"Goosey Goosey Gander" (oil on stretched canvas; 20" x 16")

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Goosey goosey gander, Whither shall I wander? Upstairs and downstairs.... Well, this family of goose, gander, and goslings are swimming in a row in a pond. How many goslings do you see?

"Winter Goose Pond" (oil on stretched canvas; 12" x 16")

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Exactly a year ago, my daughter and I went for a walk after a snowfall in the nearby Green Spring Gardens Park.  Geese were swimming in the half-frozen pond.  I even caught a goose in flight in one of the photos.  As we were expecting a snow storm yesterday, it seemed appropriate to paint "Winter Goose Pond".  When I showed the finished painting to my husband, he said: "It looks cold!"

"Sam" (oil on linen; 14" x 11") sold

sold

"Sam" is for Kristin and her brother, who commissioned the painting for their father.  Sam is a four-year-old black Labrador.  He is a field trial champion and came all the way from Ireland! The reference picture was taken in their dad's hunting blind in Chesapeake on a beautiful autumn day, when Sam retrieved eight geese.

Kristin initially ordered a 10" x 8" pet portrait.  Boy, I wished for a larger painting, so that I could do justice to such an awesome subject.  Then I could paint not only the portrait of the noble dog, but also the still life tableau of the game and hunting blind in the foreground and the autumn landscape in the background.  Somehow, Kristin telepathically read my mind and decided to upgrade.  The power of positive thinking got proven again!

They say that a dog is a man's best friend.  Sam is indeed Kristin's dad's best friend.  Can you imagine how proud and happy Kristin's dad will be when he learns about the thoughtful present on Christmas?  He will only see a card with the image of "Sam"; the painting will arrive after the New Year's Day.  I would like to thank here several clients who kindly agreed to the late deliveries of their orders.  As one client said, it is worth it!

"Sam" in progress

By the way, I took a picture of the painting in progress yesterday.  I don't usually do this, because it puts an additional pressure on myself and the step-by-step photos taken in my studio always have strange white balance.  But I get inquiries about my procedures from curious fellow artists, so here we go.  I use the same methods for all my oil paintings, whether portraits, landscapes, or florals.

I use the grid method to transfer the image to the linen panel.  (Can you see the grids I drew on the print on the left?)  Drawing in raw umber gets done fast.  The next step is a transparent underpainting over the drawing.  The geese in the foreground in the painting has, at this point, only a thin layer of transparent paints, but don't they already look finished?

My goal at this stage is to establish the correct value and color temperature scheme.  Much of the drawing gets lost, as you can see in the dog, who lost all the facial features.  But it's okay.  I don't blindly paint by numbers.  Painting is a continual drawing process with a brush!

I have already started blocking in with thick opaque paints in the landscape background and the weedy foreground.  It probably took about an hour or so to get this far.  It took four additional hours to finish the painting.  (Facial features alone sometimes take a hour.)  It was a long day yesterday!

"Ducks and Geese" (oil on linen, 8" x 12") sold

sold

Reference photo

When I showed my teacher, Diane Tesler, the above picture I took at Solomons Island, MD, she told me to keep it as a photo.  Apparently, it was too cute for her taste.  But she is in Indiana on vacation, and I am free to paint whatever I feel like.  So I painted "Ducks and Geese" today.

How can you resist the charm of this tableau?  Three geese decked in bright yellow rain gear were so jaunty that I and my friends burst out laughing when we spotted it while driving by.  The house owner obviously had a terrific sense of humor.  What made it even funnier was the two real ducks that happened to be there, as if they were checking them out.  I could almost hear one of them saying "if they are real, I am Donald Duck!"