It was a good, busy weekend. We went to Eric Barbuscia's gig at the Gryphon. His main squeeze Karen, was there. Great show. John Galla opened for him, which was also very enjoyable. We all went to Christopher's after and that's always fun, especially if my boy Dan Kane is there. I love that kid! Yesterday Jay and I both worked outside since it was a gorgeous day. Then we went to pick up feed at the Fiorella's. I love going to their farm. So much room. They are growing our organic, Thanksgiving turkeys for us. I saw them a couple of months ago when they were babies, now they're already enormous and they still have a few more weeks to go. Last night we went to Eric and Sharon's for dinner and had some comfort food, it started with a great dip, but Eric had soaked some pineapple cubes in vodka which was a great warm up. Dinner started with a nice spinach salad with Eric's pickled eggs in it, followed by rolled meat loaf, stuffed with prosciutto, provolone and arugala, then some mac n' cheese with broccoli. The dessert was Sharon's famous flourless chocolate cake, just wonderful. A really good time. Today was another terrific day to be outside. Danny made dinner and wow, was it good. He made angel hair and clams. I have to say that I haven't had any that good in years. Just perfectly done. I think I need to go up and get some more, not before I tell you about Finn's color study. I'm waiting on more instruction for the background, but it's pretty much finished. I have added some other touches to it since I took this photo, so maybe I'll show you that tomorrow night, but maybe not. Again, this is just a pastel study, so his fur looks a little more wiry than the oil painting will describe it.

Jonah was allowed to take a book to school the other day. He asked if he could take "The Restaurant Guide to Baltimore". He's 7 years old, maybe he's spending too much time here? Nah. When we were getting ready to leave there last Sunday, he wanted to come home with me , but Jeanie said no. So he turned to me and asked since I was her mom, could I please force her to let him go home with me. Just two more reasons why I think Jonah should come and live with us. Honestly, I am just so sick of all of this rain. It's just too much. Tonight's portrait of Finn is the third sketch. His owner asked if we could do the vertical portrait, the head shot, with "his tree" in with him, so I tried this composition, which I think was hard to imagine. I'm really tired and getting cranky, so I'm going to bed and read "The Woman in White", not my favorite. Have a great weekend.

The next sketch of Finn is of him sitting next to his favorite tree, surveying all that he owns. If you met this dog, you'd know that he is king.

I'm working on a pet portrait of an adorable guy named "Finn". I'm painting him from photos. This is pretty much my process when painting any type of portrait, so you can watch me as I go. I started with a very rough pencil sketch of Finn, to place his pose, features and expression, as well as getting a general value study. I hope you're enjoying this wonderful weather. Jeanie's starting to feel better. Whew!

We went to Jeanie's on Sunday for Derek's birthday. I made Lasagna for the first time in years. It coincided with probably the worst stretch of memory impairment I've experienced since it all started about two years ago. It was the worst lasagna I've ever made, let's face it, it's pretty hard to mess up, but when you forget to add the layers that are right there in front of you, that's when it becomes awful. I was able to make it just OK. Gabriel, one of my biggest fans thought it was terrific. I love that kid. So we brought Isabella home with us and joy has reigned here for two days. Now she's having her piano lesson with Pop-Pop and she wants everyone to know that she played the piano all by herself and sang too. We worked outside, went to the toy store as promised, had dinner with Aunt Celeste and after dinner we sketched and painted. Jeanie called me today to let me know she has the flu. So that means that Isabella gets to stay. Tonight's painting is of a coral-colored dahlia from Mrs. Gammalinda. I painted it on the day Senor died. "For Senor", 6"x6", oil on gessobord, $75. framed.

I'm still not really satisfied with the quality or color of this egg demo photo, but here it is. So to sum up: my goal was to model an egg, by using value. Color wasn't really important to me, but since I was painting a Marans egg, which is pretty dark brown, I used browns. I started with the dark background at home and took the small panel to church to paint the egg from life. I painted the egg shape with the darkest darks and the slight reflection on the bottom of the egg, along with the shadow, then I started layering lighter values with the four highlights. It was at this point that I took the painting home. During the demo and at home the painting fell a few times and the paint got damaged. Now at home, I decided to change the composition to a more diagonal one, by changing the light source and shadow. I started the repair, changed the shadow, which meant I mentally changed the light source. The florescent light just wouldn't do. I no longer painted the egg from life at home, just from memory of paintings from the past. The next day I finished repairing the back ground, reshaped the egg slightly and started losing the back edge of the egg. I lightened the table and added a ledge. Next I completed the egg by again by adding successive and smaller layers of lighter values until it was time to add the diffused, final highlight. That's it. If I missed something, or if you have a question feel free to ask. "If You Can Paint an Egg", 7"x5", oil on gessobord, $75., framed. Sold

Even though the painting of the egg is finished, the photo of it leaves a lot to be desired, so until I can shoot it outside, when it stops raining, this one will give you an idea of what it looks like. I think the thing that's most distracting is the glare on the left, but you can see how the egg has developed. The way I did that was to paint successive layers of lighter values until I painted the highlight on the egg. Notice that I changed the position of the shadow and made a ledge on the table. I also smoothed out the dark bands of color where the damage occurred on the background. If you're just tuning into this blog, this egg is a lot darker than you're used to seeing and certainly a lot darker than a store bought egg. If you follow this blog at all you'll recognize this egg as a Marans egg, which is the darkest egg laid by a chicken. Marans are French chickens. The Marans eggs do come darker than this. Some ducks lay almost black eggs and I believe emus lay a very dark, almost black/ green egg. So if everything goes according to plan, I'll post this painting again on Monday. In the meantime have a terrific weekend.

Back to the painting from Monday night's demo at church. I quoted N.C. Wyeth, Andrew Wyeth's father and art instructor. N.C. told Andrew that "If you can draw an egg, you can draw anything". I don't know if I totally agree with that, but then who am I to argue with N.C.? It has certainly helped me with my inclination to paint egg-shaped objects like lemons and fruit. So, in the painting above I've covered over the boo boos with a very dark brown, because they kept showing through, leaving the the fingerprints at the top left after swiping them a few times with a brush. I also took away some color away from the table with turpenoid, which I'll redo later. Not only did this help remove some fuzz and dings in the paint, but I wanted to change the shape and size of the shadow, which I will do more of to change the light source. Those overhead florescent lights at church won't do. I also reworked the back, behind the egg, to make it darker so I can begin losing that edge so that the egg emerges from the darkness. I may be able to finish this by tomorrow night, especially with all of this rain and cold making me want to stay indoors.

Huge Happy Birthday wishes going out to my nephew Pat (10/13) on his 30th birthday! I was in the labor room with his mom, pushing my knuckles into her back until I got blisters, because she had back labor and then in the delivery room taking pictures of him being born. I was such a wreck that I dropped the camera on the floor and the batteries rolled all over the place. I thought for sure one of the assistant nurses would step on them and roll and drop onto the floor, but they didn't. They did give me some dirty looks, but didn't kick me out of there. Then I got to go out to my brother and tell him he had a son. Wow, what a memory. Geez, 30 years ago, wow. And then there's my wonderful son-in-law Derek's birthday (10/14). I won't reveal his age but he's certainly getting better with age, like a fine wine. Happy Birthday again guys. On Monday night I did a demo for my art group at my church which is Church of the Saviour. I didn't finish it then, so I took it home, planning on finishing it last night and posting it, but I suddenly got really tired with terrible pain in my head and then the chills, so I went right to bed and woke up this morning feeling much better. Tonight I'll post the painting as I left it with a few more scars on it from the wind blowing it onto the ground when I was photographing it yesterday. So this will put it back a couple of stages and be officially stage two. Tomorrow will be stage three. Jay has been sick with an ear infection for over a week, has finished a Z-Pack and now is on another, stronger antibiotic. It seems to be working better. The chickens are all in lockdown and have been so since last Thursday when the local female hawk swooped over me when I let them out in the morning and then later in the afternoon, with Danny, Torri and myself standing right there, she flew into the forsythia and grabbed a olive-egger pullet. The pullet is fine, she just lost a few feathers and almost had the life scared out of her. It took her a couple of hours to come out from under the bushes. On Saturday, the hawk was swooping over the chicken pen in an effort to frighten the chickens and have them fly upward to escape, so she could bite their heads off or grab them. The net on the pen was too high and that didn't work. So she flew over to the maple tree near the pen and sat there. I ran outside and picked up a small stone and threw it at her and missed her by about four feet, but it landed under her. She didn't move. She looked at the stone, looked at me then pooped on the stone. Like she was laughing at me. Well she can laugh all she wants. She's not getting these chickens. I hope they laugh at her when she tries to scare them.

Senor was our Chihuahua. He was very old, totally blind, deaf and appeared to have cancer. For the past two years he has laid beside me in his heated bed here in "our" studio. He used to love to go outside and most times stayed close by and when he became blind he could hear me call him when he started to wander too far. Deafness changed all of that and so we used a leash to take him out. It scared him too much, so he went out with me when I could sit with him in the sun and hold him, or if Josie and I took him out. Josie loved him, she still does. He loved her, which is very unusual, because like some Chihuahuas, Senor hated everybody, except Jeanie, Danny, Josie and I. People would think they could pick him up because he was so small, but he'd poop on them. He was the big boss. He just appeared to be tiny. Danny put a huge rock on his grave yesterday when he buried him. He said it was because Senor always perceived himself much larger than he actually was. Your typical big dog in a little dog body. He definitely had a "Napoleon Complex". When Jay and Celeste got married, the tent rental company sent four Hispanic men to erect the tents and Senor ran outside to growl, bark and bite them. I followed him and was shouting at him in a very stern voice, "Senor, come here". "Senor, get over here right now!" Of course you guessed it, all four of the men stopped what they were doing and were heading my way, when I realized they all thought I was hollering at them I started laughing and really had them confused. I feel like we should have put him down-- "to sleep" sooner, but he wasn't obviously suffering, so we didn't. The boys would argue with me about his "quality of life", but I didn't want to hear it. Senor weighed less than four pounds, so when he did start to suffer, it was terribly pathetic. I would like to believe that our pets go to heaven. I know it talks about Jesus coming back on a white horse, so there must be animals up there. I also wonder if there are animal ghosts, because if you've had a pet for a while and they die, don't you sometimes think you still hear them in the house? I do think I hear Senor. A couple of times it has felt like he brushed up against my leg while I'm here at the computer. I look down out of habit to see him, but he's not there. I don't know what that is. I wonder and then I cry. The drawing above is of Senor 12 years ago. "Senor as a Young Man", graphite on paper. I thought Senor was 17, but the vet says he was older. That was a couple of years ago. I just can't remember. His portrait hangs in Josie's bedroom. She asked me last winter, when she was three, if she could have it. As I said, she really loves him, so do I.

Sharon and Eric from up the road stopped in, so I never finished my painting. It's of a dahlia from Mrs. Gammalinda's garden, courtesy of Enrico. Busy chicken day. More rain...the tarp is caving in on the chicken pen, so it looks like a busy chicken day tomorrow as well, only in the rain. yuck. Have a great weekend.

You know how you have a friend that is your heart? I have several friends like that. One is Susan Silenzi. She's just there with you, through the good, the bad, the ugly, beautiful, happy, joyous and all of the rest. She's trustworthy, real, low maintenance, can keep a secret and can bake like nobody's business. Before I get even more carried away, suffice it to say, she's an outstanding friend. She and her multi-talented, artistic son Chris, took me to Georges' tonight for my birthday dinner. Ah, 60, the gift that keeps on giving. Anyway, it was great as usual, well really, it was better than usual. Jeremy is getting the job done, but I miss Chef "Frosty". Thank you Susan and Chris! I love spending time with you. We never got around to watching the sculptor movie last night because our neighbors Sharon and Eric dropped by. After a glass of wine, they left and we just watched "Three Sheets" on FLN, which was pretty entertaining. Maybe we'll get to the movie tomorrow night. The painting above is an example of my thank you notes. This one is on ecru, fine watercolor paper. Others are on watercolor postcards. All painted with walnut ink, except for one that I did for Dan Kane. It was done with the really cool piece of graphite that Dan gave to me for my birthday, (along with a bottle of Veuve) shaped into a grapevine with grapes. It's going to take me years to wear it out. These walnut ink paintings aren't for sale, but if you want one let me know and I'll paint it for you.