JEN KELLER ART

Look how happy Mattie is eating her peanut butter biscuits!! YUM! I'm sure that puppy knows that Mattie's bark is worse than her bite... Here are a few more paintings I decided to rework. Again, I'm pretty happy I tackled these paintings again and improved upon what I had done in the past.

I was never really happy with the original of this piece, and I've finally finished the re-do. I like this one a lot better, it's just a lot more solid than the original, with the same puppy-child tenderness. Hope folks like it!

One thing I've noticed is that the more knowledge I get about the way things work from the inside, the better they look from the outside. This is especially true of anatomy. Check out this canine study I did of my own pooch. It's not super detailed, but enough so that my own brain can process where certain joints meet up, and how muscles wrap around those bones. Pretty interesting stuff.

Now that things have settled down a bit... I've decided to make more regular visits to the Oakland Zoo and keep my animal life drawing fresh. Today was a perfect zoo day. The weather was outstanding, and the place was practically empty! This made for calmer animals and more enjoyable drawing. I spent time today focusing on elephants and camels. Usually the elephants hang back in their enclosure, but today they came right up to the fence. At one point it felt like I could pet them! I did a lot of sketching and did a final drawing with graphite and watercolor pencil. It was a lot of fun. On my way out, I couldn't resist spending some time with the camels. I had tried to draw them several times during my class, but the space isn't very condusive to drawing due to the fact it's on a slope, no bences, and high fences so nowhere to lean you sketchpad. But today with the lower numbers and amazing weather, I just planted myself on the ground next to the female camel and...

So many folks are aware that I spent my time during graduate school working at Dog Bone Alley . I was fortunate enough to be able to do all of the window displays and many interior displays during my time there. I've decided to include a set featuring several of these windows on my flickr account. For a little change of pace take a look. Click here for Dog Bone Alley Window Displays