A new Cow Painting - a Black Angus steer

16x20" Painting of Black Angus Steer

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We're finally settling into our new home, but it's been (and still is) tough -- and ongoing.  I'll talk about that in another post pretty soon.

This is a painting I did of a black Angus cow that I think is a beautiful creature.  Now that I'm living in the country (five minutes from town!), I have cows as neighbors.  This little guy I just fell in love with.  He's very shy, but I have sat outside his field and visited with him enough that he now will come up fairly close to me to graze.  Up until a few days ago, he was in a field all alone.  Now, there are many other cows there with him, so I think he's not so lonely anymore.

The original acrylic 16x20x3/4" stretched canvas painting (along with prints) is available on Etsy; so if you're interested, drop by for a closer look.

How Time Slips Away!

I had no idea how much time has passed since my last post.  I've only done a couple of paintings since that time, too, and I'll post them later.  At this time, I -- and all my family, including spouse, daughter, her husband, and my little granddaughter -- and of course, all of our various pets, including Winry the horse -- are moving!

We have been looking for a forever place for a long time but didn't expect anything just to pop up!  Isn't that the way life often is?  We've been searching all over the entire country - and Europe, too -- for that perfect place.  It turns out that it (Ellensburg, Washington) was just a few hours north of us, smack in the center of the State of Washington!

We -- well, my daughter -- found a perfect old farmhouse on a few acres of land.  Of course, knowing us, it had to be a bit eccentric, so it also has a gigantic old red brick building with a really interesting history.  About a hundred years ago, it was the center of what was euphemistically called a "poor farm," a place where people really, really down on their luck lived (in apartments inside the building) and worked on the adjoining farmland to "earn their keep."  We're still doing research on the place and will do our best to try to preserve it because it, too, has fallen down on its luck over the past few decades.  I'll eventually post photos of it because it's really quite interesting inside.

Llama!!

Llama in Afternoon Sunlight

I just finished this painting today, and I absolutely love it.  I feel I'm finally getting the hang of warm and cool colors -- in their correct places, of course.  This was such a fun painting to do, and I feel s/he came out quite well!  

The acrylic painting is on an 11x14x3/4" stretched canvas.

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.

Italian Greyhound with Yellow Tennis Ball

This is a little cutie I finished up today.  (I had to take a couple of days off from my grueling landscape work.)  It's an Italian greyhound, I think.  I can't remember exactly as it's from some photos someone submitted to me years ago, and I'm finally getting around to going through some of the photos.

The original acrylic painting is on an 11x14" stretched canvas and will be for sale on Etsy in a day or so.

Several Practice Paintings I've been working on

I'm kind of busy these days not making money but trying to bring my landscape painting skills up to what I consider "good enough to sell."  But I want to keep track of where I've started and where I hope I'll be going, so I'm listing just a few I've done in the past few days.  

Let me say a bit about these little paintings (and they are small, some 8x10, some only around 7 x 8).  I'm painting them within a very strict 15-minute time limit, so I'm really, really having to think before I start, plan what's important, and try to get it down in a fairly believable way that quickly.  I just scanned these little paintings for the sake of saving time in getting them up, and for some reason, they seem just slightly out of focus.  Please, if you have any comments, positive or negative, kindly let me know by commenting.  I would really appreciate any feedback I can get.  My family are the only ones who have seen them so far, and they are a bit blind to my faults!

Bathing bird, 15 minutes about 6x6"

Bull Run River study, about 6 x 8"

Langeland, Denmark, Beach with Vacation House,  8x10" This painting is the only time exception:  I couldn't get enough info in within 15 minutes, so I took 25 on this one.

Bird sitting on Twig, in Sunlight, around 5x6"

A Revisit to a Painting I did a Few Years Ago

Guernsey Cow Painting on Teal/Turquoise Background.

This painting is prettier in person, and I'll try to get better photos of her in a few days from now.  It's a 16x20x3/4" acrylic painting on stretched canvas, no staples on the sides, and is wired and ready to frame or hang as is.

The earlier painting I did was similar to this one, but it was on a smaller sized canvas.  I've had many requests to do a painting again from the same photos I used for the first one, so here it is -- at last.

A Rough-Coated Collie Painting just finished

I just finished this painting a couple of days ago.  It's a beautiful tri-colored rough-coated collie, and the original, an 11x14x3/4" acrylic painting on stretched canvas, is still available.

Also, the original of the cav that I listed yesterday is available, too, and it's the same size as this painting.  Both are in my Etsy shop, along with prints.

Lately, I have been given a fairly large number of photos from a loyal customer, and I plan to paint as many as I can after the holidays.  Many of them are some of the most adorable goats I have ever seen.  I can't wait to get started!  But my family members come first during this holiday season.

We celebrated the fifth birthday yesterday, in fact, of my little precious granddaughter (my only grandchild!), and we did it in as grand a birthday style as we possibly could because, being a close-to-Christmas birthday person, her birthday often gets passed over in all the busy-ness of the holiday season.  Oh, and a happy birthday on the same day to her Aunt Eileen, too!

A new Cavalier King Charles spaniel painting

This is a tricolored cavalier King Charles spaniel painting I finished recently.  I'm quite happy with it -- another painting I've done fairly recently that makes me happy.  Sometimes for me painting is such a struggle, and sometimes, such as lately, it's become a pleasure.  I wish the pleasurable days outnumbered the difficult ones!

I have a problem with a photo thief

Not my typical blog post, obviously, but I feel I need to warn people and to vent a little bit.  From time to time, I search my name on Google; just curiosity, just to see if I'm even a bit relevant in the big wide cyber world -- and I'm usually kind of okay with my level of relevancy.  However, I did such a search a few days ago and was upset at what I found:  Several pages into my "Dottie Dracos" search was a site that said something about Dottie Dracos Art, and I knew it wasn't someplace I had listed any of my work.  So I clicked on the site, and there were what appeared to be listings of my work.  I clicked on one of my photos of MY artwork, and I was taken to some pornographic images and videos.  I am appalled!

I did a little research online; and from what I can learn, there's probably nothing I can do to stop this outright theft -- and embarrassing theft at that!!  I do not support pornography in any sense at all.  I find it reprehensible on so many levels that it would take me weeks to even begin to scratch the surface of my loathing for such despicable exploitation of all that is (or ought to be) decent in this world.

I generally just create my posts of my artwork and move on to my next painting and hope that from time to time, someone will be interested in some of my artwork and buy a painting or a print.  But this time, I'm asking if any of you who read my blog if you know of anything I can do to stop these people (and I realize it's probably nothing I can do); or if I can't stop them, things I can do -- or stop doing -- to prevent their stealing and illegally using my images.  Is it because I post my images on this blog, on Pinterest, on Twitter, sometimes on Facebook?  How about my posting my artwork for sale in such places as Etsy and Fine Art America, where they're supposedly safe?  And I store my artwork in cloud accounts; can it be stolen from those, even though they're supposedly for my eyes and use only??

I know -- because I've tried it -- that one can steal the small files I upload to, say, Etsy, etc., but I thought my large images were safe.  And maybe that's what these people used, were the small images that anyone low enough to want to steal my artwork could easily take.  And I think the photos I saw on this site were this smallish size, by the way, although I didn't do any thorough checking to see.  

So if you have any advice on what I might do, please let me know.  And, please, if you're trying to sell me something to stop the theft/piracy/whatever-it's-called, don't bother writing.

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.

Back in the USA

Well, the excitement, exhaustion, fun, and all the rest are in the past now, and I have only memories of my month's stay in beautiful Paris, France.  I hope, too, my experiences there helped me grow as a person - yes, even at my age!  I feel they did.

I'm back to my beloved painting again now.  Here are a couple of  recently completed pieces:

Holstein cow, original on 16x20x3/4" stretched canvas

Sweet, Innocent Piglet, original on 11x14x3/4" stretched canvas

On another topic:  I've been receiving several requests daily for custom commissioned paintings for holiday gifts.  I have accepted just a few, from repeat clients, but I don't have space on my calendar for more for the rest of this year. 

I have several more paintings in the works now, all farm-based as that's what's been on my mind a lot lately, so I'll be posting those over the next week or so.  

One Final Post from Paris

I wanted to add one more thing before I leave:  I really liked my apartment here and feel the price was reasonable, the apartment very nice, comfortable, and functional (dishwasher, clothes washer, comfy bed(s), etc.), and the neighborhood very convenient.  With the owner's permission, I am posting his email address here so that if you're interested in renting the apartment from him, you can contact him directly.  His name is Alex, and his email address is snowhaze1@hotmail.com.

My Final Post for my Vacation in Paris

This is my final post from Paris, and it's a bitter-sweet one.  I'm looking forward to getting back home and getting back to work, and I'm regretting terribly leaving my little Parisian apartment and this magnificent city.  But there's always next year.  Read my post in my "Paris Vacation" page -- off to the right side of this post.

Another Post dated Oct 1 - an update and a trip to the Louvre - again