Claire's Portrait

© Robin Edmundson, 'Claire Introducing Pepper to the Duckling',
watercolor,  12 x 9 inches.

For a few years now, Claire has been asking me to do a painting of the ducks and the dog.

There were several challenges:

• Ducks are a moving target.  You can practically watch them grow when they're little and they're either hiding or racing away at light speed.
• When the grown ducks are still, they tuck their heads under a wing and look like giant fluffs, with no discernible features.
• Dogs are frequently still, which is lovely, but this dog is black.   Black dogs show their features as they move and the light reflects off their fur.  If they're still, they're a black lump with no discernible features.  
• I'm a landscape artist. I like barns and hay bales. Painting people and animals makes me nervous and when I'm nervous I don't paint well.  

Claire told me I was being ridiculous and to just paint the dog or the ducks for heaven's sake. 

So I kept stalling.  For another year. 

In the meantime, I had the camera close by one day when Claire was snuggling the ducklings and teaching Pepper that ducklings are not snacks.   I was able to get a few pics of the three of them - enough to combine some poses and come up with this composition.

Whew. 

But I kept stalling.

This year I decided I wanted to surprise her for Christmas, so I pulled out the photos and went to work.  I knew that Claire would love a painting of one of the animals, but getting her in there with them would put me in the running for BestMomEver - as long as it turned out.   I figured I'd just keep doing draft after draft after draft until one clicked.   First I did a couple of pencil sketches to get down the composition.   Then I started painting.

More challenges:

• My daughter is ghostly pale.  What pigments to use for skin?   I used a very pale wash of burnt umber with a tiny bit of quin magenta.
• She changes hair color frequently.  Which color to put in the painting?   I went with her then-current color -- natural [dark blonde] at the roots and dyed red and burgundy at the tips.  [Those colors didn't last much longer - her hair is purple as of New Year's Day]
• She was wearing an old work shirt that she hated.  What to do instead?  Since she had red [orange] hair and I knew the background would be greens, I went with a pale purple shirt. I really love the purple/green/orange combination and I figured that would make me feel easier when I was painting.  It did.  
• The dog is black and in photographs looks like a big black hole. How to get a look at the rest of her features well enough to paint them?  For this, I went to photoshop and adjusted the brightness until I could see Pepper's features.  It was so bright that you couldn't see much of Claire at all, so I just focused on the dog and then when I was painting Claire, I darkened the reference photo back up. 

I kept telling myself not to worry about getting every detail - to use this as practice suggesting some things instead of spelling everything out.  Each time I painted the piece, I tweaked the colors or shapes a bit and each time I got more practice painting the dog, which turned out to be the most difficult part of it for me.   I did two sketches and two paintings and the third painting was a keeper.  

I framed and wrapped it and gave it to her after dinner on Christmas Eve.  She was very surprised and very happy with it.  [I did get the BestMomEver award.] 

The Mailman Always Brings Treats

© Robin Edmundson, 'The mailman always brings treats', watercolor, framed 27 x 33 inches.  $650

Finished!  

I got stuck on this one at one point and put it up for my critique group to look at.  I thought it needed some vultures and I got some great ideas from the group about the birds on the wire, too.  In the end, I did both because when I covered up either set on the transparency I tried it out on first, I missed it.   Plus, I regularly see that many birds hanging out all over the place here, so it felt natural.

It's at the framer now getting all dressed up for the Big Show in August and September.

New Addition

Meet Pepper.   She the newest addition to the farm.

She's a lab/German shepherd cross - just about 2 months old now.  She's going to be huge.  We've been waiting and waiting for the right puppy to come our way and when this one did, we snapped her up.  We are delighted with her. 

Tibby, predictably, is not thrilled.   It'll be a while before they're friends. 

Scary

So it turns out that there are some pretty scary things around here.  

I'm not talking about the snakes.   Even though there is this one water snake that lives along the road that is easily as big around as your arm.   I'm totally not exaggerating. 

OK, I am totally exaggerating.   It's not that big.   It just seemed that big when it scooted off the culvert top and splashed into the creek with a mighty splash that sent a tidal wave of water up the creek and flooded our lower pasture.  Twice.

OK, that never really happened.  There was a snake, and a mighty splash but no actual flooding anywhere after it dropped into the water.

Hyperbole is a story teller's BFF.

Other scary things around here include some ginormous spiders,  some ginormous cows and a really scary monster.

Which turns out to be me.

No kidding.  According to all the dogs that live around here except mine, I am The Scariest Thing in the World.  They all stay out of my way.  Please note:  I have never hurt one.  In fact, I don't even have to touch them.   I am scary out of pure intimidation.  [I know some people who think so, too.   You know who you are.]

We get a lot of strays out here.  Seriously many.  Six so far this summer.   It's like there's some website somewhere with a map of Where To Dump Your Unwanted Dogs and it has a big arrow pointing to our road. 

A couple of days ago, I chased a stray dog away from where it had been sleeping on my flowers and eating Tibby's dogfood.   It wouldn't leave us alone or go away so I decided to take it with us on our daily walk and then leave it a mile up the road at the blacktop where it could go find someone else's flowers to sleep on.

It worked like a charm.   That poor dog followed every rule of Pack Etiquette, never getting ahead of me [Pack Leader] or my kids.  It knew its place.  We got to the blacktop and I went into my Big Scary Person Whom A Dog Does NOT Want To Follow Home.

This involves me baring my teeth, growling and stomping around at them with my arms outstretched like Michael Gambon in that scene from Wives and Daughters where he's playing with his little grandson flapping around like a giant bird.  Really.

I am very good at it.   By doing this, I am able to scare the pee [literally] out of dogs, who cower on the ground in front of me.  All the neighborhood dogs that have tried to hang out here are terrified of me.  It's freaking hilarious.

On this day, after we got to the blacktop,  I went into my Big Scary Monster act and I was insisting that the stray stay up the road and around a corner.   This means that I scare it where I want it, then turn my back and walk away.  If it follows, I do it again.   And again.   Usually it takes no more than a half dozen times and sometimes much fewer.   You have to be firm and willing to do it as many times as possible.   When that dog sees you on another day, all you have to do is bare your teeth and look mean and it'll stay away.  Works like a charm.

This stray was persistent.   Doggone dog wouldn't stay gone.  I picked up a couple of big sticks to hold in each hand and wave around to make me look bigger.    Finally, that dog stayed put.   I turned around and headed back down the road where my girls and our dog were waiting for me just around a curve out of sight.  

And then a bunch of coyotes in the thicket right next to me started howling and yipping.  Loudly.  Coming toward me.   And it sounded like lots of them.   Coyotes in full voice are one of the creepiest, most blood-chilling sounds out here. 

It scared the living tar out of me.  I pitched the sticks and took off back toward the girls, calling them but they couldn't hear me over the coyotes and the loud pounding of their hearts and feet as they ran the other way.   All I could think was that I'd make a pretty good target for the coyotes who were no doubt in hot pursuit.  I kept looking back.  And then saw that the stray followed me again, too.  Apparently, coyotes are even scarier than me.

I got the girls to stop, and I picked up some more sticks with which to wave like Monster Arms to scare that stray.   About that time a man came walking around the curve with an even bigger stick in one hand and a pistol in his other.   I wondered if I ought to stomp around and try to scare the pee out of him.  

I don't see well at distances and it wasn't until he called out to ask if that was my dog that I realized it was a neighbor, whom I like a lot, but didn't expect to see walking on the road amidst all the howling, carrying a stick and gun.   The stray saw the two of us and hid in the brush at the side of the road. So, Ben and I watched it and swapped stray dog and coyote stories.   He'd seen me stomping away the stray up and down his hill a few times [I can just imagine him howling with laughter at that sight!] and then heard the coyotes and came out with the gun to make sure we were OK.   God bless him.  

About that time, Eric drove up, home from work, and stopped and talked with the truck  right where that poor stray was hiding and we all chatted for a while.   Then I started home with the girls and Eric talked to Ben about guns and the stray didn't follow us home.    And neither did the coyotes.

The stray was so traumatized by the Robin Monster and the coyotes and the neighbor and the truck, that it has stayed away.   The next day, when we went for a walk, it was hanging out with another dog at a house near the road.   It thought about coming over to say Hi, but when I glared at it, it turned around and went back to its buddy. 

The End

By the way, this pic up there has nothing to do with this post.  I just thought it was pretty how the sun hit the grass just right.  

Mistress of Her Domain

One day not long after Tibby came to us, we heard ferocious noises coming from the creek.    She was barking, snarling and yelping.    It sounded like she was fighting something particularly nasty and that the fight had moved into the water.    

When we heard all the noise we feared Tibby had found a water snake and commenced battle.  We have diamond back water snakes here and they are not polite, unlike our other snakes, which I love.   Water snakes are notoriously aggressive and they like to hang out in the creek...them bein' water snakes 'n' all.     We rushed to Tibby's aid.  

She was thrashing about in the water, making all sorts of noise, but since she'd muddied everything up, we couldn't see what she was after.    We saw that she was fine and we figured she must have let whatever it was go.  


Then it happened again.  

And again.  

Turns out, Tibby loves water. 

Really, really loves water.  

It's her favorite toy.    I'm not kidding.   This is Tibby's playground.

 She thrashes around and bites the water.

Then she bats it with her paws to make bubbles and foam.

 

Then she thrashes and bites the water again.  She spends a lot of time in the creek just playing.

Then she gets out and shakes all over us and looks really pleased with herself.  It won't take long til she's back in there fighting the bubbles.

She is mistress of her domain.  

Tibby

Tibby is a big black dog with a white chest and big brown eyes.  I love her.  She has a scar on her nose where she did combat with a snake once when she was a puppy.  Since then, she doesn't much care for snakes, and really, who can blame her?   I wouldn't like snakes either, if one bit me on the nose.   I haven't been bitten on the nose by a snake though, so I still get along OK with snakes.  In fact, I like them a whole lot and every time one shows up I go introduce myself and.....but I digress - this story isn't about snakes, it's about chickens.

Tib was still a bit of a puppy when she came to live with us.  She'd belonged to a student who tried to bring her to college.  It didn't work out so Tibby went back home to the student's farm to play with the horses and to fight snakes.  She was smart and got into a lot of trouble.  She missed the student.

At around the same time, it became apparent that our old dog was getting far to old to do his job.