Rhiannon
8" x 10"
Pan Pastels
Sand color Art Spectrum Colourfix

Painted from a reference photo I took with my phone and from life. Rhiannon is an eight week old Corgi puppy. We just got her a few days ago. Karl traded a tiling job on the breeder's bathroom for a purebred Corgi puppy.

Kitten is a farrier -- a horse shoeing blacksmith. She's gotten Rhiannon to be her work dog and keep her company on trips, also to herd in horses from pastures when she makes house calls (barn calls?) to shoe them. Corgi is a breed of herding dog that's a bit like a collie with half length legs, they're very low to the ground with stubby little legs but quick and smart.

Rhiannon aka "Annie" is sweet, she's so friendly to everyone. Even cats, though the feeling isn't reciprocated and both cats have retreated with dignity to my room. It's always been Cat Central, the dog-free zone where they can lay about aristocratically without getting chased.

A little catching up!

Back on May 25th, we moved from Lawrence, Kansas to Russellville, Arkansas. The move was like leaving my arthritis behind, literally on the day of the move I was stronger every hour as we drove south. I love Arkansas. It's a beautiful climate.

I've spent most of the summer settling in and getting unpacked. With chronic fatigue and mobility limits, the stuff that takes people weeks takes me months and so on. Ari likes the new house. Miss Gemini, seen in portrait in the last entry, likes the new house.

Sascha is in kindergarten now and loves school. She gets excited about it in a way that I never did. It's cool watching her bring her stuff home, she shows me things she colored and lessons she's done. I'm very carefully not telling her any of my school stories because I do not want to put her off it -- if she's having fun and enjoying it for what it is, let her.

I keep forgetting I have this blog, then updating at random intervals. Hopefully this time I'll get it going in a rhythm like my LJ and see if I can post more interesting articles on it, product reviews or art stuff the way I've done sometimes on my LJ.

Recently I've gotten started at RedGage.com which could be a lot of fun drawing together feed from my Facebook and Twitter and some other things -- and Blogger. So now I may try to mirror my posts from LJ here or vice versa, at any rate try to post here more often so the RedGage readers get something to read instead of just seeing it fade into obscurity.

I've finished the last edits on Vaumuru's Curse. The new ending is much more powerful. Now with a week to go to the end of the year, I need to write the synopsis and start sending it out to agents and publishers. It's about time I had a novel out on submission again.

Miss Gemini in the Window
6 1/2" x 8 3/4"
Cretacolor pastel pencils on Brown color ClaireFontaine PastelMat.

Christmas present for my daughter Kitten, portrait of her cat. Miss Gemini has three or four different tortie patterns stitched together on a midseam. She's gorgeous but her markings are unique and difficult to get exactly right. I succeeded, this is actually Gemini and not just a cute tortie.

She came to our door as a tiny waif in Kansas, walking up as Kitten came in with groceries to enchant her with big green eyes and a huge purr. Of course we took her in. Kitten checked for weeks to see if someone had lost this wonderful, people-friendly, loving and adorable cat -- but the only trace was that she'd been seen around a house where some college kids moved out recently. How could anyone abandon a cat this loving?

We lucked to get her. Kitten got her microchipped and took her in to the vet, which was where we discovered she was an already spayed two year old rather than the half grown kitten we thought she was. She's tiny. Only about seven pounds, well, eight now, she's packing on the ounces. Her fur went from dull and ratty to glossy and silky.

She loves everyone, even the children. She lets Sascha play with her and doesn't even claw if a child grabs her by the head. We had to watch out for her for a while because she wouldn't even defend herself, just put up with the children whatever they did. Sascha learned to be gentle with kitty.


A White Wolf
7" x 9 1/2"
Cretacolor pastel pencils on Anthracite color ClaireFontaine PastelMat.

This painting is a present for my son in law Carl. I did it on the 25th, so it wasn't late -- just pushing deadline. He loves wolves and we all enjoy the White Wolf roleplaying games, so doing a white wolf was a natural. It's a bit of an artistic breakthrough because instead of just doing wildlife, I've got the wolf in a dramatic setting too. More like a cool illustration than most of the animal art I've done.

I've had the best holidays of my life this year. Right down to grandchildren singing Jingle Bells without knowing all the words or sticking to the tune -- something I had completely forgotten about. There is an age when people don't know all those songs by heart and that's when they're the most fun.