Emerge - Lion portrait completed.

I managed to get this painting finished today which I'm rather pleased about. That means I've done a painting for each month so far this year. Quite a bit quicker than I usually am. I need to get more done for the exhibitions I want to enter this year. It's thinking of what to paint next thats the biggest problem.

Skateboarding adventures and Lion update.

Sleet and Wren have continued to have skateboarding practise here and there out in the street now as there's not enough room on our backs anymore. They've both learnt to keep three feet on and push with the 4th and to just ride the skateboard with all 4 feet on it when it's gotten moving. They still need more practise to get even better. Meanwhile, they've been attracting quite some audiences in the form of local kids and bunches of chavs..some of which have filmed them on their mobiles with permission mind. I suppose it's not everyday you see dogs skateboarding along your street. Here's a couple of pics, One of Wren and one of Sleet. The photos make them look stationary but they were both pushing themselves along pretty quick.

I've also been getting on with the Lion painting. I need more paintings to enter into exhibitions this year so, along with knightshade, this will be the second of the new paintings I'll have for exhibitions this year and need several more at least.

I've been working on getting detail over more of the lions face and into the mane. Still more work to do mainly on the mane and top of head etc...plus, I'll need to add whiskers last thing.

Emerge - Lion painting in progress.

I started on a new personal painting as I don't currently have any commissions and I need to cary on building my portfolio and also need new stuff for exhibitions.
I decided to do this Lion.
The ref photo was a little lighter and the lion was laying down. He also had bars going across him as he was photographed in a zoo so I had to get shut of those.
I stood him up and made the whole thing a bit darker so only the more highlighted areas could be seen along with minimal partially lit areas.
I love to paint this type of light...it excites me, lol!!!

Just the first two stages so far. I tend to paint different paintings differently and that something inside my head told me to do this one my painting over the whole thing with base colour and then gradually build up layers and refine...working lighter and lighter on each area. I often paint totally different to this and paint sections at a time which is a bit more unusual.

Ref photo credit:http://www.morguefile.com/archive/display/190841

Wrens first flyball win.

On Saturday, we were at Markfield yet again and, as is usual for Markfield, the weather was nice and sunny and pleasant. My sister and I managed to get Wren and her young dog Storm into another team to make numbers up. We ran with the Kaos Krew (Many thanks to Joanne and co for having us and making us feel welcome all day)
I was a little concerned about Wren as she gets very little training in because of my work. Despite this, she ran fine but decided that she was going to change which way she turned. We noticed her missing the ball and fumbling a few times and then it became apparent that it was because she was now wanting to turn the other way. I don't know whether it was because Kaos Kew use a Boomerang box and Wren is used to Canadian but we tried her with the ball in the other side on a test run and it worked so we kept it there. I also started getting the hang of being at the start and knowing when to release her from looking at the lights. Again, many thanks to Joanne for the advice on that.
The team did really well and we won all the races throughout the day despite the few minor mishaps. There were just a couple of legs we lost but we still got best out of three each time and so won 1st place in Division 4. As we were running a newly concocted team, we had no idea how we'd do so it was a very nice surprise for all of us.

No photos of them running for obvious reasons but I have a photo I took of Wren enjoying a little run about with Storm just before we put them back in the car and left for home.