Website updated

In the January edition of the SA Artist magazine there is a list of 10 things to do in 2013 regarding your painting career. I find that all of those 10 things mentioned are very important, although we sometimes tend to not even think about that. No 1 for instance is to tidy up the studio - throwing away old twisted and empty paint tubes. I will try to go through the whole list!

Yesterday I did number 7 on the list: Spring clean your website. I didn't change the look, but I reorganised my paintings, added a category for commissioned paintings, linked to my fellow artists' webpages and uploaded new paintings.

Paintings reorganised
In each category you will now first find the available paintings and then the sold paintings lower down on the page.

Commissioned paintings
There you will find out how to commission a painting and also see paintings of satisfied clients.

Linked to fellow artists
Under links you can click on the names of my fellow artists to go to their webpages
Anton Betz
Adele van Andel
Simonette van Oudtshoorn
Christelle Coetzee

The paintings that were on our exhibition are longer on exhibition pages, but incorporated in the various categories.
There is also a new painting of the month.

Please visit the website Painted Canvas  and do feel free to give comments and ideas. It will be appreciated.

A Nice Surprise!

Sometimes, no most often, we as humans plan our days ahead, and we are actually taught by the wise people that we should do it. And quite often our days pan out exactly as we have planned, or more or less at least. But then, in my life, even more often, it does not work that way, not that there is anything wrong with my planning, or the execution of my plans. Sometimes things just happen that we cannot see coming, like the day my dog died. That morning when I woke up I had all kinds of plans, but it all changed the moment I realised she was sick, and I took her to the vet. And later that afternoon she was just gone, but that's a story for a different blog.

This morning I also had my day planned out. Most of the day went according to plan, but I got this nice surprise: About September last year I entered a competition with one of my paintings. The winning painting would have been used for the cover of the December edition of the South African Artist Magazine. I didn't win. But this morning a friend e-mailed me to congratulate me on my great achievement.

In the Jan/Feb edition they gave the competition results of the winners and finalists. He said I was amongst the finalists.

There my day changed - I went to the art shop to buy the magazine, and there it was, a picture of my painting and my name - printed in a real magazine. My painting was amongst the 21 finalists chosen out of about 1200 entries received. What a nice surprise! What  an awesome feeling! What is that other than the favour of God!

This evening also did not go according to plan. On my menu for dinner was ONLY stir fry veggies (still struggling to loose a few holiday pounds!). Rather, we decided to celebrate. We went to Ocean Basket, had a starter, main meal and dessert and bottle of JC le Roux sparkling wine. More favour - it cost only R100, because I had 2 R100 vouchers!

I have previously posted the picture of this painting, but here it is again:  

The Red Umbrella

Pet Portraits

Creating a likeness, whether it be of a person, a cat or a dog or any other pet animal, is not always easy. It is difficult enough to draw or paint an animal or human that is not known by the viewer, but to paint a portrait so that it actually looks like the specific person or animal is even more difficult. Not only do you want to let it look like the model, but you also need to portray the personality or character.

When you do a portrait painting it normally looks very "dead" for most part. You make it come alive when you start with the eyes. And the eyes of a person or animal, done right, tell about the personality. If you don't get the eyes right, it would look like the person's twin or a total other dog or cat. There are a whole lot of technicalities to remember when painting the eyes concerning proportions, highlights and shadows, which will make it easier to do the eyes if you follow those rules. Remember when you do eyes, it says that the eyes is the window to the soul. That is truly so. Once you put the highlights in the eyes, the portrait really comes alive.

I took this photo of a friend's dog, Bennie, two years ago.

And last year December I made this painting for her as a Christmas gift. I changed the background a bit to give it some colour. I think I was fortunate to capture the likeness and to create the eyes. But you be the judge - leave a message to let me know what you think. I can now see the one eye is a bit too small - too much white. I will have to fix that!!

If you are interested in a portrait of your own dog, you can visit my website and get into contact with me and I will send you a quote and other information.

Happy New Year!

The year 2013 is already eight days long, and I know I'm late with my New Year's wishes, but I was on a well deserved holiday and I enjoyed every single moment of it. So I really hope that you all enjoyed a blessed festive season, and I hope that you were all so privileged to have such a nice holiday as I had.

This is my dog Maggie also wishing you all a happy new year! Just look at her smile - she was so glad I took her along on holiday.

This is Maggie and her friends on the beach at Pearly Beach. We stayed at Klein Paradijs - truly heaven!

Our cottage at Klein Paradijs. If you want to take your dogs along on holiday - this is the place to go!!!

Before Christmas I finished these two commissions. Now I still have one more commission to do and then we start working towards our next exhibition which will probably take place some time in April. All the planning and painting still lies ahead, but I look forward to every moment. I will keep you posted.

My New Year's message to all is this:  

Keep the faith, persevere, press in, cease every moment, make the most of every opportunity and stay healthy.

God bless!