My Buddy Billy

I was laid off in the fall. Besides losing my job, my income and a lot of confidence, the thing that really bugged me was that I was freaking crazily self-involved. My solution? Get a second dog.

It's hard to focus on yourself when you are housebreaking a 10 week old puppy in a snowstorm in December at 2AM. 

This is a portrait of Billie, the fantastic dog I adopted from Sterling Animal Shelter. She's the second dog that I've adopted from there, the first was Sammy, almost 9.5 years ago. She is also a wonderful dog, but Billie is something special. Sweet, attentive, loving and affectionate. Only negative so far is she manages to find and roll on every dead thing in the yard/woods/pond.

Billie

Self Portrait

I've been doing a lot of drawing lately. Trying to sketch everyday. Drawing was what I did almost daily for the first 21 years of life (ok maybe 18 - whatever age it was when I could pick up a crayon) before being an art major and therefore an "artist" which paralyzed me for decades. This morning as I was putting on make-up I noticed the lighting was good so I thought I'd try a self-portrait. I haven't done any since college. My mother has one of them - a charcoal drawing of me when I was 20 that I did an hour before class. I don't think there was a college assignment - whether it was for an art class, programming or literature - that I didn't wait until the absolute last possible moment to start. I've always wondered how I knew that it was in that PRECISE moment that I needed to start in order to get the assignment done on time.

This is this morning's sketch. In retrospect I could have given myself some graphite and kneaded-eraser botox, but that's me in all my jowly lined glory. Comments that I've gotten from my son - "Muuuum, you don't look like that, it makes you look too old" and my favorite (from a neighbor) - "When did Meg turn 80?"

That old self-portrait that my mother still has was a big bone of contention between she and I. It is huge and she loved it and had it framed. I thought it was totally depressing -big, scary, gloom woman peering out of the frame. I was pretty depressed when I drew it and it showed.  One day I came home from school and there it was, prominently displayed in the sunroom. I freaked and demanded it be taken down in the way that only an overly dramatic 20 year old can do.

The portrait sat in my mother's closet for the next 31 years. Funny thing is - she showed it to me a couple of months ago and I liked it. It was pretty good considering I did it in about 20 mins. I should take a picture of it and post it - just for curiosity sake.

My Boy

Rather than bore you with yet another version of the 3 pears on a blue plate (yes I'm still working on it) I decided to post a sketch of my son that I did in November.

I won't be able to get to the studio for a while so I may not be able to post anything until next week.

I did get my new pochade box yesterday though - very exciting. I've been waiting 4 weeks for this - they make them to order. It was my gift to myself after one year of painting. A pochade box is a self-contained little studio that allows me to paint outside. It's very cool and you mount it on a tripod. I may be able to do some painting around the house and outside - if so I'll post those. My first attempt at landscapes.