Dog Planter

Imagine if you will a living dog who is also a planter. Watch him run, the large green leaves on his back flying in the wind, now he is jumping up and down with excitement and the big leaves flop happily up and down as well. All of this because I get gardening magazines in the mail. I wish I new how to do animation but I also do not want to put in the work to learn how to do animation. If you know how, feel free to use my idea, I would love to see this little guy running around! I have a lot of animation ideas because I have a very vivid imagination to the point where sometimes I think of real people as cartoons or well everything is kind of a cartoon to me unless I am being super serious about bills and paperwork or something like that.

A New Book

I discovered the artwork of Stephanie K. Birdsong on Pintrest, and after reading through her entire blog and loving it, I decided I liked the idea of keeping a small book with a to do list and inspiration on one side and a painting on the other side. In one of her posts she said she uses books from the Hand book journal co., so a few days later I went to Hobby Lobby armed with my 40% off coupon to look at them. I liked the look of the square 5.5 book, it seems small enough to carry around and the pages are thick enough to take some paint, it is made for light washes. Though I think my idea and everyone else's idea of a light wash is completely different since my pages always buckle unless I am using real watercolor paper.

On the inside cover of the book I wrote my name, address, and phone number as I always do. I also added a quote I saw on  pinterest "No artist tolerates reality" attributed to Nietzsche. I also clipped a quote out of a magazine that says "If you want to get better, you have to play with people who are better than you". I believe the person was referring to sports but I think it applies in all areas of life.

On the first official page I thought I should state what my goal was with the book. It is supposed to be a quick sketch each day while drinking my coffee instead of mindless scrolling on facebook with a to do list for the day. There have been a few days where the word quick has completely left me and the "sketch" took me half of the day. I am happy with what I have done in this book so far but I really need to loosen up and not be afraid of "ruining" the book. I also bought some double sided tape that comes in a little rolling dispenser from amazon after asking an artist in one of my facebook groups what they are using. I had always used glue sticks but there are certain papers they do not adhere to. So I am very happy with my new tape. I also ordered some worldwide stamps from ebay for $1.99 including shipping that I plan to mix in.

So anyway, here is my first page in my new 5.5 book of a goat in gouache with the picture that inspired it and a to do list.

Mandy is learning her letters so we were naming things that start with the letter "B", so I said bumble bee bus and this popped into my head. Take a ride on the bumble bee bus with us! Painted in gouache in my big sketchbook.

Tommy starring in "The Birds". Our cat Tommy is constatnly dive bombed by barn swallows, all day everyday. He does not seem to care or notice how aggressive these little birdies are and it is kind of amusing to watch. The starlings must be done nesting because they have quit shrieking when they see him. This was done in gouache in my big sketchbook.

So my friend Julie posted pictures of noodles on fb and they looked delicious but I saw the post at 3am when I was up and couldn't sleep. I finally got back to sleep and had an anxiety dream that I was making Mandy a bowl of noodles and there were so many that they wouldn't fit in the bowl and there was no room to add the sauce. When I woke up I decided to draw a bowl of noodles to try to get it out of my system. Noodles noodles everywhere in gouache in my big sketchbook with a little stamp from a catalogue glued on to look like a picture hung on the wall.

I ordered a set of 12 tubes Holbein Artists' Gouache and after doing a test in my sketchbook which we will skip for now, I decided to try them out. This 3.5 X 5 Strathmore Sketch book was at hand so I painted (freehand) a cat from Tommy's medication that was sitting on the counter. I thought it was funny that the cat pictured did not have much of a neck. Then I thought it needed something more so I put the little frame around it then I decided it would look happy with some Frida style flowers on its head so here is my first little painting with my new Holbein gouache.

I painted this when we got back from Indian Lake in my large sketchbook. One of the campsites was right along a canal where a Great Blue Heron like to fish. I saw him catch 2 fish and gulp them down while we were there. This is painted in gouache with my Handmade Modern brushes (great inexpensive brushes from Target) and references from pintrest since I couldn't get a good photo myself.