The heat is on..

June 14, 2016 ~ thepurpledogpaintingblog ~ Leave a comment

Recently I participated in an ATC trade. An ATC is a small card about the size of a playing card, that is 2.5 inches by 3.5 inches.

Most trades have themes, for this one the theme was “Warm Weather”.

I used ink and watercolor to make some scenes from various festivals and other warm weather activities. These will most likely appear bigger in your screen then they are in life. The color looks better in real life as well, my photography brain left me stranded when I took these.

“The Carousel”

There is a Carousel in Port Dalhousie, Ontario. The price is still only 5¢.

That carousel, has one of the five Loof lions that are left in North America. Their lion is the only left that has its head turned to look at the spectators, which for some reason has always made me happy. 🙂

“The Cherry Blossom Festival” is usually one of the first warm weather festivals and is the best smelling one to boot.

“The Flea Market”. My Dad, was not a shopping/ clothes minded guy . One day he wandered off at a flea market. He came back with a gigantic bag of factory castoff socks. He paid $2 for all those socks and it made him sooo happy. My mother who had just accidentally shrunk his pea green plaid suit by putting it the dryer fifty times was not so happy. Coincidence? I think not.

“The Hiking Trail”. With the upsurging popularity of the Parks system, it will be only a matter of time before Yeti becomes a bearded, top knot wearing hipster.. If he opens a coffee shop and hires a groovy ukulele playing singer, it could work out well for him.

“The Campground” where you go after hiking. It is also where the raccoons go. Once when we were out on a canoe trip, our campers were getting a little freaked out by raccoons who were making various.. um, love songs, let’s say. We told them to scare them off by making noise. Not too long afterwards, we heard an especially long “love song”. As soon as it stopped all our campers burst into claps and whistles. I swear that raccoon walked right into the clearing and gave a bow..

“The Strawberry Field”. I should have added a couple kids pelting each other with soft strawberries because as anyone who has been strawberry picking with my brothers knows..that happens.

“The Music Festival”. Those prices are getting out of control, man.

“The Garden Show”. I once spent a summer slightly adjusting and moving my neighbors gnomes every day. Ended up getting the whole neighborhood involved so she couldn’t figure out who was doing it. Drove her crazy….good times, good times.

“The Craft Show” where crafty people while never admitting it, go to get more ideas on crafts to craft..Crafty crafty crafting crafters.

“The Farmer’s Market” where the pies are sweet and the birdies say tweet.

“The Waterfront” or “Why I love boating”.

“The Renaissance Fair”. Cheers good Knight!

©Virginia Spencer, thepurpledogpaintingblog.com, 2016

Muhammad Ali

June 4, 2016 ~ thepurpledogpaintingblog ~ 1 Comment

Float like a butterfly

Sting like a bee

May you rest in peace

Muhammad Ali

©Virginia Spencer, thepurpledogpaintingblog.com, 2016

Scratch Scratch

April 26, 2016April 26, 2016 ~ thepurpledogpaintingblog ~ 4 Comments

This is what a squirrel looks when it scratches its back on a peanut shell.

Sexy, non?

Apparently he became itchy while trying to steal seeds from the bird feeder. The local birds were not all that thrilled.

Run, little squirrel! Run!

It’s okay, he’s safe, that was from February.

Spring is definitely in the air here.

Meanwhile back at the easel..

The palette came out better than the painting!

And at the drawing board. This is ink, 10x 3 inches. I’m debating on whether or not to color it in.

town ink Virginia Spencer

Close ups.

halftwo

half one

Hope everyone is having a good spring!

©Virginia Spencer, thepurpledogpaintingblog.com, 2016

Leaps and bounds..

February 29, 2016February 29, 2016 ~ thepurpledogpaintingblog ~ 5 Comments

I didn’t want to leave February without a post, thank goodness for that extra day!

My surgery went well and I’m as happy as a squirrel with a piece of buttered popcorn.

Dummy was a bit perturbed that I didn’t share his holiday greetings so…

Happy Belated Valentine’s Day!

See you soon!

©Virginia Spencer, thepurpledogpaintingblog.com, 2016

Happy New Year!

January 2, 2016January 2, 2016 ~ thepurpledogpaintingblog ~ 6 Comments

A bit late but well intended nevertheless.

Here’s a bright bird to start the year off. I’ve had an injury and will be having an operation on my arm so this was an experiment with large brushes and lots of paint mostly because it was driving me nuts not to paint.

I have lost some movement and control but I have not lost the ability to write run on sentences. Yay!

11×14, Acrylic, Goldfinch on a cone flower.

Don’t worry though I have some friends looking in on me. I mean literally just walking up and looking in the window. Who does that? I appreciate the thought but use the door for Pete’s sake.

While I’ve been icing my arm, my trees decided to show me how it’s done and are doing a little ice therapy in my backyard. So pretty.

I hope you and yours had a wonderful start to the year!

©Virginia Spencer, thepurpledogpaintingblog.com, 2016

Under the knife..

December 4, 2015December 4, 2015 ~ thepurpledogpaintingblog ~ 3 Comments

I’ve been playing with knives.

Palette knives that is.

No one trusts me with the real kind…sigh.

This first one is acrylic, 11 x 14, inches This is the Wheatfield in Gettysburg, PA. where we visited recently.

The Wheatfield had during one day over 20,000 men fighting on her soil and ended with mass causalities. It’s not a terribly large area, I can’t imagine what they must have suffered through. It’s one of the many places on this earth where if you stand still for a moment you can feel the sorrow welling up.

With this painting I used the palette knife over a brushed in backdrop. The brushwork on the bottom layer was used to create the soft edges of the distant hills.

This tree was a fun sort of leftover paint attack. This was done solely and a bit souly with knives. I really enjoyed throwing the paint around on this. It’s in acrylic and is approximately 11 by 14 inches.

This one wasn’t done with a knife, just regular old brushes. My brushes are so beat up, I hold on to them until the very end. Acrylics are rough on brushes. Some people will tell you to spend a tonne of money on brushes but really as long as they’re not the kind where the hairs fall out, the cheap ones are fine. It’s 4×6 inches and I call it “Blue Christmas” ’cause I love Elvis.

And here’s another 4×6 inches. This is an acrylic of one of my favorite ornaments, an inch high wooden rocking horse.

If you have any questions about the paintings or technique or what have you, feel free to ask in the comments.

Have a good one.

©Virginia Spencer, thepurpledogpaintingblog.com, 2015

Keep Clam!

October 29, 2015 ~ thepurpledogpaintingblog ~ 4 Comments

Zeus is itchy.

It’s his yearly Autumn Itch.

So I bought him some itch relief stuff.

Let’s read the bottle..let me see..we have

Deep skin cleansing….splendid, that’s much better than shallow skin cleansing.

Complete body cleanser..even better, not much point only cleaning part of it.

Soothes ….great stuff, nothing better than a soothing soothe.

Clams.. sure a good clam is..What?…I mean..Pardon?

Hmmm..Yup that’s what it says..

Soothes and clams…

I’ve never had my dog clammed before.

Shellfish of me I know.

I wonder if it’s good for his mussels?

Sorry I’ll scale back.

I know it’s getting ruff.

It’s load of carp really.

Llama get back to the point.

It’s not like this happens aviary day.

It’s dragon on…

No use hanging around.

Or lion..

I’m just kitten..

Sea ya!

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©Virginia Spencer, thepurpledogpaintingblog.com, 2015

Public Service Announcement

October 28, 2015October 28, 2015 ~ thepurpledogpaintingblog ~ 2 Comments

This is a public service announcement.

Do not run with apples in your mouth!.

Stop it!

Put that down!

It looks ridiculous.

Much as I appreciate the art of meditation that doesn’t look much better.

“Thpbfft!”

How rude!’

Now everyone..

Jump!

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Please click here for available prints.

Thank you!

Wandering

October 16, 2015October 16, 2015 ~ thepurpledogpaintingblog ~ Leave a comment

Recently I was at Fort Erie, across from Buffalo, New York. It sits on the shores of Lake Erie, near the mouth of the Niagara River.

From it you can see the gorgeous Art Deco building that is Buffalo City Hall. The City Hall was designed by architect John Wade and finished in 1932. There are triumphant arches and columns and reliefs and sculptures and mosaics and a bat signal on the roof.

Fort Erie was originally built in 1764 during Pontiac’s Rebellion. Pontiac of course had been overtaking the cart market which the British did not appreciate. Soon after, the Brits sold Jaguar to Ford who sold it to the Tatas, a group of entrepreneurial strippers and a couple hundred years after the Fort was built, Pontiac ceased productions.

Okay, that may not be quite what happened.

However at one point during the War of 1812, the Fort did blow up..

What happened was that the British were led by a general so inept, his subordinate officers including his own nephew settled their affairs and gave away valued property before following his battle plans. They knew they were doomed.

They were right. It turned out that firing a cannon over top of a large powder magazine was not a great idea. The explosion threw the two tonne cannon over one hundred yards. Hundreds died or were wounded and more than 500 soldiers simply disappeared in the initial blast and the ensuing fires.

Brutal stuff.

General Drummond, the man responsible for the whole mess had a road named after him in Niagara Falls.

It’s still there if you’d like to go stomp on it.