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Art

They Found our Cat

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In July of last year – our big move started. We sold our Kamloops house, invested in a place at Sun Peaks and packed our stuff to go Seattle. Our cats were booked to go into a boarding home in Seattle for the month of August while we did some vacation travelling.

Our cats Raphael on the left, Neko on the right

And with a week to go before we move out, Raphael goes missing. They are mostly indoor cats, but Raphael does wander a field for a couple of hours occasionally. One night goes by, then another, we canvas the neighborhood, no sightings… 6 days go by and we move out of our Kamloops home because all our stuff gets shipped to Seattle. Still no cat 🙁 We all mourn him – assuming he met a coyote on the hillside. But our fabulous neighbours, who love animals, and have spent many a night looking for their own cat gone wandering – won’t give up that easily.

They ask us (!!) if they can go into our yard and keep looking for Raphael. Don swears up and down that he will find him. I am so grateful for their kindness, but have very little hope that they will be successful. The fateful day comes, when the cat “courier” is coming to take the cat(s) to Seattle before we leave the province. At 8am we get a text from Lisa with a photo “Look who we found this morning!”. It is totally our cat – but Jade and I don’t really believe it until we see him with our own two eyes. Incredible – Raphael has been missing for almost two weeks, and 2 hours before the window closes Don finds him in our backyard!? Raphael reunites with brother and off they go to Seattle!

I am eternally grateful for Don and Lisa for selfless dedication to animals – theirs and ours. I have no words. So I drew them a picture 🙂 This is a drawing of their three pets – Maggie, Chance and Marlo. Here are the in progress pictures. And I forgot to take a final photo of the finished drawing – so the framed one at the top of story – is stolen from their Facebook post.

Just sketching everyone out – Maggie’s face is hard because it’s at an unusual angle
Spend a lot of time on Maggie’s face. Trying to work left to right as a new ‘habit’
Maggie’s almost done
Now onto Chance and the pillow. For some reason Chance is much easier – and the cat, with such pure white and black was super quick. I forgot to take more photos….

Here are the photos I used – drawn as one scene.

You can see I moved Marlo over to be beside Chance.
Art

Maddy Jade

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I “can” draw just about anything – but I love drawing horses, birds and trees would probably be second. So this is Maddy Jade – a friend purchased this commission through a Horse Trials BC ( horsetrialsbc.com ) fundraiser.

Maddy Jade is extra cool because I actually considered buying her from New Stride ( newstride.com ) in 2014. It was a toss up between her, and the horse I did buy – my Dharma Queen. Here is a picture of Maddy Jade on that spring day 6 years ago:

Years later she ended up at Chase Creek Eventing ( www.chasecreekeventing.ca ) and then eventually my good friend Taylor ended up with her. She is a beautiful, sweet mare and I am so excited that she is going to have a foal in a month (eek!! cuteness overload – I’ll have to draw the foal of course!). Here is a recent photo of Maddy Jade – the one I drew:

I tried a different drawing technique this time. I have a new favorite artist – Bethany Vere ( www.bethanyvereart.co.uk) – and she does realistic drawings using pencil crayon. Bethany likes to start at one spot and slowly moves across the piece. Finishing each section as she goes. I usually do the entire piece in layers. But its messy (my hand smudges everything) and maybe not as accurate. So I developed this piece loosely following Bethany’s method. I used Pan Pastels, which are amazing, and pencil crayons. I was also very diligent taking progress photos (pat myself on the back).

And the first comment I hear – “Aren’t you going to draw the rest of the body?” The answer is no – I find people are super hard to draw and this piece isn’t about the rider. But I do need to figure out a better way of cutting it off – maybe a straight line at the waist instead of jagged. I have also seen drawings where the rider is completely left out – so where the leg appears on the saddle – that area is left completely blank, like a silhouette (I couldn’t find an example).

Stay tuned for a drawing of baby – once it’s born of course….

Art

Pixie

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An adorable dog that is a fixture at our Pony Club events, this is Pixie:

I love seeing other artists do in progress pictures – the process of creation is totally fascinating. Usually I forget to take the early photos (the drawing I am doing right now is a good example of that 🙁 ) – but in this case I paused often and have a good series for you.

I do use a grid when working with subjects that I find difficult. I don’t generally need them for horse drawings – but dogs, and especially humans, I find harder to “get right”.
The tongue is hard to get right – I kept coming back to it over and over again
Almost done – but she’s so white on a white background… I don’t like the composition of it all. But it is so scary to take a practically finished piece and then start to add a background. What if a ruin it!!??
And the finished product. I’m happy with the background – I don’t think I ruined it (sigh – relief)

As an aside – I LOVE our Pony Club – South Thompson Pony Club souththompsonponyclub.weebly.com . Pony Club is for children (and adults) who love horses and want to learn more about them. Our club is in Pritchard and leaving it to move to Seattle was one of the hardest parts of the move.