Woman Asleep with Guard Dogs #26 is now completely carved. This piece is reminding me of other dog pictures that I have carved and painted. In some of them my guard dogs look more wolf like and possibly threatening. In others the dogs look cuddly. I really don't feel like I'm in charge, what comes out of the wood is something beyond my command. These dog pictures come out of my gut, from emotions that are hard to put into words.
Here is a sketch for another carving with a "people in nature" theme. The woman is asleep, trusting, dreaming, floating in her own world. The dogs are guarding fiercely- or here's another idea, might these be wolves about to attack? They either have teethy grins or teethy snarls depending on whether they are dog or wolf. What do you think of these doggies, are they friend or foe?
Guest artist Mile Davidovic, self described "citizen of the world", lives and works in Belgrade, Serbia (former Yugoslavia). Mile makes colorful oil on canvas and oil on glass paintings. It being winter, I thought the art below would be good for representing his work.
It's worth some (a little bit out of focus) close ups of these wood spirits. Tree huggers, I guess I'm just one of them.
As an aside, anyone out there have a close up lens for a Pentax that they're ready to let go of? Help, I need a better lens.
Besides painting the face details, I've added many more thin coats of paint to make this art work glow.
This version is a little better. I'm always disturbed until I paint the eye and face details, but that's still to come.
I'm using darks in the leaves to make the picture more crisp, but so far it's not working. I'll just have to keep plugging away until this picture works.
Putting the same color paint on the entire carved artwork makes the carving detail appear flat.