Walk along the Beach

Beach Walk watercolour pencils and ink. Journal page

One of my favourite things to do in winter is to walk along the beach with my dog.  There has been a few dogs now that I have done this with, Hannah my latest is dog number four.  The one thing that always makes me smile when walking a dog is how far they walk compared with you.  I wander in a fairly straight line while they dart all over the place going at least four times the distance as I do.  You know with the keen sense of smell that there is so much more for them to discover, I feel rather left out sometimes.  But them considering what they like to stick their noses into, perhaps not.

Hannah at the Beach at Lorne

While walking Hannah along the beach at Lorne yesterday a noticed all our prints on the wet sand on the way back and thought what a great pattern they would make, so at lunch time I started the picture.  I think it shows how the walk along the beach went.

Karen

New Member of the Family

Max 14 Weeks Fast asleep with Ratty.

We have a new member of the family, a little man called Max.  He is fourteen weeks old and the wiggly-est and climbing-est puppy that ever won your hearts.  He is a rescue dog so we know his mother was a Kelpie (Australian sheep/cattle dog) but we are not sure who the father was.  Best suggestions so far are Staffordshire Terrier or Doberman, but we will have to wait till he grows up or we can get him DNA tested.  (Yes for only $60 Aus, you can find out the parentage of your dog.)

Hannah and Milo, sitting up very straight and being good.

We already have two dogs, so it was going to be interesting to see how they took to the puppy.  Milo is a 12 year old, chocolate lab, who has already dealt with a Great Dane and a Wesite puppy , so we knew she would just roll her eyes at another puppy and hide in her basket.  Hannah the 4 year old Westie was thought to be the problem one.  She has ruled the roost (Milo never saw the point in trying to be dominant, did it involve food or basket, then what was the issue), and we weren’t sure if Hannan was going to like having competition around.  Westies can be a very determined little dog.

Milo relaxing in her basket, she does take it to an art form.

How wrong we were, she was besotted from the start.  She follows him around and lies there looking at Max waiting for him to wake up and play with her again. So sweet, they are the best of mates and this keeps the puppy from bothering Milo.

Max and Hannah playing.

(First ever Youtube clip for me.  Yvette my social media mentor will be proud of me.)

So despite some damp patches, one chewed pencil and eraser all is going well in our doggy family.  Oops I hear yelling and the dogs have just scattered, someone is in trouble.

Karen

Karen

 

The Dog Ate my Painting

This is the scoundrel that perpetrated the crime.

This is a  sketch of my lovely little girl, Hannah, a West Highland Terrier.  She was lying beside me and just put her head on my lap and was looking up at me wondering what I was doing.

I thought it was time that I drew my dog,  it didn’t seem right that a dog lover would be only drawing cats.  I haven’t drawn a fluffy dog before, nor had I owned one before, had some difficulty in drawing a white dog on a white page.  Next time I will try dark coloured paper to see if that makes it any easier.

Little did I know the mischief that she was about to be up too.

For the last few weeks I had been happily (if slowly) working away on my next painting.  It was to be another large work and I had done the basic sketch, painted the background and was just starting to work on adding the pencil details.  It was at the stage when I wasn’t sure if it was going to work as it was a painting of a Banksia somewhat fluffy, which was different from my other smooth flowers I had previously done.  I was struggling with how this was going to work with the strong outlines that I been using.  But the question was sorted for me.

So readers I have not posted in a while because the dog ate my painting.  (I could not wait to use that line).  It was my fault as I had left it on the ground for a few days and it was clearly too much temptation.  A lesson learned, and I am not too upset as I had a few issues that needed to be resolved in the work, so I will just have to start again, or call it fate and begin on something new.

Karen