Faithful Reader,

Here is one of the sculptures I've done over the past year or so. This is one of the reasons you haven't heard from me. This African elephant was done from a series of photos taken by a friend of mine who was lucky enough to travel to Africa a few years ago and go on a photo safari. He was kind enough to let me use some of his wonderful work as model for this young African.

The piece is about a foot tall and about the same in length. It is made of fired clay and then painted to get the golden color I like on it. The tail, which I'll show in a later blog is made of wire covered with material and then also painted. This waterbased clay fires hard as a rock and is very durable. Will it break? Yes, if you smash it hard enough, but not under normal treatment for sculpture.

To answer a common question, yes the tusks are also fired clay.

I had a ball doing this piece and it sits in my home right now. But it is for sale at $350. You pay shipping. If you have questions, please feel free to ask. I have lots of pictures of this one.

The Window in the Chisos

Hi Everyone,

I am trying to get more paintings on the blog as soon as I can. I still have to create a file of just the paintings, which are numerous, but in the meantime I thought I would add this piece from a trip to Big Bend two years ago. Again this was done plein air, which means out in the open, on location. Two of my art friends, Peggy Thompson and Irena Taylor, and I went out to the national park for a few days of intense painting. We stayed in the Basin at the Lodge, an incredibly beautiful place, and did day trips around the park to paint. It certainly was not hard to find painting locales. Everywhere one turned was a different gasp-worthy view.

My next post, hopefully, will have some of the animal paintings I have done. Dogs, cats and horses. Did you know that I have two covers on the Chronicle of the Horse magazine? Hmm. It's been a while. I should submit something new one of these days.

Happy painting!

Jay