A Tall Drink of Water

Nothin' but a Hound Dog ©2009 Karen Mathison Schmidt
6 x 6 • acrylic on Gessobord
gloss varnish for protection and easy cleaning • sold unframed

SOLD • private collection, Poway, California

Meet our Blue. He’s a Redbone Coonhound mix who looks way different from his other immediate family. We figure there must have been something besides Redbone somewhere in a previous generation.


Remember this little tyke? Well, just look at him now - five months old tomorrow and already taller than his dad.



He passed mom up weeks ago, and he doesn’t show any signs of stopping yet. Here he is hanging out with mom Matilda on the back steps:


His basic personality is about as laid back as a hound can get, but he has no trouble keeping up with extremely exuberant sibling Sophie when the occasion calls for it.


He’s nothin’ but a hound dog, and we love him to pieces! By the way, 90% of the proceeds from this auction will go toward the purchase of large amounts of Puppy Chow. And Milk Bones. And rawhide chew bones. And probably a new collar, because Blue is fast outgrowing the one he has on now.

Here are some work in progress photos of the painting -- I was doing really good there for a while, stopping to take progress pix, but then I got into "the zone" so there's a big leap from the last photo to the final painting!






and here's a close-up detail:

Painting progress ...

I hope everyone had a wonderful and meaningful Memorial Day!

I wanted to show you all how this big one is coming along. After painting a few little ones, working on this big one (18x24) seems very, kind of, well ... luxurious. I think the feeling is akin to what it would feel like to practice ice skating on a tiny pond in your back yard for a few days and then being let loose on an Olympic size skating rink. I love the sweeping motion of the leaves, and all the movement in this one.

I’m still trying to come up with a title. Somehow, Day Lilies just doesn’t seem to cut it!

Ready or not ...

Well, here it is, the moment you've all been waiting for. I've had my name registered for a while now, but I just now finished my profile (thanks, all of you who keep checking back to see if I've written anything yet!) and I'm dead tired. But tomorrow, April 6 was my personal deadline for starting this blog, and I figure why wait until the last minute?
So now that I've officially started I can rest easy, and I promise I will start posting photos of my daily painting progress by Monday at the latest. I say daily progress instead of daily painting because lately I like to work big – 12x12 at the smallest and usually 16x20 or larger, and it would be really hard to finish a painting to my satisfaction in one day. At 2-3 hours of studio time a day it usually takes about 3-5 days to finish one. And after I live with the "finished" piece a day or two, I almost always see some last little adjustment I want to make and THEN I varnish. I hope it turns out to be interesting to see the process, each piece a new demonstration.
In the days ahead I'll tell about where the name Edgewood came from, and about my personal history with art.
And now I must go and join my very patient husband on the sofa for a little tv watching with a bowl of popcorn on the side. Please check back with me and keep me accountable for this daily blog thing!