Summer and Sadie from Animal Place Sanctuary

This is what Animal place wrote about these two:

"Summer (left) is a dairy byproduct, an unwanted male calf. They are sold at auction for between $3-20 and are generally considered worthless by industry.

"Sadie (right) is a former dairy cow. She never knew any of the calves she gave birth to. At the young age of 6-7, she was sent to slaughter but miraculously saved.

Now, she gets the chance to mother two more calves (Nicholas was her first opportunity). She's very gentle with both of them. "

I've placed this painting up for auction on Ebay HERE.

Sam Dolman was kind enough to try and teach me how to add a widget on the side bar for these listings. I'm still trying to figure it out.

Nate from Animal Place Sanctuary

After 7 games of soccer between my two kids over the past two days I'm a little pooped! I feel bad because it was the kids who were playing in 100+ degree weather for most of the games.

I'm trying something new. Animal Place Sanctuary is the midst of a big move to bigger and larger Sanctuary. I would like to try and auction my paintings where all the profit goes to them. I intend to only keep the portion that would enable me to buy replacement materials and reimburse me for the shipping and handling.

What do you think? Any suggestions/comments?

From my fellow expert artist/blogger pals, how do you insert the ebay widget on your page so I don't have to tell my viewers to go HERE to see this on ebay?

Visit Sam Doman's Blog!

I am a HUGE admirer, groupie and fan of Sam Dolman's unique animal paintings. If you look at the enlargements of his paintings [just click on the thumbnails on his blog] you can see each individual stroke of fur/feather/hide lovingly placed on the canvas to render his amazing images.

He's sponsoring a 'Giveaway' of a print right now with a little contest. Check out his work and enter his contest! Just click HERE to get there.

Meatball the cat

This is my contribution to James Parker's Art challenge blog.

He was also featured in a previous painting perched on Malissa's shoulder.

Meatball is our 19 pound cat. He is my son Donovan's cat. It's uncanny. Because cars will park day in an day out in front of my house but when the SUV that brings the kids home parks outside, Meatball immediately goes to the front door to wait for them. This is before you can see them get out of the vehicle.

11x14 oil on gessoboard

If life gives you lemons

you're supposed to make lemonade as the old adage says.

I had grabbed some veggies from a local Asian market and was painting this Bok Choy and watching a documentary called, "Dear Zachery" on my computer. This movie chronicled the movie maker's friendship with his childhood buddy who is killed by his doctor girlfriend. His friend who was also a doctor just learned the girlfriend he was leaving was having his child. After his death, his parents try to win custody of their grandchild and is ultimately let down by the system.

I was weepy already from watching this film when my son calls me from his dad's. His dad and I don't see eye to eye on how to treat/deal with issues and I feel so powerless when my son is upset and I cannot go over and give him a big hug. I called his dad and I fight my natural compulsion to tell him what I really think of him try to make it his idea for an alternative way to deal with the issue.

I watch the rest of the documentary doing the ugly crying because of the tragedy of what these grandparents go through and my guilt of 1. not being able to do more for my kids and 2. feeling bad because it really isn't as bad as what these grandparents have gone through.

So if a painting of a vegetable in the cabbage family can reflect my dismal mood, then I've succeeded.

This is oil on 8x10 gessoboard.

Just for fun

I painted these to take down to a little gift shop in our town. The owner took two of the four paintings I brought to show to her partners.

They are 5x5 and 1.5 inch deep acrylic on canvas.

I have not sold any paintings on ebay [except for a couple of ACEO's that my fellow bloggers so kindly bid on].

I'm going to give it a try.

The Honu listing is here.

The Peace sign listing is here.

There are little 2x2" mini-canvases that I put magnets on the back. What do you think of them? What would you pay for a little painting like this?

Confounding Cupcakes!

I thought this would be fun. I had missed a couple of challenges for Karin Jurick's Different Strokes from Different Folks blog. I thought....o, yummy ...a subject near and dear to my heart, "this should be easy." HA!

I have never spend so much time on a challenge piece! Four separate painting sessions, correcting most of the time and trying to keep from scraping it all off and starting over.

I thought I'd be clever and flip the image so the shadow was on the opposite side and then line them up vertically because the majority of the submissions were horizontal. [also because my fav artists had already painted my previous ideas of close ups and other lay-outs]

I started out with a off white background on a burnt sienna toned canvas. Wasn't happy with it, gave it a yellow wash; REALLY hated it and then gave it a green wash and then finally a bright green layer.

The cupcakes didn't turn out the creamy way I wanted like some of the other challenge artists did. They remind me of the display food Japanese restaurants have in their front window for customers to look at that can look a little dusty after time. Learned a lot though...[patience for one]

24x8 oil on canvas

This is Thizz....

8x10 oil on RayMar board

This is "Thizz" . A memorial piece for a friend's "first baby" as she describes him.

8 Seconds

18x 20 oil on canvas

I have been following Michelle Burnett's Challenge Blog ever since she started in April. It has grown rapidly in just the few months she has started it. I was always a little intimidated because of the caliber of artists submitting their work and the subject matter seemed very complex.

When I checked on Following the Masters this time, the challenge just cried out to me, "DO IT!" with a subject near and dear to my heart. Her blog is also educational and I loved the website she listed on her lesson plan which directed the viewer to the works of Western Artist Maynard Dixon. Seeing his paintings again tipped the scale.

I grew up on Roy Rogers, Dale Evans, the Lone Ranger and every Western [movie and TV] out there. When I was growing up in Japan, I would accompany my dad to the Army Base movie theater and watch every 'spaghetti western' that came in.

Some of the few American TV programs that Japanese TV Stations ran were Rawhide, Bonanza and the Rifleman. I grew up thinking that the Cartwrights were fluent in Japanese.

So thank you Michelle... this little cowgirl had a great time painting this image.

Portrait Quandary

Someone wanted to give a memorial piece for her friend. Her companion Bandit passed away and she had mentioned she always wanted a painting of him. This person asked for a photo of Bandit and the top image is what she got. When asked about any other images, she said the only other photo she had of Bandit was with him under her arm with his head facing the other way.

I immediately noticed Bandit didn't look too happy in the photo. I don't know about you but I wouldn't be too thrilled if my mom brought herself and another family member into your close quarters. I'm not an expert in animal body language but I worked enough with Animal Control officers when I the director for the local shelter to know that ears back isn't a happy dog.

So I asked if I could paint Bandit with ears propped up a bit. Since she has seen Bandit, I had her approve a little sketch to make sure it look okay before I painted it. I sent her the finished image today and she is very happy with the end result.

Anyone else deal with these sort of issues? How would you have dealt with it? Would you have just painted the image as it was?

8x10 oil on gessoboard