Every year I try to do quick watercolor sketches of my little boarding kennel dogs and cats on postcards and send to the owners at Christmas time.
I decided that this year I would get a head start on them as I will probably have about 50 to do this year.
This cute little guy is BJ, a face washing machine. When he finished with your face, he delights in giving love nibbles on your nose and chin.

Bull Elk

I feel very fortunate to have the use of a photographers fabulous wildlife photos as reference for my paintings, so I offered to paint one of her favorite photos for her.
This photo was taken in Colorado of a spectacular Bull Elk.The photographers name is Linda Schrag. Thank you so much Linda!

This is a watercolor painting of some of my hollyhocks. I think this flower has to be one of my absolute favorites. I used Twinrocker watercolor paper which I love for the brightness and true color. There is no color shift using this paper.

Arte y Pico Award

Doris Glovier has awarded this blog the Arte y Pico award. Thank you Doris! Arte y Pico is a blog from Uruguay created by Ana, who created this award. According to Doris' blog, Arte y Pico means the best art... over the top. I am honored to be a recipient. The rules state that it is now my honor to nominate five deserving blogs. They are as follows:

http://artmaker-cecilia-price2.blogspot.com/
Art by Cecilia Price

http://janefranart.blogspot.com/
Art by Jane James and Fran Van Allen

http://artbydabs.blogspot.com/
Art by Dabs

http://chingizart.azeriblog.com/
Art by Chingiz

http://rodrigowatercolor.blogspot.com/
Rodrigo watercolors

1) If you choose to accept this award, you have to pick 5 blogs that you copnsider deserve this award, creativity, design, interesting material, and also contrubuites to the blogger community, no matter of language.

2) Each award has to have the name of the author and also a link to his or her blog to be visited by everyone.

3) Each award-winning, has to show the award and put the name and link to the blog that has given him or her the award.

4) Award-winner and the one who has given the prize have to show the link of "Arte y pico" blog , so everyone will know the origin of this award.

5) To show these rules.

It's been a while since I have posted anything new, I have been working feverishly on a client website and trying to get some sculptures painted and in between all this I have been working on my mural panel. It took a turn halfway through and I decided to add more horses so it has changed some.
I was at this step a couple of weeks ago:

After a bit more work:

And the finish:

If you would like to see how the main mural is coming along, go to this URL:
http://muralmosaic.com/Cadeau.html

I worked on this a bit more yesterday, just starting to put some paint on the horses so I can start to fine tune them a bit. My plan for this looking like horses running on the plains is morphing into horses running in the surf. I think I will roll with that given the colors I have to work with. It will still be a stormy sky. Debating on putting in some lightening, not sure yet.
I am going to do a second panel for the famous horses part of the mural. I will be doing Seattle Slew which is appropriate for me since I live near Seattle and have seen him run many times.
Should be fun and a challenge.

I am taking part in an equine mural mosaic project which is very exciting. Here is the URL to see the actual project.
http://www.muralmosaic.com/Cadeau.html
Each artist is given a 16" X 16" panel that is already painted on to use for the backdrop for their artwork. You must stay within the colors that are on the panel and if there are any obvious dark or light areas you need to work around those.
Above is the panel that was sent to me originally.
Here is my panel with just the horses blocked in. It is going to be a stormy night with the horses running across the plains.