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!

Painting Success

It is now exactly a month after our VERY successful exhibition and we still stand in awe of what the Lord can do if one put your trust in Him. Our success, fortunately, did not end with the closing of the exhibition. In fact that was just the starting point. Since then Simonette and I both sold some more of the paintings that were exhibited and both of us also got quite a few commissions.
We are very grateful for all the good that has come our way this year, and we are looking forward to even greater blessings next year.
At the moment we are still working hard to get all the commissions done, that's why I've been so quiet. That and the fact that I lost my very dearest furry friend Ami.

Here is one of my commissions - my friend's Schnauzer Tiger:

And here is another commission from a friend. Its from a picture of her grandchildren taken at a birthday party. Faces are always difficult but I think I got the likeness.

And here is a commission Simontte finished today.

If you want to commission a painting, done by either Simonette or me, you can just mail me a picture and the size you want it to be, and I will send you a quote and other information. It can be anything, portraits, pets, abstract, landscape, still life, wildlife. Just CLICK HERE to send an e-mail.

Exhibition now ONLINE

The recent Kaleidoscope of Colour Art Exhibition can now be viewed online on my website. View Online Now.

The paintings that have not been sold on the day of the exhibition is still available at SPECIAL exhibition prices. That will be so for a limited time ONLY. So if you want a real bargain, do not wait too long. The paintings are worth much more than they are priced, but we want to help you to get some nice original paintings for Christmas gifts!

Thank you for your support.

And PLEASE tell us what you think of our exhibition!

Congratulations!!!!

Kaleidoscope of Colour

Raffle

Congratulations to Danel Hanekom from Pretoria, who are the lucky winner of the raffle that we had during our exhibition. Unfortunately there can be only one winner. We would also like to thank everybody who participated.

Lucky Draw

Everyone who came to our exhibition on Saturday qualified for the Lucky Draw. Our winner is Ansie Strydom. Congratulations to you Ansie. Here is a picture of the painting that Ansie won.

Success, success, success!!!

That is how we can describe our first self-organised art exhibition, Kaleidoscope of Colour, which took place on Saturday, 27 October. (Artists were Simonette van Oudtshoorn, Marietjie du Toit, Adele van Andel, Christelle Coetzee and Anton Betz.) It exceeded our wildest dreams and expectations. God blessed us with the most amazing day. There were a constant flow of people from 9am till after 6pm. Everybody enjoyed the snacks and wine, but most of all they enjoyed our very professional display of high quality art.

People walked up and down, taking pictures, enjoying the tranquil atmosphere, breathing in the beauty of the venue itself and the stunning paintings from all the artists. It was just awesome to see how everyone enjoyed the day. We received numerous compliments and positive feedback. Everybody just wants to know when our next exhibition is going to be.

Above all else we were also blessed in that we sold 23 out of the 55 paintings that were exhibited on the day. We also received a few commissions for paintings.

We give God the glory for all the amazing miracles He performed on Saturday.

I believe that even greater things will flow out of this very successful exhibition. We will always aim to provide better and better quality art at the most affordable prices at our next exhibitions.

If you missed out and couldn't be there on Saturday, the whole exhibition can be viewed on my website from Friday  2 November. Paintings that were not sold, will still be available online at exhibition prices, but only until the end of December.

We were so extremely busy the whole day that I didn't have time to take lots of pictures, but here follows a few:

First it took lots of hard work to prepare the venue and to hang all the paintings. Here my friend Nico were helping us.

 Simonette busy organizing on her Blackberry. Everything still standing around.

Anton Betz on the day of the exhibition

Simonette with her stunning African Celebration, or as we sometimes call them, the dancing queens!

Afterwards we celebrated with champagne and a braai