Whoa, passage of time...

Hi guys.  Well, I'm still pregnant (over halfway through now!), it's still hot as Satan's you-know-what here, so I'm taking lots of naps and I'm not being very productive.  But, on the upside, monsoons will be starting soon...

It's just teasing us now.

Oh, and this weekend, I actually picked up some paints for the first time in way too long! (the progress picture goes under the cut, because, well, it's in progress and as such it's kind of unsightly...)

Hey, I'm still here!

Hi!  Happy St. Patrick's Day!  I hope everyone is wearing o'the green today, and not drinking o'the green (beer), or...turning o'the green from drinking too much.  Perhaps later on today we will be mowing o'the green (lawn).

Scotty helps us mow the lawn.  He does!  He eats the grass that comes up.

I feel bad for not writing in here more often, but I do have a couple good reasons for it.  There are some projects taking up tons of time right now, some of which I am at liberty to talk about now, and some of which I'm not....plus the usual ongoing process of making the house look nicer and function better, maintenance of dogs, and making sure my family is eating properly (and one of them is a 16-year-old boy, so that is a hard job, my friends).

Still photographically challenged...

As promised, here's the second half of my November photo-a-day challenge...plus a few extras.

Not part of the November challenge, but...

 I've started to take more photos in general after doing the challenge...especially since winter is actually very picturesque in Arizona.  We're only now having some fall foliage, as can be seen above...our pomegranate tree at our house turned bright orange, and some of the neighbor's trees have too.  Fun to see, and lovely to take pictures of.

Instagrammically challenged

Sometimes you'll come across these "[blank]-a-day for a month" challenges on blogs or social media...I've tried to do a couple of them in the past, but when you're not posting the results you're not really accountable to anyone, you know?  So I never finished the couple I'd tried before.

But then I saw this on Twitter...

...and it linked to this, and I thought, why not?  I'll play it this month!

Inspired Monday: walk it off

I've been taking lots of walks lately...this should come as no surprise since I've mentioned on here that (one of) my day job(s) is as a petsitter/dog-walker.

Here's one of my charges.  She enjoys grass.

If you're feeling stressed, creatively stuck, or just need to take an energizing break, then my advice to you would be to go take a hike!  Literally.

This week in art

Well, it's been a big week around here, dudes...I got another craft fair lined up, possibly some gallery show time this summer, another cat portrait commission, and am just up to my eyeballs in DOING STUFF.  It's fun stuff, though.  It's a good thing I get so much sleep, otherwise I would never have the energy to do all the things I do. ;-)

Except when these two menaces to society wake me up at 5 AM.  "Hi mom!  We need food right now!"  Cue cold dog nose in face.

Plus there are occasionally soccer games going on.  That makes it a little hard to be productive sometimes.  Heh.

Take that, summer!

So...it's hot.  Have I mentioned that yet?  Because it's really, really hot.  This is already the kind of summer where I wish I was a snowbird and had a summer home in some much cooler clime.  Like Siberia.

I know, I've used this photo before on this blog.  I don't care.  Non-Arizonans need to understand how painful this part of the country can be sometimes.

But!  The last few weeks, I have been testing out a brilliant heat-beating idea.

Show prep madness!

As I may have mentioned, I'll be selling my work at Monterey Court here in Tucson this Saturday night...actually, I'm pretty sure I only mentioned it that one time, because ever since it's been finalized I've been in major preparation mode.

A Pile O'Prints!  Plus on the left you can see a package I just shipped - a cat portrait off to Florida.

 I ended up making 17 large prints (like the ones above), 20 smaller prints, and six sets of greeting cards.  So Tuesday was Packaging-fest 2014!

Hey, you! You need t-shirts!

It's just a big week for this little ol' art business all around...preparing for the show next week, and now, Society6 has informed me that my t-shirts are on sale!

I bought this one.  Is it not perfect to wear to yoga?  Or just on any day when you anticipate you'll need a little extra bless-and-releasing?

It goes through Monday, and it's $5 off any t-shirts (this style shown above, plus v-necks or tank tops).  So that lovely shirt shown above is only $19.  Plus shipping is FREE.  You don't see that every day, folks.

Check out these possibilities...

Parties, painted stones, dog antics, and SPRING!

We had a good weekend, all the denizens of the Art Shack...it was both relaxing and productive, which is the kind of thing I like.  Productivity is good, but it's also good to sit down and have a beer when you're finished being productive, am I right?

We had our "yay, now we're married" party this weekend, which was basically just inviting all our friends over for a big party, since we had a small wedding and we couldn't invite everyone to that.  So I got to bust out our wedding flowers again...

And we did other stuff, too.

From progress to DONE.

So remember my painting of a Westie that I showed you guys the progress on a few days ago?  Well, it's done!

When last we saw the painting, it looked like this...

This westie has no background, but she doesn't care - look at that tail wag!

And now?

Supplyin' and incorporatin'.

So, it turns out when you're trying to (finally) turn your modest side business into an LLC, you have to DO stuff.  Lots of stuff.  And think about stuff.  And spend MONEY on stuff!  What?  You mean this takes effort, and being a professional artist isn't just wandering around with paint splattered on my clothes, staring at flowers and musing about the fleeting beauty of life?!  Well, forget it then!

...I'm just kidding.  They told me about all this in art school, so I was totally prepared. ;)

Scotty does not understand these things you call spreadsheets.  Scotty would like a biscuit now.

I'm actually kind of geeking out and having fun over preparing myself for taking this big leap into Incorporation and Grownup Stuff...

Painting in progress

I feel better today...as I posted on the Maxfield and Madison Facebook page yesterday, I was reeeeeally sick all weekend.  I'm not entirely sure what it was, nor were the people at the urgent care place I went to, but they just threw antibiotics at me and it seems to have gone into retreat for the moment.

Unexpected illnesses are just not fair.  I had planned on going to the big street fair this weekend, to see what other artists were doing in terms of booth setup, maybe asking them questions, doing a little research.  But did Mr. Illness care about that?  Noooo.

I had planned to finish this painting on Saturday too...

But since I spent most of Saturday lying in bed with a fever, this did not happen.  However!  Today I made up for the lack of progress on things this weekend.

Oh no, she's back!

Hi!  Miss me? (sound of crickets chirping)

So, seeing as I've had a lot of art-related things going on over the past year (two exhibitions, launching a print shop and making several sales, and starting to inch my way into the pet portrait industry), I thought it might be prudent to restart my art blog.  Well, that, and I kinda just missed having a place to ramble on about art and related things.

Here's something I've been doing lately: playing with this app called Brushes on my iPhone!

It's a pink corgi.  Why?  Why not?  There never has to be a reason to draw pink corgis.

It's really gratifying, not only to be able to create tiny phone paintings, but the Brushes app also shows you a little video of your progress on the painting.  I'm trying to figure out how to import those, because they're really fascinating...and I like seeing videos of other artists' painting process, like the ones Jorge Columbo does for the New Yorker's Finger Painting blog (which is where I found out about Brushes).  It's been a fun way to get the daily sketching in, even without carrying a sketchbook...ahh, iPhone, what can't you do?