Come Rain or Come Shine

So have you gotten your entry ready for the UVARTs Symbols, Letters, Words ----------- Text Us! Show? How come, you know the deadline is fast approaching. Do you want to be left out?

You don’t have anything that will fit the show requirements. Why not?

That’s an important part of being an artist, being ready. Sure you have things that fire you up everytime, every day, but they won’t always fit the prospectus. You have to expand your vision, take in a new subject and make sure that you don’t work yourself into a rut.

Plants, landscapes and maritime subjects are really cooperative, They don’t move. That’s really helpful when you are doing a painting. Things that don’t move make it much easier to mix paint and compose your image.

But they really don’t challenge you. You want to find out how good you are paint something that moves. No, husbands watching a ball game do not qualify. You have to take their pulse every now and then just to make sure they’re still alive. No asking for beer and snoring are cheats, they make it too easy to be sure. No I was thinking about something with a bit more life. Kids and pets.

Kids make any kind of composition a nightmare and keeping them still without hot glue and a stun gun is something that the Geneva Convention has under study.

That leaves our favorite guys, come rain or come shine our pets love us and will to please us do just about anything.

But pets can be like kids, they move, they twitch they get distracted, How do you tie them down so you can make art and not just a smear on the canvas? (You could do that and call it impressionistic art, but that’s not a way to challenge your skills)

Pets are always willing to be part of your life, even if it involves standing still. This is an area where cats have it all over dogs. Cats will be still for hours at a time plotting new depravations for later. They just manage to do it like Jennifer Anniston with great beauty and grace and when they don’t they do it hysterically.

So here’s your chance, try capturing that expression as your terrier eyes the ball across the room. Got a cat with a crooked grin? What about puppies or kittens? If you can’t make them cute you should take up plastering.

Our pets are there come rain or come shine and it seems a shame not to take advantage of someone who will pose for hours without a word of complaint. The trick is to capture them without making them a cliché. Yeah, it is hard to do but then you’re an artist, right?