When Asha was a puppy, she was intriqued by birds. She wanted to get close to one so she could give it a good sniff. Whenever she would try to get close, the bird would fly away. Asha doesn’t give birds the time of day now. She is SO over them. Then, there were the squirrels. We have lots of squirrels around here and they fascinated Asha. They even talked to her, which only increased her interest. But, whenever Asha would try to get close to one, it would run up a tree. So much for the squirrels. They can scamper all around Asha now and she just ignores them. But, there is one type of wild life that is plentiful in our neighborhood, that is Asha’s current obsession AND that has the good sense to stay on the ground where Asha might one day actually be able to get up close and personal. Rabbits, or, as I like to say when we see one “Asha, a wabbit!” We can’t leave the house without smelling where they’ve been in the yard and to be on the lookout for them during our pre-dawn walks. This morning we had the luck to come into contact with three, count them, three rabbits. Asha has never been able to get close enough to one yet; but, she got to watch them from a very short distance this morning. 

Perhaps I should download the song “Wild Thing” to play to Asha. I can just hear it now…

Wild thing
I think I love you
But I wanna know for sure
C’mon on, hold me tight
I love you

Wild thing
You make my heart sing
You make everything groovy
Wild thing

Last night, I took my camera along with me on my walk with Asha. I live next to a neighborhood that has many large old Victorian style homes and the neighborhood really gets into decorating for Halloween and Christmas. It is a several block area that is aglow with lights and massive decorations at this time of year. My picture taking was actually quite unsuccessful because, when I attempted to take a shot without my flash, the lovely colors of the lights came out but everything was blurred due to the slow shutter speed. When I used my flash, everything was washed out. At any rate, here is one picture I took, which I cropped and lightened quite a bit in Photoshop.

When Asha stays at home on my work days, we do two walks a day. The first one usually takes place at around 5 or 6 in the morning and the second one takes place when I get home from work in the evening. Due to it being the time of the year when the daylight hours are few, both our walks are done in the dark. Asha dozes the daylight hours away snug on the couch or bed or stretched out on the carpet somewhere. 

The good thing about it being cold outside is that I don’t worry about putting “acceptable” clothing on. It doesn’t matter that what I have on are some old blue and green plaid flannel pj bottoms and a flowery sleep shirt and that the combination makes me look like a Salvation Army reject. I just slip my bare feet into my high top squall boots, pull on my ankle length down coat, slap a warm cap on my uncombed hair, and away we go. No one will ever know…unless of course I get run over or have a heart attack out there somewhere. Then, the fashion police will know. But, at that point, will I care? I think not. So for now, this will just be my little secret.

At doggie daycare, formal “school” pictures are taken a couple of times a year. Invariably, Asha has the “I hate this routine” look on her face. Although certainly not happy looking, at least in this one taken on Halloween, she did not look like she was being led to the gallows.

Fall is an emotionally evocative time for me. It is a time when I feel melancholy, but in a way that I enjoy. I love walking with Asha as the leaves rain down and the cool air whisks them around. As we walked through the neighborhood this morning I was noticing the brown color of the leaves until I turned down our street and saw a carpet of yellow. It brightened my spirit. And as it turns out, the carpet of yellow was spread out around my own house

I was contacted by a woman from Tennessee who now lives in Saudi Arabia about doing a 3 for 3 trade. She picked one of my collaged cards and said she would love a card depicting the American Curl Cat. Apparently, she has a wall dedicated to these cats. I did two and I hope she will like them, or at least one of them. They seem a bit lifeless to me. I think I was a little too caught up in trying to get the details right rather than allowing my movements to flow more. Oh well, it is good to practice.

Behind the cut are some photos I took of the Zoe girl this morning during our ramble at a local lake.

I can’t resist this face…

Here is a link to pictures of the blue-walled room I use as my studio.  I tried to get it a little organized and thought I had better get pictures of it before it turns back into a complete disaster area. Unfortunately, as I was taking the pictures I dropped my camera and broke it.

http://pics.livejournal.com/couchart/gallery/0005w6dk

It isn’t that I haven’t been doing any artwork over the past few weeks, because I have. I just haven’t done much work that I have felt good enough about to post here.  I do upload my weekly efforts, which anyone can see in my art folder; but, lately, my only sense of satisfaction has been that I have continued to churn out work regardless of the fact that I have not been very excited about the results. Compared to past years where I would just not work if the results were not what I wanted, this is a step forward.

So, lately, I have made a few  efforts at trying to learn how to work with clayboard (also known as scratchboard). This involves scratching an image into a board with a white or colored clay undercoating and black or colored ink top coat. I’ve seen some marvelous pieces that artists have done with it and I want to play with this medium. My efforts are very crude, but I feel like I am learning. Here is a portrait I attempted recently. It is nowhere near where I want to get with this medium, but it is a few steps further than my first efforts.

A raging storm, replete with thunder and a hard rain, is enough to make Asha’s life a frightening experience. Poor baby. My normally independent dog becomes a momma’s girl when it is like this and huddles near me. I sure hope the weather dies down soon, because I must get ready and leave for work before long. I hate leaving Asha when she is scared. She continually moves in front of me trying to keep me from leaving and gives me that “Sophie’s Choice” look that tears my heart in two. I can tell her all I want that it is all going to be okay, that she is safe and that I will be back, but it makes no difference. To her, I am leaving her and abandoning her in her darkest moment of fear.

*sigh*

I agreed to a 3 for 3 trade with Lemurkat. She asked that I create a card of a loris. I didn’t even know what a loris is, but I looked it up on the Internet. I hope she will like it. The other two pieces are ones I did previously that she said she liked, the cheetah and a horse. These three pieces will be going to live in New Zealand!

Hooray!  I am finally done with the ATCs for the Pick a Theme swap at ATCards.com. I drew or painted 35 cards for this swap. Each card is done in a different theme that was chosen by each of the other participants. Some were great fun to do and others were less than inspiring to me. I ended up being surprised by the ones tnat turned out well and also surprised by the ones that turned out not so hot.  I just hope the recipients like them.  They may be viewed here: http://pics.livejournal.com/sutospeak/gallery/000408s4. Now, I just need to finish some other commitments and I will be free to do whatever appeals to me art-wise. The challenge of this swap was good for me, but I am glad to be finished.

A piece done for the ATCards.com swap. I usually end up feeling less than satisfied with most pieces, but I like how this one turned out.

Fortunately, one of the themes I am supposed to do for the Pick a Theme swap on ATCards.com is a self portrait ATC. So, I can use this card for the swap and have another entry for the self portrait marathon. I like being able to accomplish two goals with one piece!

I joined another “pick a theme” swap on ATCards.com where I have to create a card for each of the other participants using their chosen themes. I have finished the first card for a person who chose “In the Wild Jungle” as her theme. This is a drawing of a cheetah. I am wondering now though if the cheetah is really a jungle animal or more of a desert animal. When I googled jungle animals the cheetah came up so I figured I was in the right ball park. Hopefully, it will be acceptable even if I haven’t quite hit the mark in subject choice. I like these pick a theme swaps because they cause me to draw subjects I would not think of choosing myself. I am not always thrilled with the themes people choose, but it forces me to think about how to give them something they would like to have and be of interest to me as well. The hardest part sometimes is coming up with an image that conveys the theme and also works on the small size of the ATC canvas, which is only 2.5 inches by 3.5 inches. Close ups seem to work best. 

Edit: It has been confirmed that the Cheetah is not a jungle resident. That’ll teach me to do sloppy research!

I received another Paper Trader’s journal (Suze’s) and got right to work on doing my spread in it. Her theme is extraordinary women, historical or fictional. The first person who came to my mind was George Sand, upon whom I did a 50 page paper, written in French no less, when I was in grad school.  I always admired the way she lived her life according to her own vision, at a time when few women had any sort of freedom.

The scan of this drawing is not very good because I didn’t think to scan it before attaching it within the book. Once it was in the book, I was not able to get it to lie flat enough on the scanner to get a good scan of it.  Oh well, one gets the sense of what it is like at least.

I decided to go ahead and buy the CDs of the group I found the other day (it seemed like the right thing to do). I received my shipping confirmation email today and I have to say that it is the funniest confirmation email I have received to date on the web (and I do a *lot* of Internet shopping). I thought I would share this gem. After the details of my order came the following words:

“Your CDs have been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow.

A team of 50 employees inspected your CDs and polished them to make sure they were in the best possible condition before mailing.

Our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle and a hush fell over the crowd as he put your CDs into the finest gold-lined box that money can buy.

We all had a wonderful celebration afterwards and the whole party marched down the street to the post office where the entire town of Portland waved ‘Bon Voyage!’ to your package, on its way to you, in our private CD Baby jet on this day, Friday, June 9th.

I hope you had a wonderful time shopping at CD Baby.  We sure did.  Your picture is on our wall as “Customer of the Year”.  We’re all exhausted but can’t wait for you to come back to CDBABY.COM!!

Thank you once again,

Derek Sivers, president, CD Baby”

I’ve done quite a bit of art work over the past week. Here is one of the pieces that I completed.

I joined a swap on ATCards.com in which each participant picks a theme. All of the other participants must create a hand drawn or painted card for each of the other participants using the participants’ chosen themes. I thought this might be an interesting challenge. One person picked the theme of “Beethoven.”  Here is the card I created for her.

The others picked themes I found a little difficult.

Another potential swap piece.

Additional possibilities for the “black and tan plus one other color” swap. I only need three, but since I prepared a bunch of black “canvases,” I figure I might as well do a few and then pick the ones I want to send in. The pieces are kind of funky looking, especially in the scans. They look better in person. I am still enjoying the process of thinking differently about my empty (in this case the black) spaces.

I decided to join a swap on ATCards.com in which we are to make 3 cards and restrict ourselves to using the colors black, tan plus one other. This is my first effort. I drew it while looking at a picture of my uncle Jene, who was a WWII navy fighter pilot who died when his plane crashed after taking off the ship. He was my father’s twin brother and my brother Jene is named after him. It was fun to work on black drawing paper because it forced me to think in the opposite way I am used to thinking about the use of light and dark spaces on the page.

I also did a couple more small landscape series, which may be viewed by following this link:

http://pics.livejournal.com/sutospeak/gallery/0003xyeg

So far in this past week, I have finished 21 pieces, which is more than I usually do. Some of them I like and some of them I think are rather putrid; but, it feels good to be pumping the creative well.  This week is the commencement of the traveling journal round robin on Paper Traders. So, for the next year, I should be facing some new challenges on the artistic front. There are 12 participants and we have a month with each journal before we have to ship it on to the next person. It is one thing to work on a piece of my own as I can trash it if I want to do so. It is another matter to work in something that belongs to another person. Hopefully it will be more fun than stressful.  I guess I will find out soon enough.

Asha met foxes for the very first time this morning. We were out for our Sunday morning adventure and went to the southeast end of Lake Shawnee. There is a lovely little stone structure at the point where one can look out over the lake and which is surrounded by trees and grass and water. Asha discovered a threesome of foxes, who were quite beautiful, but rather scary sounding. Asha followed them, but kept a safe distance after hearing how ferocious they could sound. I did not get any good pics of the foxes, but there is one where you can see it in the distance.  More photos from the morning’s ramble are below.