Wildlife Art, Tiger

I did say I'd been getting on with my wildlife art! I've been so sorely disappointed with the weather today, we were supposed to suffer heavy snowfall which would have prevented us going to work tomorrow, but I had hoped the very large amount of remaining snow would melt to make our journey into work easier, instead it's the thick compacted snow/ice which is all the way down to the main road. We took all of the dogs down to the road to see if things had improved and although the main road is much better, we still have to fight our way out and take the big dipper ride down the steep track to get out. As a result, I've been sulking, I've updated my website and got on with this tiger painting and moaned and mumbled at myself that tomorrow will be horrendous, wet and cold!

Anyway here is the obligatory snowy picture from today's walk, look at that road!!!

And a little video of my dogs in the snow

I do apologise it's not very interesting but my batteries went flat and I did cuss a bit too!!!
If you like my work please take the time to leave me a comment or become a follower. If you would like to win a pet portrait of your dog, cat, horse or any other pet please see my new competition. The competition has closed for this year but there will be a new one in 2010. Join in the fun and vote for this year's winner by following the links here.

If you are interested in commissioning me please visit my pet portrait artist website or my wildlife artist website
Now visit my picasa photo album to see completed pieces of art.

Thanks for visiting!

Dog Portraits, Willow, Gypsy and Zac

Here is Zac’s dog portrait completed, I will obviously go back to add the background and add bits here and there but you can see it’s him now. I’m pleased with the likeness and it does help that digital cameras are now wonderful: unlimited pictures can be taken, settings can be changed and the not so good images can be deleted, you can click away until the perfect image is captured. Any pet owner knows their pet upside down and will know when they’ve got that perfect shot so really there is no excuse for a bad image these days which is just such good news for a pet portrait artist, it must have been hell years ago when cameras with films were in use and you had to wait for the photos to be developed, remember posting them to Truprint and waiting a couple of weeks to get them back! My mum used to wait until she had a batch and would send off a few films at a time which meant she’d even forgotten some photos being taken or that favourite shot turned out to be just the side of my sister’s head (mum is a terrible photographer even she has to admit that). Anyway I will be starting work on Gypsy very soon so do come back to check how things are going.

And here are a few very short videos of Cyril, you'll see he's a little unsteady on his feet still but he is just so cute!



If you like my work please take the time to leave me a comment or become a follower. If you would like to win a pet portrait of your dog, cat, horse or any other pet please see my new competition. It costs nothing to enter, all you require is internet access.

If you are interested in commissioning me please visit my pet portrait artist website or my wildlife artist website
Now visit my picasa photo album to see completed pieces of art.

Thanks for visiting!

Dog Portraits, Willow, Gypsy and Zac

I've made more progress with my dog portrait, Zac is fast appearing on the page which is surprising considering the image is 70cm by 50cm! I have worked some of the white chest area but it is lost in the brightness of the photo at the moment but it is there.

Plus here is a little video of Cyril the squirrel as promised and as you can see he is a bit mad, the problem is he isn't the most balanced, I think he needs stabillisers until he finds his way about a bit better.

If you like my work please take the time to leave me a comment or become a follower. If you would like to win a pet portrait of your dog, cat, horse or any other pet please see my new competition. It costs nothing to enter, all you require is internet access.

If you are interested in commissioning me please visit my pet portrait artist website or my wildlife artist website
Now visit my picasa photo album to see completed pieces of art.

Thanks for visiting!

German Shepherd Pet Portrait

I think I'm nearing the end of this pet portrait now, Arthur still needs a little more work on the black of his coat and obviously I need to finish the legs, my only problem now is wondering what to do with Arthur's tail as it sticks out at the back and could make the portrait look unbalanced so I'll need to see if that's the case, if I need to change it I'll be using Willow as a tail model!

And just a little video of my latest batch of chicks, we found them in our biggest pen and Mother Hen had managed to raise 11 of them in the middle of it successfully! They've all been moved to more suitable accommodation where the are not able to run through the chicken wire and get lost in the garden but mum is still very protective and she gave us a few good pecks when we stole her children for house moving!

If you like my work please take the time to leave me a comment or become a follower (see bottom of page). If you would like to win a pet portrait of your dog, cat, horse or any other pet please see my new competition. It costs nothing to enter, all you require is internet access.

If you are interested in commissioning me please visit my pet portrait artist website or my wildlife artist website
Now visit my picasa photo album to see completed pieces of art.

Thanks for visiting!

Pets in the garden

Just a few pics from the garden today, as usual Willow will not be apart from her beloved football, she has punctured the new one and abandoned it already, this one is obviously her favourite, she now tries to take it for a walk in the woods as well as to bed with her at night time. She's a bit obsessed now! She's soon to take her bronze training assessment in a few weeks, I'm not sure if she will pass though as although she is quite good at doing all the exercises, she will need to do them without treats on the night, and she does like her cheese, fingers crossed she'll be as good without it, we are currently phasing her treats out which is good as she's developed quite a fancy for expensive Cathedral City Cheese!!!

And this has absolutely amazed me, we found these little chicks this evening after just hatching out today. Their Mummy is known as Thumbelina due to her minute size, she herself was hatched a couple of years ago and she stopped growing at a young age and I just cannot believe she managed to sit on 10 eggs! These must all be hers as no other hen is brave enough to sit where she was plus they are all so very very tiny themselves, much smaller than the normal size.

And the muscovy ducklings are happy as can be with their own mini swimming pool and mum to look after them, she spends 99% of her time just rounding them up!

And so to the furry little bunch, this is BB, one of my adopted brood, he's a little overweight, but at 7 going on 8, I think it's a bit late to put him on a diet, he's a grumpy old so and so and growls at me every morning, yet he loves a cuddle and is quite happy to be picked up and fussed and has had many many baths which he doesn't seem to mind at all!

Treacle loves Bob, she cuddles up to him all of the time, Bob just completely ignores her until they have a pointless tug of war over dandelions. She's so sweet, she squeaks all of the time and is a typical woman when it comes to getting her opinions across....very loud!

As for Pickle, he is running about the garden but he is still indoors at night time so I can keep an eye on him, last night he watched a film whilst sat on the sofa, he sat motionless for about half an hour and then went racing off somewhere down the other end of the sofa, so things are looking up, he's also started squeaking much more which is always a good sign!

And just a quick video of the guinea fowl, these are hilarious, they beat each other up relentlessly, sometimes in a rush to get away or chase one another they do crash into things which I've yet to catch on camera but even so they just have me in stiches as they really are quite mad!

Anyway, here in sunny old England it's fast approaching 9pm, I'm still sat out in a very sunny garden in my t-shirt. I love the English summer, it's just such a shame it's only for a quarter of the year (on a good year) but already we have passed the longest day so I have got to make the most of it, hence no pet portrait update! Oh dear.

If you like my work please take the time to leave me a comment or become a follower (see bottom of page). If you would like to win a pet portrait of your dog, cat, horse or any other pet please see my new competition. It costs nothing to enter, all you require is internet access.

If you are interested in commissioning me please visit my pet portrait artist website or my wildlife artist website

Thanks for visiting!

springer spaniel pet portrait

Not too much of an update on Brodie's pet portrait. This past week has been quite tiring at the day job so I've not done much at all. At least Brodie has 4 legs now and can stand up! I'm still trying to figure out the background but I am working on it I promise!

And talking of work, this was the lovely place we ended up at on Thursday, it's a fishing pond near a place called Steam Mills. This is a man made pond created by the Forestry Commission, isn't it lovely!

I even managed to spot some of the local wildlife (it turned out to be a foreigner who has moved in permanently into this country...a mandarin duck and her little ducklings)

And here they are hard at work, it was quite a busy day with the boys felling some difficult tress and then me trying to help drag them up a bank, I did get ran over by a tree at one point!

As you can see, nothing is ever easy, there were some harder trees to fell, this involved them having to be roped and dragged back in by hand, I found myself on the end of the rope many times and boy did my arms ache afterwards!

And poor Willow was not impressed at all, as she isn't worried by the noise of the chainsaws I did tie her up out of harms way as the trees were felled because I thought she may have come to investigate, even then she narrowly escaped a tree falling on her as it was taller than expected and fell short by about a foot, she just lay down but never stirred!

Anyway, it turns out she was smarter than I gave her credit for and simply moved even further away when let off her lead to sit and watch us from a more comfortable distance. You can just see her ears poking up.

And today was another steam rally, I've added a few pics to my flickr account and you can see more here

And I have got a little video of mummy muscovy duck with some of her new duckling babies (the rest are underneath her keeping warm.)

And yet more news on Pickle:

Since my last post Pickle took another turn for the worse and was returned to the vet, he has had xrays and ultrasound and was found to have at least 4 stones, the largest of which was the size of my fingernail, luckily the vet was able to remove this during surgery, unfortunately he could not locate two smaller ones but they could well be on their way out so that's good news but he still has one in his kidneys so only time will tell if this one can be broken down. Pickle now has to eat lots of apple and beetroot for the acid in them to break down the remaining stones and prevent anymore. He is currently holed up in a large carry cage in my living room so I can keep an eye on him. Poor Pickle, but at long last things may actually be cured so I've got my fingers crossed. I would show you a picture of the stone that was removed but it is a bit gory! Oh and you'll be glad to know he's already had a bit of carrot.

Plus one last thing to report, I'm thinking I may hold another pet portrait competition after the success of the one held last year so I'm starting to think about details on that, any suggestions or ideas from you all on that would be appreciated.

If you like my work please take the time to leave me a comment or become a follower (see bottom of page). If you would like to win a pet portrait of your dog, cat, horse or any other pet please see my new competition. It costs nothing to enter, all you require is internet access.

If you are interested in commissioning me please visit my pet portrait artist website or my wildlife artist website

Thanks for visiting!

Leopard by Wildlife Artist Karie-Ann Cooper

Well this is where I've got to, I'm not sure whether I'm keen or whether it's just so much quicker working on drafting film but I think the leopard is appearing before my very eyes!!! I've really got stuck in yesterday, no guilt now that Patch is complete and now I know I will go back to the amur leopard on rocks when I've cleared my head of grey!!! Unfortunately my photo editing skills have let me down again, I took this image out in the glorious sunshine and as a result there is a sun reflection on the bottom right corner (yes I did say sun reflection) but I really don't care as it was such a lovely day.

Due to the sunny weather I let all the rabbits and guinea pigs out in their pens and here is a little video of Bob the rabbit and Treacle the guinea pig playing tug of war with a dandilion leaf! There were several more rounds but I didn't manage to film them all.

I've also added more photos to my Flickr account for you to see, these are a few of them

This is our acer tree, unfortunately some wally (Ronnie) planted it in front of the kitchen window, he keeps threatening to cut it down, but it's so odd but pretty I won't let him. Most trees start to green up in spring, this one starts out almost cerise pink, as the summer goes on it goes green, no one knows what it is, Ronnie's brother is a gardener and has a degree but even he is quite literally stumped on this one!

And one of the worst jobs is filling all of the water containers each day for the birds, here you can see the newest assistant on the block, alias Willow, who decided to steal the container instead of help out!!! We found it under a bush later.

And this is a pear tree in the middle of the goose pen, it is a local pear, called the Blakeney Pear Tree, in years gone by, Ronnie's parents planted all of the orchard with pear and apple trees for Bulmers the cider company, (they make my favourite drink of all, Strongbow!) they tended the trees throughout the year for the cider company plus market gardened 10 acres of land. The house next door, which is very small, was Ronnie's father's apple store, now a family live there!!! In past years when there was a bumper crop of pears Ronnie came home to find his geese had eaten them after they had fermented and they were all wobbling about a bit, bet they had a headache!!!

DON'T FORGET MY WILDLIFE COMPETITION

Please visit here for a chance to win your wildlife image as a piece of art. Ends 30th April 2009

Thanks for visiting my blog, please come back again, your comments are very welcome

Plus join my link exchange for websites and blogs.

pet portraits website wildlife art website

If you like my work please take the time to leave me a comment or become a follower (see bottom of page). If you would like to win a pet portrait of your dog, cat, horse or any other pet please see my new competition. It costs nothing to enter, all you require is internet access.

If you are interested in commissioning me please visit my pet portrait artist website or my wildlife artist website

Thanks for visiting!

Dog Portrait, Patch

I've restarted the pet portrait of Patch using the new images Emily has sent, this has made the portrait so much easier as I can see all the details and fur directions without having to guess and it is now a pleasure to continue with this dog portrait of the lovely Patch.

And here is the new image, you can see the difference from the one in the slideshow at the top! I have many many more layers to add so it's quite bland looking at the moment but Patch will appear on the page as each day passes.

On the home front Willow is in very bad books today, I heard a commotion in the garden, lots of chickens making a lot of noise and found Willow chasing a hen so she is banished to her basket without bedtime biscuits. Luckily, said hen was not caught or damaged, I'm not even sure that Willow wanted to catch the hen or was just playing chase as she does with Gypsy, nevertheless it's best not to find out.

As for my exciting life, today we fetched a sawbench on the back of a tractor from about half a mile away, it was the first official road use of any tractor, they usually just get driven around the garden and tomorrow I am off to a tractor jumble rumble thing, no doubt to buy lots of rusty bits of metal that fitted to a tractor about 50 years ago and are obviously being sold to some daft wally that thinks they are worth something (Ronnie). We came back with about 10 nest boxes for hens last year from the same auction!!!!

And here is a little video from work, these two does walked across the forestry track in front of us in an area called the Bark Rack. They paid us no attention whatsoever and just wandered along in their own time.

DON'T FORGET MY WILDLIFE COMPETITION

Please visit here for a chance to win your wildlife image as a piece of art.

Thanks for visiting my blog, please come back again, any comments are very welcome

If you like my work please take the time to leave me a comment or become a follower (see bottom of page). If you would like to win a pet portrait of your dog, cat, horse or any other pet please see my new competition. It costs nothing to enter, all you require is internet access.

If you are interested in commissioning me please visit my pet portrait artist website or my wildlife artist website

Thanks for visiting!

No pet portraits today!

Just a few pics today from work and home, this was me and the girls, Cassie and Willow walking back out for our afternoon session. Willow had had a few hours sleep in the truck and was raring to go at this point and Cassie, who is fifteen and a half (very important that half) had done, as she always does, a full day and still soldiers on, she's such a bossy pants that she barks at us when we stop, no rest for the wicked as they say! When Willow discovered we were on a steep bank she took every opportunity to enjoy the stops between trees as they were each measured. (By the way I'm not making a fashion statement with a yellow tie, it's a girthing tape used to calculate the diameters of trees.)

And this is us going into the bottom of the racks, like I said they were quite steep, this is the third or fourth work day in a row we've been on a bank and I was warm this afternoon after Andrew 'the oracle' Davis told me it would rain so I put my rain mac on and sweltered all the way up to the top!

We were marking my favourite trees today, red cedar, I love them, they are just so flippin' difficult to get the bark off, your arms ache like mad after a day on them! As you can see I'm a bit of a dawdler, I always plod along at the back just listening to my headphones and basically living in my own little world.

And this is me and my baby at break time. She's getting a bit big now, luckily she's happy enough to curl up in the back of the truck with Cassie now so I don't get crushed legs from her sitting on my lap!

And this is Sallow Vallets covered in early morning mist. It looks like the Himalayas from a plane, not just the local valley!

And to the home front... As you can see, Ronnie has even less patience than I do, he spent ages, days and weeks in fact buying bits and pieces for his new tractor then painting it, but he still couldn't wait to test drive it around so he put the back wheel back on without painting it, watch when he turns the corner! Now he has to take it back off to paint it, unless it's like everything else in the garden and will get done sometime never!!! This is his usual weekend pastime, just driving aimlessly around the bottom of the orchard. Still I suppose it keeps him happy!!!

Plus we have some new additions to the feathered friend camp, we now have 3 jungle fowl which came from Ross bird sale on Saturday. They have been put safely into their new pen and promptly laid us an egg! They are not prolific layers so this is a good sign of the breeding season ahead hopefully.

As for the pet portraits, luckily I have been sent some more pictures of Patch, one of which is just perfect so I am more than happy to start again plus I have started another portrait which I cannot post just yet as it's only just started so you would only see a few pencil strokes on the page!

DON'T FORGET MY WILDLIFE COMPETITION

Please visit here for a chance to win your wildlife image as a piece of art.

Thanks for visiting my blog, please come back again, any comments are very welcome

If you like my work please take the time to leave me a comment or become a follower (see bottom of page). If you would like to win a pet portrait of your dog, cat, horse or any other pet please see my new competition. It costs nothing to enter, all you require is internet access.

If you are interested in commissioning me please visit my pet portrait artist website or my wildlife artist website

Thanks for visiting!

Cat Portrait, Elle

I've got back to Elle, I only managed a little bit last night before puppy training with Willow (who is absolutely fine after her rat poison episode) but due to the poor wet and windy weather now I'll be sat cosying up to the fire continuing with her portrait and starting on Patch's aswell.

And this is a little video from work, we are working in the Bark Rack area which is on the border with Wales and this place is a goldmine for deer. This group (and I was lucky to catch them) crossed in front of the truck twice before I got my camera ready. There were about 20 or more in the first group and then I think we saw another 3 or 4 groups, mainly does but I did see a lovely stag and have another video of him to post at another time. Look how fast they travel! The track is like an italian mountain road, chicanes and hairpin bends right down to the bottom and I think it must be over a mile down from the main road so the deer are on the whole very undisturbed by anything.

And also a little prezzie from my friend Linzi (she's just got a blog so please visit, it does make me chuckle) and this was for a portrait of her two stunning labs, Liam and Clyde, thanks Linzi!!!!

And so to the I love your blog award...

And I nominate the following blogs

1. Linzi's Patch as it really does have me in fits, and I think it's pretty

2. Oregon Art Guy, Bill's little anecdotes are so cheeky!

3. Emily Roe, I love her portraits

4. Musings from behind the easel because I want all the things on here
4. Animal and Pet Portraits by Collette Theriault because I love her wildlife art.

DON'T FORGET MY WILDLIFE COMPETITION

Please visit here for a chance to win your wildlife image as a piece of art.

Thanks for visiting my blog, please come back again, any comments are very welcome

If you like my work please take the time to leave me a comment or become a follower (see bottom of page). If you would like to win a pet portrait of your dog, cat, horse or any other pet please see my new competition. It costs nothing to enter, all you require is internet access.

If you are interested in commissioning me please visit my pet portrait artist website or my wildlife artist website

Thanks for visiting!