MAMBO

12x24 oil on canvas, sold

Now that Christmas is past, I can share what I was busy with before the end of the year. Mambo's painting was one of two paintings commissioned by a friend's husband. I love how husbands call me a couple of weeks prior to their special events...actually, I love how husbands think of paintings for special events! :)

On the day after Christmas in 2006, celebrating the holidays in Corsicana, Tx at the family's ranch, Mambo wandered up with a stick in his mouth. The young couple did the obvious; they threw the stick. He was elated. That first game of fetch lasted over an hour, and by the end Mambo had taken his hold on their hearts. After an exhaustive search for the prior owners, Mambo was adopted. Fetch remains his all time favorite activity!

I can attest to Mambo's love of fetch; Cowgirl and Mambo have had a couple of play dates, as long as there is nothing to fetch, Mambo will happily play with Cowgirl. I'll post the companion to this painting in my next posting.

MUDBUGS

The so very talented, Jean Townsend selected detritus as the theme for her Texas Moleskine. I struggled quite a bit with the subject matter. I wanted to be original, but did not have a clue what to paint until I thought of painting crawfish. Hailing from SW Louisiana, I know a thing or two about the ever popular crawfish boil...served on a heaping pile of newspapers and with the crawfish and vegetable remnants left behind you have the perfect pile of detritus. I usually begin with a sketch, but since I did not know where to begin with this tangled mess of legs and tails, I "drew" a few lines with my brush and then just jumped in. It was cropped "rough" so that you could see my own detritus in the making. Thanks, Jean...this was fun!

Thank you so very much for following my blog, despite my absent postings, your e-mails, comments, and encouragement mean a lot to me. Here's to painting and posting more in the upcoming year; Happy New Year!