Our beloved Skye terrier, Jewell, was a bit of a vamp.  She lived for love.

We would not have predicted this, given her appearance:  a Skye is built like a dachshund who has streaked her hair and let it grow long, producing an Old English sheepdog who is apparently walking on her knees.  Add to this a pair of outsized prick ears which at a distance conjure Micky Mouse.  One neighbour referred to her as our "stretch limousine."

A series of casual liaisons put the lie to our assumptions.  First to fall victim to her allure was Alfie, who was not only a pitbull but a particularly tough one.  He ran daily past our place with his athletic owner until the day he spotted Jewell sitting peacefully on the lawn.  She was not a wanderer and never had to be leashed.  Alfie came to a full fast stop and affected a casual saunter towards her.  Concerned, I started towards them, but there was clearly no need.  If anyone needed a rescue, it was Alfie.  He was besotted.  They romped in circles for a few minutes and Jewell even allowed him a deep sniff after satisfying her own nose as to his worthiness.  After that they always galloped towards one another ecstatically.  He would return to his human but not without at least one yearning backward glance.  Jewell was already thinking about something else.

Alfie passed away but was easily replaced by Mouscu, a scruffy Pomeranian with a pronounced under-bite.  No matter.  Different actors, same plot.  And so it goes.  The saddest part was seeing Mouscu scan the lawn in January while Jewell snoozed on the best chair in the living room.  The only two male dogs who disliked her were nasty old Caspar (a dauchshund, of all things) and Canyon, who took his cue from his steady girl but came calling as soon as she moved away.  Our lawn was an olfactory Eden and, when we were out walking, I frequently congratulated Jewell for her diligence about sending and retrieving peemail.

Not that male dogs were her only targets.  We started to call Jewell The Schmoozer after she was invited to a number of garden parties and we had the opportunity to watch her work the crowd.  Her stopwatch must have been set to ten minutes;  she would plunk herself down in front of a man and stare at him until he patted her.  Next, she would flip his hand up until he patted her some more and got into a rhythm.  About the time (Minute 11) that the poor sucker had begun to mutter endearments,  she would stand up and pad off to the next conquest.  And repeat.  Again, it proved heart-breaking to watch.  She was always a bit full of herself after a party. 

I took the shot for this painting on a sunny October day when Jewell climbed into a pile of leaves and settled in for a sniff.  I think she was re-reading old love letters.

Hydrangeas, too, are blooming in the garden.  I painted these ones en plein air but they were still in their pots.  Later, I faithfully planted them but should not mislead you as to what they look like now;  only in August do I think to myself:  "Really should have added copper sulphate this spring."  I am making progress, however.  Just this winter I read somewhere that the phrase "blooms on new wood" applies to hydrangeas and simply means that they should be severely pruned in fall or spring,  or their flowers become shrunken, like little mummified heads, on last year's branches.  I went at them with a vengeance this spring and they obviously thrive on abuse, fat-headed again, but still pale.

Just to be clear, I have no intention of ever painting hydrangeas again.  (A friend has been trained to remind me:  "Don't ever paint another violin."  I should have her add "hydrangea" to the mantra.)  Have you ever counted the number of individual flowers on those glorious pinky-blue heads??  As you will note, I chose to highlight a few florets but ultimately chose sanity over complexity.  The full painting is about three times as wide as it is tall and I was a wreck by the time I finished it;  while watercolour is not quite as unforgiving as some would have you believe, it is still hard to back out of a problem, especially if the colour you wish to alter is a "staining" one.  Sometimes you have no choice but to "crop" it down.  Everyone I know who paints in watercolour has at some point had to choose felicitous sections of a painting or two;  out of some misdirected frugality, we then cut the rejected part(s) into bookmarks.  You will notice that our group shows always feature  free bookmarks, every one different.  Now you know why.  

This time of the year, the waterlilies are in bloom.  The lotus flower is spectacular, to begin with.  They are harder to paint than I would have predicted because they, like clouds, appear at first glance to be all white;  closer examination reveals that the petals are defined by the colours they reflect and their tiny imperfections where some insect has taken a bite;  their centres stand as stiffly as soldiers and glow with a yellow that painters will identify as cadmium yellow deep.

The leaves, however, are even better!  They reflect the sky and the flowers;  these ones begged for the laying in of Prussian blue glazes.  And they forced me to learn how to paint water droplets.  My father bought a print when I was a child;  the artist had painted a rose with a perfect droplet beside it and Dad endlessly admired  that detail. As a result, I felt daunted at the prospect of trying one.  It turns out that a drop of water has two predictable characteristics:  it casts a shadow, and it always has a spot or two of reflected light, as your pupil does.  And while a droplet tends to be rounded or globular, its shape is ultimately determined by its circumstance, as in the case of the upside-down heart in the upper right.  

I remember trying to bring waterlilies home, always failing and feeling like an assassin.  This is much better.   

There is something magical about roads which, in the distance, gently turn and disappear.  One is left with the mystery of what a traveller might discover on such a road;  Robert Frost certainly chose one.  One of my favourite poems, "Curiosity," contrasts  the stodgy "dog" (who prefers "well-smelt baskets and suitable wives") and the adventurous "cat" (who needs all nine lives because curiosity causes him "to die again and again/ Each time with no less pain").     I know myself to be a dog but I do admire cats,  and I do stand and ponder paths which meander away. 

This particular oil is based on a photograph I took a century ago on Salt Spring Island.  We had rented a house near the north end of the island;  naturally, Jon had brought his bike and his fishing rod so he was often away and I was happy to to paint or to hike the almost deserted road.  It was an unusually grey winter and the area was heavily forested. But one day the sun broke through and turned the road blue.  This painting is a celebration of that moment.

As I keep saying, the final glazes are pretty much nothing but fun.

Today, in addition to painting the kitchen trim (we do it every thirty years, whether it needs it or not), I started refining the portrait.  

1.  I lightened the background to make the hat stand out.

2.  I thinly glazed the shirt with ultramarine blue;  may add one more layer.

3.  I widened the left arm even though it was technically correct, the blouson covering part of it;  even so, it seemed too thin;  still not right so may reclaim some of the shirt.  

4.  I glazed the sunlit skin with a thin mixture of transparent yellow and alizarin crimson.

5.  Decided on a title:  think it will be either "So Like her Mother" or "Back at You."

Feel free to cast a vote.  I'm open to new ideas too.

It took a few days, but once the value foundation and the colour foundation were done, I could start to enjoy finishing the painting.  Ironically, it is always some aspect of the original image which had originally drawn me to it which turns out to be a challenge to paint!  This time, for example, the diagonal slant of the sun had set up a lovely contrast between the skin tones in full light and those in shadow, but both sides have to look believable, part of the same colour continuum yet at very different values.  So I have fooled around with the tones,  reminding myself that skin is translucent and that blood, both red and blue, shows, and mumbling to myself, "How did Rubens do it???"  No answer is forthcoming.

I have been mentally compiling a list of the artists I most admire for their handling of skin tones.  Will publish it when I have ten minutes.  That may be a while:  every day I am out in the garden pulling the root shoots from two large black locust trees which failed last year and had to be removed;  they are not going gently into that good night.  I must have pulled close to a thousand foot-high volunteers by now.  The alternative is to live in a dense forest full of thorns in a few years.  

I must go now to bathe my wounds and then back to the easel for finishing touches.  I am trying to post here twice a week, assuming I can stem the black locust blood-letting.  (Reminds me of the time many years ago when I fell into a very tall lilac hedge which I was trimming from a stepladder;  that experience taught me never to wear a bikini when combatting nature.)