Bequa's Salon Italian Fountain Mural

I thought I would post a few pictures showing what I have been doing every Monday for the past four weeks. My friend, Angie Harvey, and I have been working on this mural for Bequa's Salon in Boise. (That's Angie on the left and a tired looking me on the right.) We still have a few things that we both sort of want to fix, but we are running out of time and wanted to at least get it to the place where it looked mostly finished. I am entering my busy time for art shows and I have to prepare for them so there won't much extra time to work on things like murals.

Basically, I like the way it turned out. I think we are going to add more sky and less green and blue background and I would like to, at some point in time, make the ivy a little bigger. The ivy may looked a bit rushed because we were rushed! It was the last thing we did and we had only about 30-45 minutes to do it. I am still learning how to be a fast mural artist. It is a challenge. I am more like the tortoise than the hare when it comes to painting murals.

Here is the story of how this thing got started. A mural artist friend of mine, Jessie Nilo started this mural several years ago for Bequa in her salon and was unable to finish it. After staring at a partially finished mural for several years, Bequa decided it was time to get this darn thing finished, especially since she was in the process of renovating & redecorating her salon. So she asked Angie Harvey to help her and Angie asked me to help. When Angie first told me about the mural she said it would be just a few easy touch-ups and wouldn't take more than one afternoon. A few touch-ups? I don't think so! Well, what we thought would be an easy touch-up job ended up to be practically a whole new mural that ended up twice as big as the original! Although I did not get paid for this mural, I got some free pizza, an order for a rock animal dog portrait, and a future free hair cut, so I'm happy!

Reflections from The Feathered Nest

My second piece on the theme of Leavenworth, Washington is done! This piece didn't take very long either. I started it about two weeks ago. This is from a photo I shot last fall at Leavenworth. This is a decorative mural that had been painted around the window of a shop in Leavenworth called the Feathered Nest. It had at least five windows and each one was decorated like this, with the pink and blue hand-painted framework around it. This is just one of many examples of the Bavarian style artwork in Leavenworth that really captivated and inspired me. What you see in the window is the reflection of what was both outside and inside of the shop. I love the distorted and abstract composition of it. This is unlike anything I have done before and I like the way it turned out. I am usually a very traditional artist and this has a more abstract twist to it. I call this piece "Reflection Detection."

Pet Portraits and Murals

Yay! I got another photo from a client, which means I have another cat portrait commission to start on. This cat is a long-haired gray cat, darker than my gray cat, Maynard. When the portrait is done I will post both the photo and the finished portrait on this blogsite.

Last Monday my artist friend, Angie, and I worked on a mural painting that we are doing for Bequa's Salon in Boise. This painting is a fountain in an Italian garden with wisteria flowers hanging down. It is almost done, but it is taking longer than we both thought it would. I am not a fast mural artist either. It looks great so far. I hope we can finish it next week. I will post a photo of it when it is all done.

This Thursday I am delievering my rock animal of Bequa's dog, Barbie, to her at her salon and I will get paid then. I showed her the finished rock portrait Monday when I was there to do her mural and she was so overcome, she hugged me! That is what it is all about and that is why I love my job as an artist!

SPAM/VIRUS FOUND ON MY BLOGSITE!

Some SLIMBALL posted a SPAM AD/VIRUS under the Comments section of my 3/27/08 blogsite! No, this is not an April Fool's joke. What happened is when I went to read the comment a dialog box popped up to warn me that there was a virus that would cause my system to crash. Then it said that in order to remove this threat, I needed to download some software called XP Anti-Virus 2008. BUT THIS XP ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE IS ACTUALLY A VIRUS!

Fortunately this virus did not do any harm and I was able to delete it with some of my own anti-virus software. ANY TYPE OF SPAM AND/OR VIRUS IS ILLEGAL AND WILL BE REPORTED TO BLOGSPOT.COM. THIS TYPE OF THING IS UNACCEPTABLE AND WILL NOT BE TOLERATED ON MY WEBSITE! I AM POSTING THIS MESSAGE TO WARN OTHERS ABOUT THIS.

Business is Picking Up!

I am starting to have more art-related projects and tasks now. I just booked myself for at least one, possibly two shows downtown at "Emerging Artists" Capital City Public Market. These shows start in April and go until the end of the year. I will be having a show on June 21, then maybe one show in either April or May. I would book more Emerging Artist shows there if I could but they have it set up so that you are only guaranteed one show a year. They do that so that every artist in the area has a chance to participate. I also applied (a month ago) to be in the Capital City Public Market but I haven't heard from them yet. Seems strange to me because the market opens in a couple of weeks. I'm not holding my breath waiting for them to contact me. If I get in--great; if I don't, that's okay too.

This weekend I finished a rock animal that I was commissioned to do. It turned out real cute. I am doing a mural for a lady who owns her own hair salon and she also wanted a rock animal portrait of her dog, Barbie, who is a blonde cocker spaniel. This dog has beautiful long ears and reminds me of a canine version of Veronica Lake. What makes this portrait unusual is that the dog is wearing a pink T-shirt. This is the first animal portrait I have done where the animal is actually wearing clothing.

I am in the process of getting photos from people who have indicated to me that they want pet portraits. I received two photos this weekend from a lady by the name of Karen, whom I met at the Cat Show. She has two cats, both Cornish Rex cats, whose names are Sienna and Vevay. Sienna is the gray and white cat, Vevay is the orange and white cat. I have posted their photos above.

I have two more people who are in the process of getting photos of their pets and will contact me and probably email them to me. I have a list of about 8 people that I have emailed but haven't heard from yet about their pet portraits. So this week I think I will start calling them on the phone. I have learned the hard way that if you don't get the photos for portraits in a somewhat timely manner, you may not get them at all. So I think I may have to be somewhat persistant. I have never felt comfortable being pushy about stuff like this, but I have learned that there is a fine line between persistence and coming across like a pushy salesman.

Photos From the Cat Show

I thought I would share some of my photos from the cat show a few weeks ago. This first photo (top) are some colorful awards won by a couple of kittens. There are 14 awards between these two cats. Not bad for a day's work.

The second photo is me at my Chick Artistic Creations booth surrounded by the art I have for sale. The one below that was taken during the actual cat judging process.

I had a "meow-varlous" time at this show!

Hidden Lake, Washington

Although I am still putting in some final touches and deciding if I want to change anything, my first piece of art depicting my trip to Leavenworth, Washington is 95% completed. This piece is called "Hidden Lake." It was taken during a beautiful hike I took with my husband and his sister, Chris. She lives 20 miles outside of Leavenworth in a little country town called Plains. The name of the lake is actually "Hidden Lake." I didn't just make it up. This piece was done with colored pencil & turpenoid, with a little spattering of acrylic paint here and there.

I plan to do about three more pieces that are also from places I visited during my Leavenworth trip last October.