Bella! My new rescue dog!

Amaryllis (almost daily) gouache studies

My sister gave me this bulb, and it’s such a pleasure to watch bloom in January when there’s snow on the ground.

More practice by copying a contemporary master

It’s about 25 degrees outside and the ground is sparkling with fresh snow here in KC. I’m not interested in adding vodka to my water to paint outside, so I’m working on a new study today.

Vlad Yeliseyev has caught my attention recently so I decided today I would create a copy of his work. Disclaimer: I paint these simply for practice.

This scene of boats is such a beautiful painting he did. The rust on the surface is so lovely. So off to paint a dry docked boat, or two. I fiddle with these copies to learn as much as I can. Note the yellow circles where there are areas I went back in to change. My first thought was to simplify his painting, leaving out the far boat edge on the left side. I laughed to myself as I went back to add it, wondering why I thought I needed to change anything he did! So, this is my first attempt. As it’s posted I see a load of obvious errors in just the drawing. I will use the excuse I was excited to paint, and sketched fast. Huge mistake. I could paint this scene 100 times and continue to learn from it.

James Gurney has a great blog post on this topic! July, 2014!

Practice with Daniel Marshall video.

I bought the new Daniel Marshall video and dove in to try his method, which is basically borrowed from Joseph Zubucavic. Dan studies with him. The thing I strive to understand is the water to paint ratio: tea, coffee, milk, cream and butter theory. I came to the conclusion yesterday the only way to accomplish this is to use fresh paint right out of the tube. Spraying my pan paints just doesn’t cut it, except for the tea and coffee ratio.

Here are the studies I did yesterday. The charts and street scene are from D.M.. The street scene and barn scene is copying J.Z. It’s all good practice.

Snow!

Our Kansas City Chiefs were in a big playoff game Saturday , as a snow storm rolled through. I don’t remember the last time we had 11” of snow! It is beautiful. But…..at the stroke of 2:00pm as pre-game started…..the power went out! Being an optimist I thought the power would be restored before the game started at 3:30. 3:15 and the house was getting colder by the minute, no power and not so happy Chiefs fans. My husband saved the day. He turned on the gas heat in the Airstream, found the tv Station with the game, and bingo! We were ready for some FOOTBALL. We watched the game in the trailer with all 3 dogs. 5 minutes before the game ended, the power was back on! It was actually fun to spend the afternoon camping in the yard, watching the game! Here are a couple of sketches I did.

 

New Blog, New Dog

Bella and Max are buddies. Woody can take her or leave her. He refused to take part in a photo op!Since December I have been helping create a new on line presence for Urban Sketchers Kansas City. One blog seems to keep me busy, so I expect many of these posts will be created from this blog . http://www.urbansketcherskansascity.wordpress.com

On my birthday, November 28, I offered to foster a dog that was found on the streets in the blizzard, by the Zoo! Within hours I realized it would take a  crowbar to pry her away from me. The little girl was barely 6 pounds, and so boney it would make you cry to touch her frail body. Her toe nail looked like they had never been clipped. She was checked for an ID chip, but didn’t have one. Long story short, no one claimed her at KC Pet Project. My vet called me a Foster Failure, teasing me. I’m sure Derald knew from the moment we held her, she would never leave us. So, this is Bella (Blizzard) Wilson. She is about one year old, and is 6 3/4 pounds now. She was spayed this week, she is chipped and she will never be homeless again.