Our dog Hugo is settling in nicely. We have taken him to a puppy manners class once, and his next class is tomorrow night.
Heather surprised me this Saturday with the perfect date proposal; that we go to a park where I paint outdoors while she runs with the dog. I felt like Nabokov, who was known to ride in the back seat of a station wagon while his wife drove. They were interested in America's varieties of butterflies and they would travel to see them. Nabokov in the back would work on his books. Hugo and Heather frolicking around, I got back into the swing of painting outdoors; something that is so enrapturing yet moot feeling while you're not in it- like meditation. I had fun and made a painting of a field of clumpy grasses on a sunny but cold winter day.
The next day I went out too; this time just Hugo and I and it was a much more overcast day, and I sat an made another painting- this time of a similar field but with a foreground birdhouse as the subject, with an echoing birdhouse in the distance too. Indeed I was reminding myself of Andrew Wyeth a little with this composition, but I didn't let it bother me too much.
Hugo is a good painting dog companion. Unwittingly I have been informally training him by taking him out to paint plein air. The first time he was entertained by Heather, the second time he split his time between entertaining himself looking for birds and annoying me a little by stepping in paint, and eating a little bit of it, then licking himself to get it off his tongue (I tried to keep him out of it, okay?), staining his white fur permanent rose; (what was I thinking painting an overcast day with that color anyway?). My palette that day was permanent rose, titanium white, yellow ochre, pthalo blue, and black- a very 'fast' palette.
The third painting session in the graveyard went well with the acrylic paints, even though I didn't like the painting.
Today I worked for the Amish, helping the barn builders with updating their website. After work, I came home and knew I had to get a painting done lest I lose the streak. I also feel hot to work on my website after I optimize and hook up the Amish one all day. So I worked on my site a little, then Hugo made it clear he needed to run, so I took the failed acrylic painting back to the graveyard this time with oil paints, and did another failed attempt. Tonight was much cloudier and the sky was orange due to city lights. the painting flipped from a cold scheme to a warm, and my blast over only half covered the surface resulting in a half cold half warm monstrosity. The thing I am writing on about though is that Hugo was a pretty good dog except he started DIGGING in the graveyard at night when I was painting. He was close, so I could stop him, and we were at least on a trail instead of atop a gravesite, but Jesus Pete!
The good thing is when he wasn't digging, he would sit neatly next to me and wait, then, bored, would spring back into a full run out and away in a big exploratory circle, before coming back to my side to sit by me again. "Why are we sitting quiet?" he seemed to wonder, then I think he totally got it- "we're hunting!"
