PEACEABLE KINGDOM

           I think I can be called a Dog Person. We've had many dogs over the years, mostly Shelties, but we've had Collies and a couple of mixed breeds as well. Both my husband and I love taking care of them, love living day to day with them.  And I love working with them, seeing what I can teach them and finding out what they can teach me. We try to be responsible pet owners.  Our pets are always neutered/spayed, micro-chipped, on leash when out, and supervised every time they go out in our fenced in back garden.   We take them to Dog School and work with them at home because we  want them to be good Canine Citizens.  Just because we love our animals, doesn't mean that other people will, so we don't want super-exuberant  dogs who leap at people in a frenzy of friendliness.                                                                                           But animals are not just pets for me.  They are the inspiration for my art as well.  I have always been attracted to their beautiful shapes, textures and colours.  I have always loved watching the way they move and the way they interact.  Over the years of having multiple pets, I've been fascinated to learn how they interact with each other, and I'm always intrigued, watching how they work out the little problems they come across in their day.                                                                                                                                       It's a joy for me to paint these lovely creatures and so much fun to fit them into my genre  paintings of life in the country.                                                                                                                                           

                                                                                                                                   

I've been blessed to realize my dream of having a horse of my own. We had a marvelous little Morgan for 19 years. He taught me so much, and we had such wonderful adventures together.  And our house has always had a cat too.  As Colette said, "A house without a cat is not a home."  For us, this is true.  And do all our cirtters get along together?  Of course.  Our one major house rule is that we all must get along.  Ours must be a Peaceable Kingdom, and somehow, give or take a minor spat or two now and then, it always is.

  I've always loved animals, and from the time I was a little girl, I wanted to know more about them, to pet them, to understand how their minds worked, to learn how to work with them, and of course, how to draw and paint them.   I've always been entranced by the sheer beauty of dogs, cats and horses.  They are beautiful to look at, and they have a beautiful generosity of spirit and a sense of peace that shines out of them that speaks to so many of we humans.  I know a lot of folks are puzzled by us  wanting  several animalsat a time in our daily lives, and I guess it boils down to, either you get it or you don't. Thank God we both do.  We couldn't imagine our lives without them.                                                                                                  

Cheers                                                                                                                                                   

Heather                                                                                                                                                  

www.heatheranderson-aniamalart.com                                                                                                    

Brilliant Orange

I am MAD about ORANGE!  LOVE IT!!  I love every juicy hue, tone and shade of it.  I couldn't live with it indoors - it's much too strong and active a colour, but outside, in the crisp, clear Autumn air, against a background of burning blue or mysteries-of-the-ages green,  it fills my soul with a frenzy of delight.

                                                      

I love it in a wild tangle, as in the Chinese Lanterns  above and below, spilling it's bright abandon where ever it feels like roaming.                      

                                                                                                   

And I love it tamed, well, (as tamed as Orange ever gets) in a glory of copper pansies.  Last year, I found some spectacular ones in Orange and Black!

          

Orange of course,  is the happy marriage between red and yellow.   You  can buy it in a tube or you can mix it yourself.  There's really no shame in using tube colours!    They have been carefully mixed by people who know what they are doing, and each quality company produces results you can count on.  But if you are the sort who likes a walk on the wild side now and then, you can mix your own secondary and tertiary colours.   ? ??   Many of you who read this are artists, but for those of you who are not, a Secondary colour is one that is created by mixing two Primary Colours.  A Tertiary colour is created by mixing a Secondary colour with a Primary.    Red, Yellow, and Blue are Primary colours, and you either buy them in a tube or you get hold of the correct minerals and suspensions and a grinding stone.  These colours can not be created  by mixing other paints.  But mix a Primary (Cadmium) Red with a Primary (Cadmium) Yellow, and  ORANGE blossoms forth!!!    Change the recipe a bit by using more red or more yellow, and the orange hue changes.  Add a little of it's complimentaty colour - blue - and you tone it down.  Set the complimentary colour beside it, and both colours blast.  I love colour magic!

I'm going to take a quick ramble through the garden now, to soak up the glory of orange. 

Cheers,                                                                                                                                            Heather                                                                                                                                           www.heatheranderson-animalart.com                                     *  All photos are copyright Heather Anderson

STEADY AS WE GO

Today's blog is about art rather than home.  I thought I'd address the subject of staying steady.  By that I mean keeping your career on a steady path and  keeping a flow going with  your paintings.  In art school, we were taught to be careful and thoughtful about where we decided to go with all things pertaining to our painting, and hard as it is, I've tried to follow that advice.
A starting point for me was to choose a reasonable (with some stretching)  goal of painting the best horse, dog and cat paintings I'm capable of doing and selling them to people who love animals as I do. My set of subjects and mediums are those that call to me . . . they are things I love.  I am a watercolourist first and foremost and always will be, but I also enjoy graphite and sometimes dabble in acrylics.  Experimenting with mediums is good, especially when you're starting out - you have to try things to see where your heart lies, but once you find that, it's not a bad idea to stay with it and work at developing your proficiency with that/those medium.  Each of our paintings need to proceed slowly, with a plan of where we are going, and with watercolours at least, thinking about each brushful of paint before we lay it down.
I paint domestic animals because I have loved and felt a connection to them from the first moment I saw them.  That said, I love the world of field, forest and garden as well, and those things fit into my animal work under the net of 'Country Life.  I try to keep my paintings authentic, to keep them about a way of life that I love, know well, and want to share with the viewer.
                                           

Hard as it is, we have to develop a style that is recognizable, and if at some point we decide to change that style drastically, some artists have chosen to present that parallel work under another name as way of keeping things straight for the viewer.  I've never done this, but who knows what wild hare I might try someday.
Pricing is another area where we need to hold steady.  Again, this is from my wise teachers from years ago; if we raise our prices too fast, it's pretty hard (although not impossible) to go back and lower them if the market of the day can't sustain those prices.  But if you are asking $1,000 for a painting in one place, you risk losing credibility, to say nothing of ticking off collectors,  if you then turn around and ask $100 for it at another venue.  Pricing is a mine field, and I'm still trying to get it right.
Another old adage is that if you put too much bad work out there (due to lack of real interest in the painting, rushing, or of reaching too far ahead of  oneself in one bound) you will be giving people a wrong impression of what you are capable of.  We all have a painting or two out there in the past what we wish was not out there, but as much as possible, we need to be seen at our best.
So in my view, if we are committed to being an artist, each painting and our entire career is a case of Steady as we go.
Cheers
Heather
www.heatheranderson-animalart.com

COMFORT

                                           Find A Quiet Corner                        watercolour

This past year and a bit has had its challenges, and by the time mid summer rolled around when things began to quiet down, all I wanted out of life was some comfort.    ( Peace, quiet, staying home, and good health for myself and my loved ones).  I began to notice that I almost lived in my old, worn, comfy jeans and a choice of three T-shirts.  I have lots of clothes, but they stayed in the closet most of the time this summer.  I craved the soft, reassuring comfort of those old, well worn things.
We went back to our old favourite shows on DVD and watched them, almost on a loop.  The familiar voices, stories, and scenes soothed our evenings when we didn't want to think, we just wanted to chill out for a lovely change.
We spent time with friends who have been there since forever, people we love and trust and want to have in our lives always.   And we spent long, peaceful hours with our animals, just hanging out.  Is there anything more comforting than petting a dog or cat's silky fur?  They will sit with me by the hour in companionable silence while my soul heals
We sipped a lot of hot tea, that most soothing of drinks.  It starts most of my mornings and ends the day after dinner.  Serve it in a bone china cup or mug, take the time to inhale the fragrant steam coming off the tea, and sip slowly to make the world go away for a few minutes.
Let's not forget comfort food.  Everyone has their own special food for stressful times.  One of the family favourites here is Shepherd's Pie, or more correctly, Cottage Pie, because we don't eat lamb.  Hot, bubbling, and delicious, it's a go-to meal when we want to relax.  Perhaps you'd like our recipe.

                                                            COTTAGE PIE

The amounts and times are sort of vague, as this changes nearly every time I make it, but here is the standard recipe:    1)  Brown and drain one pound of extra lean ground beef.  We don't like fat, so we pat the beef                        dry as well.   Boil some potatoes while the beef is browning.
              2) slice some onion (not too much) and cook in with the drained meat.
              3)  Add cooked sliced carrots, and frozen peas, in an amount that seems adequate for  your taste
              4)  Add one tin of creamed corn  and salt to taste.  (I never added salt until it was removed                               from the creamed corn, which tastes a little less appetizing  than wall paper paste without the                         salt. .. .  in my opinion.
             5)  Add some Thyme, a bit of Sage, and some Rosemary to taste.  Mix everything well.
             6)  Mash the potatoes and spread more or less evenly on top of meat and vegetable mixture.                             Smooth out, then "flip" into waves.  Brush some margarine or butter over the hot potatoes and                        sprinkle with paprika.
             7)  Heat at 350 until hot and bubbling. (25 - 30 minutes)  Serve with your favourite sauce - ie.                            ketchup, home made chili sauce, etc.

                This gives us dinner for 4 with the addition of  a salad and crusty bread.
Oh, and be sure to relax and enjoy both the prep and the dining.  This is about Comfort. :)

Cheers,
Heather
www.heatheranderson-animalart.com

THE QUIET LIFE

My husband and I love our quiet life in the country.  We both enjoyed the attractions of the social whirl when we were younger, my Sweetie going to sports events and me to the ballet.  He enjoyed venues where he could listen to rock, and I went to the symphony.  I should point out that at  that time,  that we hadn't yet met each other :0  But underneath the fun of going places and seeing things, both of us had a deep seated craving for the quiet of country life.
We moved to the country many years ago and we've never regretted it.  He has loved being able to walk to work in the little village we settled in, and I wanted the time to stay home and paint every day.
 We were warned that the country was beautiful in the summer but bleak and harsh in the winter, but we haven't found it so.  We love all seasons here; the lushness of summer, the glories of spring and fall, and the majesty of winter.

I think we are positively addicted to the big skies, where  we can often see a Splendour of wings overhead,  and there is always time to stop and  listen to the birds, sometimes the rackety gossip of gulls, but more often the chorus of field and garden song birds, each one singing out their joy ..  "Rejoice, we woke up alive this morning!".

I guess the thing we love the most about our quiet life are the evenings, when there is a lovely hush, and with night coming on, we go out and walk in the garden with our shelties to enjoy magic of the gloaming.

                                                Evening Walk                        Watercolour

Where ever you live, I hope you find peace and joy in your daily lives.

Cheers,
Heather
www.heatheranderson-animalart.com

The Discipline of Art

No, wait, this is not a repeat of  last week's blog.  Last week I wrote about needing discipline to follow a career or serious hobby in art. This week, I'm writing about the need to be disciplined in how and what you do with your medium and your paintings.   I always keep discipline in mind when I'm making decisions about my paintings.

SIMPLICITY   Even in a complex painting, I want to make sure that my subject, my center of interest, stands out from the background.  One way to do this is to keep things simple.  I keep the background to what I need to set the scene and learn to understand how much detail is great texture that adds  richness to the piece, and how much detail produces "Busy".   In this Mountain Guide and Mule painting, "DID SOMEONE SAY COFFEE?",  I focused on making the pair of them the thing that you see and stay with.  There is lots of detail in the man and the mule, so I had to restrain myself with the background.    The background is there  to enhance them, not swamp them.

                                            " Did Someone Say Coffee?"             watercolour


COMPLETION    There are times when I just want to finish a painting, call it done, and offer it for sale.  But that's not a great idea.  Not only would I feel I'd be cheating the buyer, I'd be cheating myself, and at these times, I have to find the discipline to keep going, keep making the colours richer, deeper. Sometimes, I want to splash around colour, just because I'm caught up with the magic of  the image and I want to keep adding something new.  But I try to  restrict myself to only those few colours that are going to make the painting "speak", and to keep adding the appropriate colors until the painting truly is finished, not set aside because I'm tired of it.

                               
                                         'MOONSHADOW'                                   watercolour
                                                 
COMPLEXITY    Even when a painting is very complex, I need a sense of order to make it flow.  I need the discipline to create a pattern that leads the eye, makes sense, and is interesting and clear to the viewer.  Even in a very complex, detailed painting, the eye needs a place to rest if you want people to enjoy looking at your painting for the long haul.

In ALL THINGS BRIGHT & BEAUTIFUL, (watercolour) I was very careful that one image led into another, that there were little surprises to discover, and that there was some clear space to rest the eye now and then.  It took a long time to choose the animals for this one, and to put them together so they made some sort of sense.  It was hard work, but great fun!

In 'PATCHES OF SPRING',  (watercolour) there is actually a lot going on, so I kept everything simple.  The trees, the patches of snow and grass, the old leaves, the clouds, the "patches" on the horses, and the grouping of the horses themselves could produce eyestrain if not carefully handled, so I thought about every step, and only used about half of what I could have.  I think the result is fresh, exciting, and yet has a sense of calm, much like a lovely day in early Spring.



So all the while I'm being Creative, expressing myself, and letting the artist in me flow, I am also conscious of the need for discipline in what I'm doing.  It's kind of like riding two different minded horses at once. Are we having fun yet? :0
cheers,
Heather
www.heatheranderson-animalart.com

Art As A Discipline

A few days ago, one of my favorite Face Book people asked the burning question - is there a role for discipline in  today's world.  (I'm paraphrasing this a bit).
 My answer is a resounding YES!  If I didn't have discipline, I would never have made it through Art School.  Working all day and then going to school two or three nights a week, followed by art assignments the other nights and weekends is not for someone who can't force themselves to have good work habits.  And it's not easy.  There is always something much more enticing to do than buckle down and get the work done.
When we were nearing the end of the courses, one of my teachers told us that although we all were there to learn how to draw and paint . . . how to be artists, only a very small handful of the group would actually follow through and make art a career.  He told us that some of us would get discouraged with the near constant rejection . . .boy, he got THAT right!  But like other artists, I learned to live with it and celebrate the successes.   He said that many of us would start off fine, but would find ourselves getting bored or lonely with the solitary life, the hard work with no certain financial reward when the painting was finished, and we would gradually drift into seeking out fellow artists who were beginning to feel the same way and end up in cafes  sipping coffee and talking about art instead of sitting by ourselves day after day, putting paint on paper/canvas, and getting on with our art career.  He said that a very few of us would take that lonely, discouraging path and actually become artists.  The thing that would make the difference was, you guessed it,  DISCIPLINE.
 If I don't do the work, I won't have anything to sell, I won't have anything ready when Opportunity comes knocking at my door, (as it often does) and my art will never get any better nor will my career move forward if I don't have the discipline to establish and keep good work habits.  I have to work nearly every day, even if I don't feel "inspired".  Trust me, NOTHING is more intimidating, more likely to kill inspiration, than that big, blank sheet of white paper sitting on the art table in front of me! Even after all this time, it takes discipline to keep going on a large painting, or on one that is very complicated.  The color pattern on this Australian Shepherd nearly caused my eyes to cross, but I wanted to do it and do it well.

                                          Australian Shepherd                          watercolor

Besides painting, I need to have the discipline to market my work, to return calls/emails from potential clients, be cheerful and polite even when I want to say something quite nasty to a rude comment, I need to keep excellent financial records and a record/diary of my completed work.
Sometimes the size and complexity of a painting is nearly enough to swamp me.  "I'll Do Hay..." is 20 x 27, nearly the full size of a big sheet of watercolor paper, and there were many times I nearly threw the brush in on this one.  I thought it would never be done!  But I'm glad I stuck it out and finished it.  It never would have happened without the discipline of good work habits.

                                    I'll Do Hay, You Start Coffee                           watercolor

The bottom line I think, is that if you want something badly enough, you have to be willing to have the discipline to work for it.
Cheers,
Heather
www.heatheranderson-animalart.com