Tuesday, August 30

Only one more day of August~  crazy!  Sorry I missed yesterday-  the boys went to the State Fair with the art car and had so much fun they were late home and brought beer, so that required a bit of discussing...
Here is a small painting of Bingo at the Airport Dog Park, and a large painting of a lovely dog named Bell whom I know from the Art Shanty Projects when we used to be able to have dogs on the lake...

Bell on the Red Couch

Bingo at the Airport Dog Park

The one of Bell is a 30x40 canvas that I was working on over at the studio this summer, and the other one is my painting for the day....the paint is still wet!

SUNDAY August 28th!

Whew!  LOLA Rocks!!! I gotta tell ya, it is SO nice to be able to sit outside all day and have friends and strangers alike come by and tell you how much they like your work, and then actually BUY some of it!!!
But dang, it sure is hard to get a painting done with all these people coming by!  Here's what I managed today...

And it really isn't done, because I haven't figured out the mess on the bottom left side yet... there is supposed to be a sidewalk and a trash can there, but every time I would be attempting to focus on that little problem, someone ELSE would come by and bug me with money and questions!
Dang!
THANK YOU so much everyone who came by!  It was a FABULOUS weekend!
And tomorrow I have my new students...  oh that was another amazing thing today... I got to see four of my students from my last school, St Mark's, who came by~  dang, makes me miss them all the more...

August 27th, Saturday~

Um, why didn't any of you kind people let me know I was a day off?  I said that yesterday was the 25th-  so where did the 26th go, then?  Hmmmm?  Are you the kind of people who let someone know when they have a bit of spinach in their teeth, or their fly is down, or there is a smudge on their forehead, or do you just ignore it and let them find out later at home when they look in the mirror as they are getting ready for bed and leave them desperately trying to remember WHEN was it that they last had SPINACH?!

Well, despite that, I still love you~  and thank you to those of you who came out for LOLA today!  What a great day!  And I LOVE sharing space with Christy and Rebecca~  who've been with me since the START of LOLA~
So come by tomorrow if you can-  I have a couple new pieces from Grand Marais I didn't have along today...
And this pup is Molly, and she is a commission, and I DID just paint her tonight, believe it or not, and don't ask me how I do this because it just seems to happen, and now I need to write out class lists for monday when I meet my new students for the first time....
Thanks for following!!!

friday august 25

yup- tired again, and feeling that feeling of working too dang hard and missing the fun stuff, but i do know i've had a heckuva lota fun in my life, and still do, even when i'm "working", so i guess i'm just maturing....
maybe...

so here's a couple commissions because i have had no time to paint today- will be doing THAT tomorrow and sunday at the LOLA Art Crawl!
Come see me!
xokat!

Thursday august 25....

wow-  tired today-  up last night with a feverish child, and more workshops and meet-the-teacher things today.... lovely but tiring~

so here is a corgi, with an earnest expression...

August 24

Here are some more crabapples, from the park by Lake Hiawatha, picked by Max but snatched by me before he plucked the stems.....

tuesday August 23rd~

Here is a not-so-great one- but it is hot and I am tired and it seems that there are small invisible insects constantly BITING me as I sit here in the dining room under the ceiling fan~

Attempting to really suggest the rainy pavement... this one will be revisited because I love so many artists' depictions of a rainy street....  gee, I suppose I could see if I could find one to put on here to show you what I mean- 
Ah!  There!  And it is by Gustav Caillebotte, NOT Sargent, and since it is Paris and not New York, that would make sense....

MONDAY! August 22~

Whew!  I DID it!  I painted a painting, despite being tired and needing to fill in my new insurance forms and all that stuff and get class lists and the underpinings of a profession in line for the new school year, and I still DID IT!!!!
And I want to go to bed now...

this is a house that I took a photo of as I was taking photos of another house for a commission, but I just couldn't resist it.  The large tree to the right had a sumptuous summer saturated green going for it, and leaned protectively over the house, dwarfing the house which is quite a bit larger than ours...

Nice for August, I think...

Sunday August 21st!

Ha!  We're having a brunch today, it looks like it may rain, Duane is trying to get more blocks into the window well so we don't have a muddy flood in the basement like last tuesday, and I painted Max's mug and another blue one I like to drink wine out of and the couple of crab apples from the playground at Lake Hiwatha that Max did NOT pull the stems out of on the stroller ride home...
Alrighty folks, I'm going to seriously try to keep this up, and I will learn how to put these onto the Daily Paintworks site so I can auction them off...  Something like this one I'd sell on the auction for like $40 starting...
Whadaya think?

August 20th, Saturday...

ummm....
I do feel the need to give an excuse, but I am NOT going to, except to say that yesterday was incredibly busy and the opening at Diamond's was WAY better than I'd expected with a lovely mob of boistrous people and kids and dogs and some treats and stuff!

Dudley, with Sad Eyes...

The Madden Cabin in Door County

And here is a painting for today~ 













And a painting for yesterday too, so you won't feel too gyped or anything.   Dudley is my friend Rachel's friend's dog, and the EYES were just WAY too much on this one.  Really, the photo is even more extreme.  Believe me, I toned them down...
And the other painting is the view from the living area out the amazing front windows through the sumac to Lake Michegan...
thanks!

August 18th, Thursday~

Here are the two pieces that got into the Niza Knoll Gallery in Denver, thank you to an old friend who LIVES there and let me know about the show, and then offered to deliver my art to the gallery for the jurying process, and THEN offered to pick the work up and mail it back to me!  What a GUY!!!

Sparky Waits

Front Seat Grinning

Sparky was up at the Grand Marais Art Festival in July, which was a wonderful event with incredible people, and LOTS of rain!  And the other painting is Bingo and Gus in the front seat of the car on the way to the airport dog park...  they OBVIOUSLY know where they are going...
And if you haven't noticed, I've changed the title of my blog here, since I am not always posting paintings of dogs.  I may rethink this and go back to "My AutobiDOGraphy" since I think that is a remarkably clever and witty title, and I like to see myself in that light.  Since I AM remarkably clever and witty~  really.  All my friends say so...

Okay, tired and going to bed~  more mugs tomorrow!

Agust 17th, Wednesday!

With a White Gesso Ground

Today was my last day of official SUMMER.  And I was bummed that I haven't painted since some crappy attempts at Plein Air saturday afternoon at the cottage in Door County, so I painted a couple versions of Max's yellow cup/mug...
  I mean, it just seems that if the VIEW is great, shouldn't it be easy to PAINT it?!  Man....
And I was excited to try to use some of Carol Marine's tips in my acrylic this morning.  I DO want to do oil, like I did all last week, but it is just trickier for me to get that all set up, and our basement flooded last night, and blah blah blah, excuse excuse excuse.

With a Black Gesso Ground

SO what I want to try to do is to get on a daily painting dealio, where I auction off a painting every day.  I want to try to start in September.  This may be ridiculous, as I am committed to a few shows here and there where I also need to have some STOCK to sell, but since I do love to paint, I thought I'd give this a shot.  What will happen is I will post a painting a day, like I have with the dogs and the cats, but THIS time you will be able to bid on the piece in an on-line auction (like e-bay) and by the end of 7 days, it can be yours!  I want to start the pieces at the low end of the price scale, again probably ridiculous, but what the heck?  I can always quit, can't I?  So, I think I'll start the first few bids at between $25 and $50 bucks~  and the pieces will all be small, like 6x6...
Any comments or ideas for me, I would REALLY appreciate hearing them!
lovkat!

still Thursday...

Dang-  sorry-  I got excited~  i definitely will be learning how to take better pictures of oil paintings... but this is my NEW boot I got from an etsy shop (i have the other one too!) and I love it so much~  I wanted to paint it!

August 11th! DOOR COUNTY!

I am at the Peninsula School of Art in Door County studying with Carol Marine, an incredible artist and teacher who has a daily paint blog that I follow, and have totally forgotten about putting a link to in my own blog!
Anyway, this has been an AWESOME week and I thought I'd maybe better start posting things every day too, since I do want to try to paint daily and it will never be the perfect time for it so I may as well do it NOW.

Left boot from Porto Portugal

so here are a couple things i've painted here....

August 5th, Thursday

 And here are a few dogs I have had a chance to get back into~  I was gonna try to do a "before" and "after" scenario, but I am too dang tired and Doc Martin is on.....