Chow-shepherd mix. Oil on Pintaur panel, 5x8. Jill, a friend from newspapers, told me in passing that another friend of hers had, like me, quit her job to make her way as a painter. That friend, Jill said, works from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. painting. Romance, Jill said, is not a part of her friend's life.
Her friend's life sounds much like mine, except that I start around 7 in the morning and end around 7 in the evening.
I don't paint the entire time, but I work on my painting business the entire time. I paint, yes. I enter shows. I do research on shows and upcoming events. I answer email. I do squeeze in freelance writing when I have the chance. I post to this blog, and to the new Art for Shelter Animals blog (click here to see that one!)
And just as I'd have days in my newspaper life that would waste away to nothing, I have such days in my painting life. Yesterday was one of them, cut up by demands on my time. Everything I did was worth doing, but it pulled me away from my mission.
So, cold and hungry and disgruntled, I finally got home and took a few hours to paint. I went down into the basement with a teeny photo (the only one available) of Moxie, a chow-German shepherd at the Conn. Humane Society shelter in Waterford.
What I came up with was a painting of this devilish-looking dog, something like a cross between a chow, a German shepherd and Cerberus.
I don't know what I'll do with this painting. Probably, I'll donate it. Somewhere, there's a dog that looks like this one. Just not the dog I was painting!
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