Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Sleet



When I finished art training, I supplemented my bread and butter in fur and whiskers for the most part and that love of creating animals who appear out of paper has never lost its appeal.  I would trundle around old stately homes, photographing and sketching gun dogs. Labradors mostly with some spaniels or setters and terriers thrown in.  I would sit in drafty kitchens with high ceilings, watching dogs transfixed by aging pheasants hanging in larders, flies buzzing around while I silently vowed to become vegetarian.

I occasionally had to put the gentleman of the house in his place as portraits of dogs wasn't on his mind.  And I would silently vow to be a spinster.

But the dogs were always the fun part as I would have them brought into a garden for photos and if I could some live sketches. And I would silently vow that I would own a handful of dogs always.

None of the vows followed through completely.  Life got in the way.  Vegetarianism is borderline.  Spinsterhood was timelimited.  A handful of dogs?  I usually had two until I moved to Canada, then a dog and cat.  Well two cats, one who came to an unfortunate end, the other lasting 18 years and the dog 16.

So even though I spent a month drawing cats, this little fellow had an appealing face so I tried a sketch in charcoal and white pencil on kraft paper in a sketchbook. And silently vowed to keep drawing animals.

Meet Sleet.

4 comments:

Gina Cuff said...

What a great post, Jeanette! And your animal portraits are amazing!

Jeanette Jobson said...

Thanks Gina.

Chris Beck said...

I've gotten quite far behind in blog reading, but wanted to say how much I've enjoyed catching up with your posts -- as usual, wonderful animal portraits and some super people portraits too!!

Jeanette Jobson said...

Thanks so much Chris.