Happy New Year! Dog Paintings Galore...

How fun it is to start the new year, and subsequently start the numbering system for my painting inventories all over again! I've begun the new year with a bang, completing two paintings already, and getting the slides for them for one of the specialty art shows of the year. This one is slated for the Art Show at the Dog Show.


This is an 18 x 18 inche gallery wrap (1.5 inches deep) canvas, on which I'm painting almost life size, the two puppies Onslow and Sparky asleep. The source image for this is in my blog from a couple days ago. You can see it here. (Opens a new window.)

I love the circular design of the image, and have worked to keep those circles and inter-twining arcs going in the painting. Reminds me of a Raphael painting from the Renaissance, since he was known for his circular designs. Here is his "Madonna of the Chair" for your pleasure. Look at all the circles and arcs in his design!
One of my New Year's Resolutions for you is to link what I do in the studio to the history of art, so you can understand that as artists, we are so connected to what has gone before.

One of my resolutions also is to make paintings with CONTENT, or soul, so that I am not just creating a technical exercise with the pigments, but giving more of myself, the story, and the design more emphasis. This looking-down view of the puppies is my first endeavor.


In doing this painting, I am using oils, and made a quick drawing with burnt umber and ultramarine blue (which I forgot to photograph!) and then laid in the washes of Australian Red Gold (Artist's Spectrum) and a new experimental color for me, Green Umber (Lukas Pigments). The combination of warms is really exciting for me, and I can hardly wait to see what will develop. They are both warm in the spectral reflectance arena, so would go in the warm box. But these are "oddballs" so, they'll only visit once in a while!

I've been working on the February Workshop (full) and now am opening the March one to outside artists--there are only five slots left in this workshop here in my studio. Contact me if you are interested in this three-day "Mini-Color Boot Camp"

And I'm opening the May workshops in Georgia in the coming days (been a bit late on this one!) so the five-day Color Boot Camp and the returnees' Boot Camp will be taking registrations by this weekend. You know who you are!!! (They dubbed themselves "repeat offenders!!")

I'll post a direct link in the days to come.

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