Sep 27 - Working over an old one - Goat Kid

Working over an old painting can be very rewarding--if you know what you're doing! Remember while back I had a bonfire of a LOT of old paintings? Well, this one of the goat kid (upper image) was salvaged from that bonfire. It was going to be a gift for a friend of mine, but somehow looking at it ready to be packed up just bothered me... Here I was going to fry this turkey (ok, goatie) in the flames, and yet it was good enough to "gift" to my friend? No.
So I put it on the easel tonight, and worked it over. I knew that I wanted the colors to be more harmonious, and I wanted to see better relationships between the sunlight areas and the shadows. Now it is at the first stage, having covered up many of the garish colors that represented early endeavors with the Color System. Although not finished at this stage, I can see where its going and am more pleased with its evolution.

Tomorrow I will continue it and hopefully end up with a painting worthy of leaving my studio. But my friend will have to wait a while longer until it is dry enough to ship! It's a 12 x 12 oil.

On other news, the HEAT is ON. Record-breaking heat for September has been registered for yesterday and today, and is expected to continue tomorrow and through the week. Whew. Everybody but the goats are hunkering down in the basement studio where the inside temperature went up to 87 while the outdoor thermometer read 111 degrees at 5:30 pm. At almost nine p.m. it is still 95 out there. Talk about HOT DOGS!?!
Here's Niko (GROWING) and Willow comatose on the cool studio floor. She's six months old today. What a monster.

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Jul 20 - Colorful Study of a Goat Kid

Ah, the heat is cooking my brain, so I hide out in the cool studio (daylight basement, stays in the 80s when the outside temp is over 105!) and do work here. There are four dogs here, too, and everyone else who cannot come in (goats, horse, chickens) have plenty of shade and water.

Today's job was to organize and sort some of the thousands of photographs I have taken over the years. But (no surprise--ha!), I got distracted! This image of one of the many goat kids I've had and it just asked to be painted. So I brought out a 12 x 12 box canvas (with 1.5 inch depth) and did this colorful study of the shadow sides on this little fellow.

These colors are stated more strongly than some of my other paintings, because it was/is my intent to make the coloration easy to understand. It's a great morning light lesson painting to learn how to mix those shadow areas on a white animal. It's an oil, and painted around the edges, so no frame is needed. Available to a new or returning collector for $295. Got goats?

Congratulations to new collector John Wickham of Los Angeles, California on his purchase of "Sycamore Leaf" from my collection.

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