Red Fox Portrait

Another fox?

When I did the first version of this one, it was in my art sketchbook. 

I liked it so much that I wanted to put it on canvas.

The first one was done with watercolor, colored pencils, paint markers, and a little acrylic.

The second one was done mostly with acrylic. 

We occasionally see a red fox, but not often.  I've never had one in my yard or had one bother my chickens, so I'm a friend of the fox.  

When I was a very little girl, I had two invisible friends.  Their names were Foxy and Cool.  My mother once asked me to draw what they looked like. I drew a kind of figure 8 or hour glass shaped blob with eyes, a mouth, and a few hairs on their heads. She used that as a guide to sew them into pillow friends for me.  One was pink and the other was yellow.  

Funny... once they were real... they stopped coming around as invisible.

Thanks to Tamara LaPorte for the fox painting in Sketchbook Revival 2023.

Acrylic Painting on 6"x 8" Wrapped Canvas

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Red Fox

I love smearing paint with a palette knife. 

I love seeing how it looks on the canvas.

I love rubbing my fingers over the texture after it dries.

This  little fox was done with a lesson from Tamara Laporte in a Sketchbook Revival 2023 lesson.

What a pretty little vixen!

I do try to be friends with watercolor, but I'm afraid it's just not a relationship that's meant to be. The very parts that make watercolor special and beautiful (like the blotchiness and unfinished look) also annoy me. 

For some reason, "Oo-de-lally, oo-de-lally, golly what a day" is stuck on a loop in my head.

If you're wondering... yes... still trying to use up that left over paint, but it's almost gone!

Original Palette Knife Oil Painting on 11"x 14" Wrapped Canvas

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I Like Thursday 4/23

 Thank you to Leeanne of Not Afraid of Color for reminding me to notice things I like. 

I like seeing my chickens in the backyard.

I like when a hen gets broody and we can get baby chicks!
After dark we replace the eggs with day-old chicks. Momma hen is so happy the next morning.

I like going on an evening walk down the road. 
We never know who we might happen to meet.

I like these gals...
Elenore, Twinkle, Pip, Pauline, Foxy,
Fancy-like, Doily, Ruby-Jean, Jolene,
Dominique, and her two babies who don't have names yet. 

I like Buff Kitty.

I like... nope... bad Buff-kitty!

I like watching my seeds become plants.

I like seeing the trees turn pink and purple and green!

I like putting my onion sets in the ground and covering them up with soil.

I like first signs of spring.

I like getting the soil ready to become a garden.

LeeAnne gave several other prompts to think about. 
Here are a few quick answers to them:

Do you like spring flowers?

I love flowers that return each year.  Lining our backyard and our driveway, we have daffodils in March and irises in April. In may we enjoy the dogwood blooms in the woods behind our backyard. (June used to be for lilies, but the moles and I have battled... the moles won.)

Do you plant a vegetable garden or pots of herbs? What are your favorites to plant?

I love my vegetable garden.  I find it very satisfying to grow my own tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, jalapenos, onions, okra, and herbs. 

Do you like spring flowers?

I do plant some cucumbers and okra in advance.  I have great sunlight in an upstairs bedroom window.  It's kind of my greenhouse. I buy onion sets, pepper plants, and tomato plants.  I buy herb starts, although I did keep some alive inside all winter.

Is your garden in raised beds, patio pots, or in the ground?

My main garden is in the ground.  It's 13'x 20'.  I also have 20 cow-feed barrels that serve like raised beds and each hold a tomato plant, a pepper plant, or onions. And, I have many large pots to grow things on my back deck.  Everything has to be enclosed with wire fencing.  My deer are beautiful to see, but they are not trustworthy to stay out of my garden.

Birds on a Branch Silhouette

Although we still have some cold days, it is spring.  I'm not a real bird watcher, so I don't know who is making which sound, but I do love hearing the twitters and chirps and whistles and tweets and caws and hoots and trills that surround our home.

My inspiration for this piece came from an Instagram photo that I loved. It was taken by my good friend and photographer Sara. My further inspiration, or maybe motivation, was that I'm still using up paint left over from our students' palettes from our class a month ago.

The challenge for Creative Companions this month was "Silhouette." In my companion piece, I used different kinds of silhouettes.  

• The cardinal silhouette at the bottom was cut from a photograph I took of the cardinals that hang out in a tree by the bird feeder in our backyard. 
• The bird at the top was done through a fun site called Word Art. I simply put in the names of all the bird I could think of that live near me, chose my color palette, and printed.
• The words are just something I've noticed as I get nearer 60!  "Ignored... in the background... They've always been there. The older I get, the more I notice them... enjoy them... look for them in the foreground."

Original on 11"x 14" Wrapped Canvas

Click Songbird Silhouette if you'd like to purchase this painting.