New Portrait finished

I am pleased to introduce to you "Lexy and Oakly" a lovable Husky and Border Collie pair from (and now headed back to) Hampton VA! This is an 11x14 Colored Pencil drawing.

In the original photo, the husky wasn't really looking at the camera. The client wanted Lexy (the husky) to be looking more at the camera, so I did "a bit" of editing in my drawing...
This was the original photo:

 But I swapped heads with this picture of Lexy:

That's all for now...

Tracking

A human's nose has 5 to 6 million olfactory receptors. A dog's nose has over 220 million. Why then, do I continually find so unbelievable to watch Abbi follow a track with her nose?

I began teaching Abbi to track late last fall. I've never been too serious about teaching it...as long as she gets to the end of the track approximately the same way I laid it, I'm happy with her. If we were training for a competition, I would train her to track very carefully and precisely, making tight turns and staying right on top of the track at all times, but since we never plan to compete, I don't really worry about her rather sloppy way of tracking. I think of it more as a fun and hopefully useful hobby that we both enjoy immensely. I started teaching her by giving her short tracks of about 10 feet to work...with a piece of food in every single one of my footsteps. then I started lengthening the track, then leaving food out of a footstep every so often, and finally adding turns.  Of course, she learned incredibly fast (as always) and although she isn't weaned off of food completely yet, she is doing fantastic. She's starting to pass me up actually - that is, she's gotten to the point where even if I've forgotten where exactly I've laid the track, I can trust her to follow it. I'll try to get a video of her tracking and upload it on here soon...

What I really need to do is train Jed to track. He actually is much better with his nose than Abbi...He has much more of a natural instinct to track. Haha, I've been thinking if I taught him to track, he could help me find Abbi when she runs off :P

Flowers and a New Camera

Last month, I graduated from High School. Two weeks ago, my parents gave me my graduation present: A Cannon EOS Rebel T2i dSLR camera!! Wowie!!

 For someone who has never owned any sort of camera, (well except for an ancient little film camera that was passed down from one of my older sisters that I had when I was like, six....does that really count? ) a dSLR is just a tad overwhelming! How did I get this lucky?! In just two weeks (which includes the time before I even got a memory card) I've taken over 1000 pictures. Something tells me that I am going to need an external hard drive for my computer if I plan on keeping this up :P

So anyway, I get an awesome camera, take half a ton of pictures, yada, yada, yada....don't you want to see some of them? Don't worry...I won't put all of them up ;) But I did take some pretty flower pictures today that you might enjoy:

(ok, so that one wasn't a flower picture :P )

Meet Simon:

The Beagle/Lab mix who has a very lovable white tip on the end of his tail.

Of course, we couldn't leave that out, so we had to move his tail out from behind his body just a bit :)

This drawing is just a 5x7, so it's been pretty quick work....almost done!

Cute bear and a dog show

Meet Teddy. I made him for my Sister in law's baby, and naturally once he was finished we had to go on a little mini photo shoot...

If anyone is interested in making their own teddy bears I HIGHLY recommend the book "The ABC's of Teddy bear making." This book literally has everything you need to know to get started in bear making, from info on jointing and doing faces to correct stuffing techniques to complete bear patterns. This bear in particular was made from the pattern for "Missy" in the book, but considering it's for a boy, I prefer to not think of him as a Missy :)

On Saturday I got to go to a dog show! Yay! It was so fun to see so many of the people that I know from the dog world, and meet some new ones. This was a local, annual AKC all breed show that also does Rally and Obedience trials. Soo much fun to go to. My only regret is that I didn't enter Jed in the Obedience or Rally...

This little girl was so sweet!

I think Afghans are so pretty :)

I think the dog on the left was the best of breed border collie...but I'm not sure....There were too many gorgeous dogs there!!

Signing out....

Finally!

I can finally show my latest commission! This set was a graduation present, so I couldn't post it until after graduation.

It's actually a friend of mine who was graduating, so I know the sweet Border Collie in the drawing. I got to go to the farm and take my own reference pictures which was quite fun. One of the pictures I took will be included in the set when it is all framed together.

The big drawing in the middle is an 11x14 pencil made by combining 4 photos; one for the closeup, one of the dog herding, one of the sheep, and one of the barn. Here is a close up of the finished drawing (you can click on the picture to make it bigger)

The small one on the left is a 5x7 watercolor of the dog as a puppy.

That's all for now!

Goodbye old, hello new!

"Near this spot are deposited the remains of one who possessed

Beauty without Vanity, Strength without Insolence,

Courage without Ferocity, and all the Virtues of Man, 

Without his vices.

This praise, which would be unmeaning flattery if

inscribed over human ashes, is buta just tribute to the memory of Boatswain, a dog."

Although I never met Pixi, I think her name could easily be exchanged for Boatswain's in this quote. Rescued from a puppy mill, she had been abused, but courageously, she kept on loving. Her legs were deformed, but that didn't stop her from being beautiful. She was special...even though she didn't even live to two years old.

This painting is finally finished, delivered and payed for. To be honest, I'm really glad that it's done, and especially glad that my client is happy with it. This didn't turn out to be exactly the best painting I've ever done. I'm trying  to tell myself; "Practice makes perfect -- the next one will be better" but it is rather frustrating to work on a painting that you just can't seem to "fix." I think part of the reason I didn't do so great on this one was that I took too long. I don't seem to have the "stamina" to stay excited and motivated about a piece for much more than a week, so when I drag the work out and put things off, I get bored and then I can't concentrate. :P For instance, I did this painting

 in just two days last week and I LOVE the result! I think another thing that helped make this one such a success was that it was not commissioned, so I had absolutely no pressure. I was able to keep it light and fun the whole way through, and try new things that might not work out without worrying about messing it up. :-) (this one is for sale btw...email me if interested) So anyway, GOODBYE old commission! In spite of my frustration, you helped me grow, and I did have fun working on you after all. More than that, I was so happy to be able to make a lasting memory of sweet Pixi. 

...And HELLO new commission! I can't post much about this one now because it's a gift, but I will say that I'm very excited about it; it's a commission in my favorite medium and of one of my favorite breeds of dog :-)

That's all for now....