First week of March Update - Agility Border Collie

The reddish cast is from my maroon sweatshirt I had on when I snapped this. Ocean isn't in the middle of a growth spurt at the moment...so he really isn't half as sleepy as he was a couple of weeks ago. I draw in a catch as catch can method right now. LOL Puppyhood...lots of fun, but not great for productivity.

Blessing in disguise

A couple of weeks ago, my studio printer decided it was too old to deal with card stock paper any more. It would jam and smash up every page I attempted to print on. That's a problem...a big problem since a lot of the items I sell on etsy and ebay are note card sets. Staples and Best Buy both told me the rollers are probably spent and I would be better off buying a new printer than trying to replace the rollers on my printer. It's about 4 or 5 years old now and since I don't have an issue printing on regular paper, it seemed silly to me to replace it. My husband has a new printer that is only about a year old and he's probably used it a handful of times since he got it for his iPad.

Well, I set it up to print wirelessly to my laptop which I was insanely proud of all in itself. And I am so glad I had to switch printers.



This blows away anything I printed card-wise on my old printer! After a couple of pansy cards with a bunch of lines through through them (almost like the print heads were dirty,) I learned that there was a setting just for card stock paper for this new printer. Well, holy smokes. After I switched it over to that...the color quality was to die for. The black and white cards had way more detail too. Man, I am so glad that my printer decided to be bitchy and not work with card stock any more...because I am beyond thrilled with what this new printer can do for my studio! :)

Progress...making progress

And I did make some substantial progress last week! As I start to work the rump of the dog...my facebook fans who were still guessing were able to see what my subject is. :) And a lot of people were able to successfully figure out the breed. Black and white border collie!

I'm still loving how this is turning out. I really enjoy working with drawings with that stark contrast with blacks, grays, and whites. This drawing lets me flex those contrast skills and the level of detail is just enough that I don't get hung up on it. On the Lars' puppy portrait, I'm finding myself getting really hung up sometimes on all of the detail that is on the reference photo. Both drawings are teaching me something on what works better for me on detail and what may not. We're always learning something in our life's work...aren't we. :)

Got the tail done...

Finally, I've gotten back to somewhat of a routine with Ocean here now. I can carve out a couple of good drawing hours in the morning while he's napping. The rest of the day is catch as catch can and evenings are spent with us keeping him occupied or me passing out on the floor from exhaustion. I'm trying to get stuff done on this and I have a feeling as he gets older, it will get easier. :)

Anyway...someone on Facebook guessed what I was working on! They got as far as a dog going over a jump (after many interesting guesses like racoon, cats, and lemurs.) **grin** But, we haven't had a guess on the breed yet and I'll make that the official guessing game now. I'm still really happy how this new drawing is turning out. I'm getting into the "flow" of this drawing when the act of drawing itself becomes easy and I just turn things over to my brain and let it go from there. I don't have to think about what I'm doing...I just do. It's feeling that has been hard for me to explain for people when they've asked me how do I do what I do. As a youngster, I would just tell them "I just draw what I see." I guess that's still a great way from me to tell people how I create these images with paper and pencil...."I just draw what I see." The way that my head works....it really is as simple as that.

Mystery drawing revealed!

So, I got some stuff done. And we're playing a guessing game of what it could be over on Facebook. :) Someone has come up with a tail...and I'll confirm that. Other than that...that's what people have come up with. I'm still staying mum on what it is.


I'm really digging how it is turning out. I thought this was going to be tougher or slower than the hydrangea drawing was...and I am pleasantly proven wrong. I think this one will be done faster than the hydrangeas because it's not totally dense drawing work and because I'm not worrying about how colors will work and what pencils have to be used. Graphite pencils are like wearing an old sweater in the studio. I pick them up and the magic just happens.

On the hydrangea drawing front, I have prints now available! They are on both eBay and Etsy and are reasonably priced which is nice. I'm so happy with the quality of the print and they are the same size as the original drawing. I'll be doing a 750 limited edition print series of these guys.

Hydrangea Prints on Etsy

Hydrangea Prints on Ebay

I have a frame and matting on order for the original which I believe will look great. Once I get the original in it's new frame, I'll have that available for sale and if I happen to hang on to it for a while, I'll get this into some juried art shows too this season. :)

I might be a little slow on posting drawing updates because I'll be really busy soon...with stuff not art related. We're getting a new puppy who is a cousin to my current dog, Lars (who is the puppy drawing in progress I have been working on. He's 4 now.) He'll be here Saturday! So, I may be spending free time with wrangling puppies than with my pencils. Hopefully, I'll get some studio time when both of my monsters are sleeping. :)

Introducing Ocean!!!!

(photo thanks to Pauline Karalia, Lars' and Ocean's breeder)

Moving along...

Well now that the hydrangeas are done...back to my usual theme of horses and dogs. I dug out Lars' portrait and worked on it a bit over last week. It was a light work week so I just got myself refamiliarized with it.



I'm excited to start on my next project which will be canine. Like I said before, I want to balance out the ratio of equine to canine art. After Lars and my new project, I'll go back to horses. Then I'll probably alternate between canine and equine art. I can see myself getting hung up on canine art alone, especially since I'm no longer into horses myself. But, I'll be making sure I keep things balanced. ;)

I have a game plan to work on two pieces at once and keep the productivity from getting stalled. The Lars portrait is destined for my walls even though I'm fully planning to create prints and cards from his image. My plan is to work on him over the weekends when I get time. I honestly don't look at drawing as work...it's escaping for me. ;) I could draw everyday and it would totally work in my life. What I'll be working on during the week will be the projects for shows and for sale. At some point, Lars may become the week work...and most likely when I hit the home stretch for that drawing. But, I think this will keep my drawings moving forward. Recently, someone had asked me if I work on two projects at the same time. I usually don't (as we all saw with the hydrangeas) because it would take me forever to complete both. Where it may take me 2 - 3 months to finish one....it would take me 6 - 7 months to finish two at the same time. This is going to be an experiment and we'll see how this new outlook on how I work does.

We have a title for the hydrangea peice!!

I jumped the gun yesterday with my blog post and I should have just waited until last night. We have a winner from my Facebook Page "Name that drawing!" contest for the hydrangeas.

Congratulations to Debra Totten who came up with the name "Ocean of Petals" and that was the top voted name with 6 votes. Deb will be getting a free pack of note cards featuring the drawing she helped name. :)

I want to thank all of my fans for suggesting great names and then for voting on the name they liked best. That was a lot of fun and we'll do that for all of my artwork from now on.