"The Girls"

Dear Friends,

At long last I return to the blog with little excuse for having been away so long. I do note that the last post I made, which was in May, was the same time we acquired our new puppy and the rigors of raising a little baby pup--only 7 weeks old when we got her--have been distracting. She's a cutey though, and shows signs of being a great agility dog.

This portrait of three Labrador Retrievers has kept me busy too. I've spent most of the summer working on it one way or another. It took a while to arrange to have all three dogs together at the same time, as they live in different parts of the state, and we ended up bringing them all to my house so I could photo them together. That made it much easier for me rather than trying to match lighting and coloring from different photos taken at different times and in different places. Then I admit to a great deal of waffling on the background for the dogs. I don't think I spent more than a few weeks on the dogs themselves, but the background drove me nuts. I tried foliage. I tried a lot of foliage. I tried black, and orange, and green and ---you get the picture. It involved a lot of fooling around.

The issue was not helped when the mother dog--the one with all the gray on her face--passed away suddenly and left an owner in mourning and me feeling the pressure to put my best foot forward. Fortunately the owner and everyone else who has seen the painting and knew the dog are in agreement that I managed to capture the physical appearance and spirit of this beloved pet.

So now I am on to the next great thing. Watercolor. I have joined a class with a great friend of mine and am relearning technique after a ten year hiatus from the medium. It's been a great deal of fun and I'll be showing you some of the work as soon as I can. I promise! Soon!

Jay