PORTRAIT OF CHLOE

A friend at work asked if I would paint a portrait of his Great Dane, Chloe, who had just recently passed.  I don't do much of dogs (I find it very difficult for some reason) so I was hesitant, but he kept asking, so I relented.

I've been fiddling with it off and on for over a month now.  I really didn't like it at first, so that makes it difficult for me to work on it.  But the guilt outweighed the dislike, so I persevered. I'm not hating it.

Here it is, acrylic on canvas 9" x 12".

Chloe, Good Dog.

LOWMAN BEACH VIEW

I spent the morning painting my office room walls.  My neck hurts and I'm tired.  I just wanted to go somewhere and relax.  So, Lucy and I headed to Lowman Beach.  I took a blanket, the newspaper and my sketching stuff of course.  We found a nice log to lean up against and sat down to rest.  Eventually the view intrigued me and I couldn't resist.

It was lovely and the sun was shining when we arrived.  We weren't there very long when it started to rain about the time I was finishing up the watercolor.

I love Seattle's weather.

A TRUCK ON THE TIPPER

Not a very good rendering of a truck on the tipper at work (Cedar Hills Landfill) while it's trailer gets emptied.  I sat through three different trucks getting tipped out, but I still couldn't capture it at the moment it was at the top of its cycle.  So this was my best guess, and it's bad.  I'll try again someday.

GANG UNIT

Had lunch at Toshi's Teriyaki in Westwood Mall with my husband Darrell and these fine officers of the law, Seattle's Gang Unit.  They looked so young.  I'm feeling old.

This is a very quick pen and ink sketch with a little black watercolor.

LEVI JACKET

I thought his Levi jacket looked particularly interesting this morning while we waited for our breakfast at Luna Park Cafe in West Seattle.

MOVING DAY

After we got all of Mom's stuff up into her penthouse apartment in the sky, Josh and Billy went about setting up the cable and TV while the rest of us watched.

I kinda had some goobers with the watercolor.  Let's blame it on Mom's dog (puppy) Reba.

LUNCH WITH MY MOM

I helped my Mom take some boxes to her new apartment.  [We're getting more help this Saturday with the big stuff.]  Once we got the boxes upstairs to her fourth floor apartment and stacked out of the way, she took me out to lunch.  We went to the nearby mall, Kent Landing, where we had lunch at Ram.  They have tables outside, which we took advantage of, since we had Mom's little dog, Reba, who we couldn't leave in the car on such a warm day.  We put her in her crate, and she was nice and quiet under the table.

I did a quick sketch of the folks enjoying their lunch outside on such a gorgeous day at the tables next to us.

I used my fountain pen with Noodler's ink and a little watercolor in my sketchbook.  It was done very quickly while waiting for our food to arrive. [I wouldn't have noticed the cool 'swoop' of the chair legs if I hadn't been drawing them.]

We had a very nice relaxing time sitting there enjoying the day.

DARRELL'S CNC

This guy is making a CNC machine for Darrell.  We went up to check on the progress and get some questions answered.  I sketched while they talked about stuff I couldn't understand...vectors, g-code, CAD, spindles, tool path...on and on until Lucy fell asleep.

WATER TRUCK AT WATER TOWER