Professional dogs, box project, studio tour and veggie lasagna

A Creative Life, art gallery, artist book, author illustrator, children's book, Creativity Chats, dog portrait, Dogs in Art, pet portraits, Sustainable creativity, words and pictures

My childrens book The Professional Dog progresses along! Below are three in a row. Do you see how the colors in one piece leads to the colors of the next? For example the background color on the left dog becomes the shirt color on the middle dog… My use of color is one of the ways I am planning the pages to flow from one to another in the book. The original portrait is done on board and will be framed as fine art.

Below is a closer look at each dog portrait. The text for the book is under each painting.

The Dean’s dog is a distinguished dog.
The Doctor’s dog is a diligent dog.
The Entrepreneur’s dog is an energetic dog.

Now about the holiday box project: as I mentioned in my last post the Caplan Art Designs Gallery is asking us artists to wait to do social media about our box work until after early November. So I’m waiting … While we wait here’s my studio supervisor dachshund with a fuzzy toy.

And now for something completely different as they say in Monty Python:

Here’s a look at my art studio – I have small sketchbooks and a box of pens that travel, like my coffeecup, between rooms of my house and outdoors to the patio. Then there’s a room that has all of my art supplies including my art easel – in the photo you can see my work on The Professional Dog on my easel.

My holiday box project has been very carefully not depicted, displayed or described in the following photos of my studio. Oh, look a dachshund with a fuzzy toy! (See photo above)

When you see all the non-digital tools I use to make my artwork perhaps it won’t surprise you much to hear that I really enjoyed this poem on contrariness by Wendell Berry .

But I am enjoying the digital tool of making short videos on topics I think about a lot.

This week in Creativity Chats I talk about the human attention/perception mechanism and how that relates to being creative…and how using that mechanism purposefully can help us relax. Here’s the link: https://youtu.be/9eGsbENABP0

https://youtu.be/9eGsbENABP0

The food to be remarked on this week was vegetarian lasagna! I loosely used this recipe for inspiration: https://www.food.com/recipe/very-veggie-lasagna-25181

My variations to the recipe: I did my Simple Sauce (my hand drawn recipe card here), and Cuisinart chopped the broccoli, carrot, celery, garlic, onion, red bell pepper. Then I used Penzey’s Tuscan Sunset spice mix when I sauteed the veg before layering them with the noodles, the sauce, the cheese. Seriously yummy! I made individual servings in oven safe “boats”. There were no leftovers. We wished for some though.

I will likely be late on the blog post next Monday. We’re having work done on the house. Also both my spouse and I are getting Covid booster shots. Hopefully I’ll stay on my project production schedule for The Professional Dog at the very least but however things go will be fine. The main thing is to be gentle and easy… Here’s hoping we all have a gentle week. See you as soon as I do.

24 thoughts on “Professional dogs, box project, studio tour and veggie lasagna”

  1. I love how you’re building suspense for the reveal of your holiday box, even getting your dachshund into the act! Slobbery tug-of-war, anyone? I enjoyed your latest creativity talk. The process of focusing attention in one place and not another is very much the process of writing poetry. Your comments about not worrying about writing a bad poem or making a bad drawing remind me of a Garrison Keillor quote to the effect that when we write a bad draft, nobody dies or even loses their teeth. (I tried to find the quote, and I couldn’t, so the paraphrase will have to do!)

    1. Lol!!! Thank you so much!!! I’m so glad to hear you’re enjoying my dachshund suspense building…and my creativity talk too!! You encourage me to keep going and I heartily thank you for that!! And I love the Keillor paraphrase you share!!! Yes!! That’s it exactly!!! ❤❤❤❤❤

  2. I look forward to the reveal of the box project! The veggie lasagna looks delicious. That is one of my favourite things to cook and eat but my kids disagree so I don’t make it often. I do occasionally make them a beef lasagna which I then cannot eat. Best of luck with the Covid boosters. I received mine just over a week ago and had a headache and fatigue for three days afterwards. I did have my flu shot at the same time so maybe it was the combination. I never had a reaction to either of the previous Covid shots so it was a surprise to experience side effects.

    1. I’m glad to hear you’ve had your booster too though I am sorry you had headache and fatigue. I hope you’re feeling much better now. We had our flu shots several weeks ago – you’re a brave one to get both vaccines at the same time.
      About lasagna: totally hear you re having different preferences for a dish. Back in the before times of large gatherings with many different preferences – we got the individual oven safe boats. Made it possible to do one lasagna sauce, the noodles, then multiple ingredients- give everyone a boat and let them layer and fill their lasagna to suit themselves. Then covered each boat with foil marked for ID and baked. The just meat people, the meat and some veg people, the veg people who didn’t like onion, and the veg people who like all veg – were each happy. And it had the side benefit of many hands making for less work. 😆

      1. Thanks. The side effects only really lasted a couple of days. It was probably not a smart idea to get both vaccinations at the same but I was trying to be efficient with my time.

        Individual dishes is a good idea. If I had more storage space, I would be tempted to do that. I have ramekins for making some individual dishes but those would be too small for lasagna.

  4. I love your creative energy and the beautiful capture of the dogs. Each carries a kindness that is heartwarming. Bravo!

  7. Pingback: Professional Dogs, puzzles, holiday box and figure ground relationships – sue clancy

  9. I’ve gotten behind again…being gentle with myself as I finished projects and started the intense goal of NaNoWriMo. Wondering if your dashing dachshund and/or fuzzy toy might be a hint to inspiration on the secret box project. Hmmm, we’ll see. 🙂
    This next set of dogs are wonderful too, and I love the explanation of the color continuity to provide flow from page to page. Works beautifully. I think I’ll take a little break for the Creativity Chat, and I’ll catch up on the next couple posts soon. Have a Happy Week!!! <3

    1. I’m so glad you’re being gentle with yourself!! Please keep that up! Applause from me to you as you work towards your goal!!
      I’m glad you liked my dogs, the explanation and my hints about the secret box project! I hope my Creativity Chat and my posts will encourage you! Hope you have a good week too! ❤

Thank you for reading and sharing encouragements!