Dog Day Afternoon

Last night we watched the Mets lose in the rain, both of us with an animal tucked under our arm for comfort. I didn’t mean to become a baseball fan but I got lured in by my husband’s enthusiasm. And his cute hat. The only good news of the day is that I managed to finish two pieces of artwork.

I said before that I didn’t really labor over either of them...but that ended up not being true.

First, I painted this dog for the living room. It’s a silhouette of Sam (sort of) in one of my new favorite color schemes. I found an old sheet of canvas fabric in the basement that I’d used long ago to paint a sign for one of Jeremy’s CD tables. I flipped it over and discovered that I really like painting on this type of canvas, as opposed to the stretched white kind from the art supply store. It was easier to control my brush. Although I am really happy with how this dog painting turned out and love how it brightens up a once too-brown corner of our living room, I can’t really take much credit because I copied the design. While flipping through my Anthropologie catalog, I had spotted this similar silkscreen print of a greyhound and had one of those “I can do that,” revelations. Especially since their version was $498!

Here are both versions:



I tried to use Sam as my model, but he wouldn’t hold the pose for very long, so I ended up stealing a few details from the catalog page. I figured it’s okay since I’m not going to sell it, and I’m admitting that mine is entirely unoriginal.

This is a photo of Jeremy (later in the evening) showing his excitement over the dog painting (okay, actually he was cheering for the Mets who made an amazing play in the 6th inning.)


After the dog, I moved on to something more my own...I decided to finish this fork painting I had started two years ago for the kitchen...(another unfinished piece I found while scrounging in the basement.) All it really needed was a background and a few details so I got out my palette knife and slapped on some blue and white paint. That’s the point when I thought I was almost finished, and started my bragging about having whipped up two paintings with barely a thought. Tra-la-la.


But after the Mets lost, I went back over to inspect the fork and realized I didn’t like it so much. It didn’t measure up to the quality of the stolen dog, the tines on the fork were uneven, and the image was too small for the space it’s going to hang. So I painted over it and now it’s a pear.