillon and Dachshund little paintings finally finished

This is the long-overdue painting I did of a tri-colored papillon.  I don't know why I had so much trouble with this little one, but at least I finally finished it.  It's an 8x10" acrylic painting on heavy paper, so it'll need to be framed and probably matted.  I'll have it for sale on my website, http://www.dottiedracos.com. 

I'm making final preparations for my trip back to the USA, which is really hard to do because I want to be able to work from both locations since I intend to live part-time in each place at least for the time being.  It's turned out to be a bit more difficult than I had anticipated to ship items from Denmark to the USA, and I've even been losing all profit - and even going into the hole - from many of the prints I've been shipping from here.  I'll figure it all out, though.  And my ceramic pieces that I'll be making in the US, they absolutely have to be shipped from the US for American customers because of their weight and the cost of shipping internationally.  What I've arranged there is to complete the pieces while I'm there and then leave them with a family member to ship as they are ordered.  So there will be a rather limited supply of them.

Weimaraner in Red Pickup Truck - Oops, I forgot to post this painting!

This is a painting I finished last week and forgot to post!  It's a weimaraner belonging to a friend/customer of mine, who loves her weimer!  I did a commissioned painting for her of this same dog, the one where she's lying down, with one paw out front, looking wistfully at the viewer.  It's not too far back in my posts if you haven't seen it.

Anyway, this was a lot of fun because of the red truck and the glass and the reflections.  I hadn't had any experience with such things, so I learned a lot from it.  Hope you like it.  Unlike most of my paintings, it's in acrylics as usual, but it's on a heavy watercolor paper, which I wasn't crazy about painting on, to be honest about it.  First of all, it ate my poor hand up; it's really scratchy, which surprised me.  Also, not being a watercolorist, I didn't realize how much watercolor paper soaks up any moisture.  I like rich, saturated color, so I really had to lay the paint on - over and over and over!  I'm finally happy with it, though.  But I won't use watercolor paper again with anything but watercolors, if I should ever decide to give them a try.

French Bulldog Puppy with Toy

I've been away from painting for a while as you know, and I still don't have my supplies, so this little guy is on watercolor paper, which for me, with my acrylic paints, has been quite a challenge.  But I think it turned out pretty well under the circumstances.  The photo was submitted by a "fan" of mine, and for her submission, she's getting a free full-sized png file to print in whatever size she chooses.  That's my deal:  submit photos of a preferred pure-breed dog or cute cat or other animal that I might be interested in painting, and if I create a painting from the photo, you get a free print of it. 

I've made this offer directly to some people in the past who wanted a commissioned painting done (which again, I'm taking a hopefully permanent break from doing), and I think I offended them by making the offer.  But those of you who just want a free print of a painting of your dog, you're more than welcome to submit photos to me.  I must make the usual statement, though, that I continue to hold all copyrights to the painting, including the right to reproduce and sell prints of it.  Also, in most cases, the original painting will be for sale, too, with you, the person who submitted the photo(s), getting a 10% discount on the price of the original painting.  If you're interested, just email me, dottie@dottiedracos.com, and I can give you more details. 

I'm currently working on a painting of a weimaraner in an older red truck.  I expect I'll be able to finish it and upload it by early next week.  So far, I'm rather pleased with it, but again, it's on watecolor paper, so it's a more difficult surface for me to work with. 

My shipment, I found out yesterday, is on its way!!!   Finally!  It should arrive in Denmark, at least, on around August 4.  I am so excited to get all my "stuff."  Was it worth the price of shipment?  Most probably not, but it's my "stuff," and I've already paid for it, so I'm really looking forward to getting it.

The Most Recent Commissioned Painting which I did before Leaving USA

This is a painting I finished right before I was leaving for Denmark.  These are Tasie and Tierre, relaxing on the grass.  One is an American Eskimo, and the other is a Rottweiler, both females. 

It was a pleasure to paint them, and I am so glad to report that the mom of these two was very happy with her two pups' portrait.

I have one more commissioned painting I will be doing, of two adorable terriers.  Unfortunately, I still have to wait for my shipment from the US to get to all my paints, brushes, and canvas to be able to get to work on them.  I started their painting before I left for Denmark, but I just wasn't happy with the way it was going.  So, with the mom's permission, I asked for time to re-start the entire painting from a different point of view.  That situation rarely happens with me; but when it does, I cannot be happy with what I think would have been a less-than-ideal painting, so I completely start anew!  I'll share the results just as soon as I get the painting done.

Another Day in Denmark

Here's the entrance to our farm.  The house is on the right, and some of the barns are on the left.  I'm standing at the end of a short tree-lined drive that is the entrance to the courtyard.  The barn closest to me, on the left, is the one that borders the small road that curves past the front and western border of our place.  I'll post more photos here later, or you can see even more photos at my facebook page.  The two little dogs you can see in the photo are Sammy, on the right, our little black Cavalier King Charles spaniel, and on the left, my little sweetie, a pom-peke mix, I think, (who cares), named Harry Barker.  We have another dog, too, Casey, a rat terrier mix, who is out of view.  We also have three cats, a couple of whom are in the photo, I think.  Their names are Maxine, Kayla, and Matilda.

Several people have asked me to talk about how we have gone about getting to Denmark and about any tips I might be able to give.  I really don't feel qualified to do so, but I'll give it a try, anyway.  First, you'll see that one of the reasons I am not qualified is that we ended up in Denmark not because we just chose it and wanted to move here but because my son-in-law, Mark, is from Odense, Denmark.  And it was his parents and brother who actually found this wonderful farm for us.  Up until about a month ago, we still just wanted to move here but hadn't been able to find a perfect place to live.  So not only Mark's family but their friends as well have been searching for a place for us to get.  Just by coincidence, too, Mark's brother, Henrik, heard about this place through a friend just days after it had been placed on the market.  We now live just minutes away from Henrik and his family, who live just an easily bicyclable few kilometers north of us on the same island of Langeland.  Mark's parents live a little over an hour away from us in Odense, and we see them often.

So as you can see, a lot of the work was already done for us before we even got here.  But regarding the actual move, I can definitely give you a few pointers there, mostly what not to do.  First, as we had very short notice about when we were to move (about three weeks), we had to act very quickly.  Because we were going to bring all six pets with us, we had to get them flown out of the State of Florida because the summer heat got too hot in case they got left out somewhere after we relinquished them to the airlines.  Well, actually, it was just the dogs we had to worry about because we carried the three cats onboard with us.

Regarding the pets, first, it was very expensive to start off with.  They all had to go to the vet to get microchipped (except Maxine the cat, who was already a world traveler), get health-checked, and certified as being so.  The vet cost for all six was over $800.  Then we had to download forms from the USDA that were required for each pet in order for them to be flown internationally, take those in to the USDA, then back to the vets for their signatures; that all cost a few hundred more dollars.  And everything we did was time-dependant, too, so we had to keep a close watch on the number of days before our flights. 

We also had to buy flight-safe crates for each dog and airline-approved carriers for each cat.  That was a couple more hundred dollars.

Then we had to buy the tickets for the dogs to fly in cargo (very expensive, a couple of hundred for each dog as I recall - I'll verify that cost later on), and tickets for the cats to fly onboard, around $150 each, I think.

Finally, as only two animals are allowed onboard in the cabin on any one flight, we had to take separate flights, with my going first, taking all three dogs in cargo and one cat under the seat.  So I arrived in Denmark first and had to retrieve the dogs from cargo.  That was probably the hardest part of this whole ordeal because I was really, really tired, and we had to wait around three hours to be able to get the dogs.  Plus, there were more fees at the airport to get the dogs into the country, a couple hundred more dollars, I think it was.  I had help with this stage because Mark's parents were there to pick me and all the animals up and take us to the farm.

So what I learned from this part of the trip:  I think of our pets as family members, so we had no choice but to take them, even though it was difficult and very, very expensive.  I will say this:  All the animals, while probably horrified and miserable through the entire nearly 24-hour ordeal, forgot about it immediately and are none-the-worse for the ordeal.  But one little bit of advice I can give you regards the cats in their carriers.  First, don't feed or water them for many hours before the flight.  Secondly, don't trust the little pads in the bottom of the carriers to manage any "accidents."  The first time Kayla "pottied," there was nothing to catch the urine but the little useless pad in the floor of the carrier.  So I took her and carrier into the airline toilet, ripped up tons of paper towels, and lined the bottom of the carrier very liberally with them.  The next time, then, I was prepared.  After she finished, I simply put a barf-bag over my hand, grabbed all the messed-up towels, pulled the bag back over my hand, with the soiled towels then inside it, tied it off, and threw it away.  Very simple solution. 

Okay, that's the first part of my detailed description of our trip.  I'll try to cover other matters later and add more pics as well.  If you have any specific questions, just drop me a note and I'll do my best to try to answer them.

Oh, also, I am still painting, but I still don't have any of my supplies other than just a few paints and brushes I threw into my luggage at the last minute.  That's another story, by the way, shipping!  So for those of you who read my blog to hear about my paintings, hang in there and I'll get back to them just as soon as I get back up and running.

Another Off-Topic "Book Review"

I'm on a literary roll.  Before I read "War and Peace," I read "Anna Karenina," also by Tolstoy.  It, too, is a great book.  It's a dark book for the most part but talks a lot, too, about the life of both gentry and peasant Russian people in the 1800's.  In addition to a great, but tragic for some characters, story line, it discusses the class system in effect in the 1800's, how the lives of the various classes differed, how farms were managed, and generally about life and the different ways people choose to live it. 

Again, as with War and Peace, I highly recommend this book.  Don't let the length of these books stop you; I promise you that you will want them to be even longer than they are once you are reading them.

Another great, great (but oh-so-depressing) author I can recommend very, very highly is Emile Zola, an amazing French author who wrote mostly of the lives of ordinary - or even "sub-ordinary" - people in the late 1800's.  Every single book I've read by him - and I've read many, many - has been great.  But I might add that my family would always ask me when I was down if I was reading yet another Zola book.  Some of my favorites have been:  L'Assomoir, L'Oeuvre, Germinal, Nana, La Bete Humaine, just to name a few.  Although I read them in French, I'm sure there are English translations easily available. 

Okay, that's it for now!  I'm currently reading (or sometimes re-reading) a whole stack of Charles Dickens novels.  The first in this list is "Bleak House."  I'll give reports later.  Comments?