Sweet River Studios

This has to be considered an all time great finger food.  If you haven't made one I highly recommend them.  Also, its super versatile. You can add filling and spices you want to it or change the entire thing. I usually make these around Christmas just because its still good at room temperature. Not all of my people arrive at Christmas at the same time and we all usually just wonder about nibbling at what's on the table. These are fairly easy to make once you get the rolling method down and they freeze great.  So if you make extra or just decide to keep them all to yourself instead of giving them away for free to people you may or may not really like, you can freeze them for later. When I worked, I would layout a roll before going to work and it was defrosted by the time we got home. Then we just had to heat it up. I've often wanted to change things up a bit but rarely do but you can make one with  mushrooms and caramelized onions with cheese,...

This painting came together fairly easily. I'm always leery of painting black animals. It can be really hard to distinguish the actual shape of the animal. All that black can lead to just one giant blob of mystery. But I made sure to leave a white highlight down the shoulder and arm which I think really helped. I added some gray/white to the body area and flicked my brush to leave the directional lines which took on the fur. I added gray to the face and white to the arm, head, chest to highlight the black fur. Since gorilla's live in the jungle, I added some tree shapes and greens to the background.

Well, I haven't painted any animals for a few weeks now. I got hung up and couldn't decide a few things. I decided to add a lowland gorilla and maybe a manatee but I haven't decided.  I did discover a cute bird called a Quetzal and I'm thinking I'll add that to the border but back to the harpy eagle. Since this bird lives in the deep jungle, I went for the darkest shade of green I had and painted the background and a branch and let this layer dry. I used gray, white and a dark midnight blue to initially rough in the bird. Finally, I used black to darken areas and white for additional highlighting.  I also added some leaf shapes and squiggly yellow. Not sure why but it needed something to break up all that green and yellow peaks through green in the jungle and it just seemed to work out. Its about the animal not the backgrounds and I think this eagle turned out pretty good.

I started with the elephant in this painting.  I put down a medium gray in the darkest areas and a light gray in the lightest areas. I darkened in the main body/legs area and trunk and put a layer of white down for the tusks. As you can see from the first picture the tusk on the right was fairly far out and I decided I didn't like it there so I moved it further in.  I added some dark wrinkles along the trunk, forehead and ear areas and then I let the whole picture dry. Next, I added the background in browns and yellows trying to mimic the African savannah. I was trying to go for an elephant stepping out of the dust. I added more highlights and darkened the shadows and I added a bit of brown. Elephants are pretty dirty after all. This one was fairly easy to get done and probably took me 4 hours which includes 2 hours of drying time.

On Saturday, April 18, River and I attended a C-WAGS Scent trial at Anything Goes for Dogs in Marysville. Although, there were 3 levels River and I entered Level 2. There were two searches at Level 2 and she qualified in 1 search.  Most of the dogs didn't do well on the first search for some reason. As for River, she's pretty excited in new areas and won't settle down for a while but she got into the rhythm on the second search but barely. There's also going to be a Scent League during the summer what should be a lot of fun and hopefully River will be able to earn a title or two.

This portrait of a baby leatherback turtle was really quite easy to get done. I guess because there's not that many colors.  Painting wet sand is not fun either. I had to use a dark brown with yellow and a darker brown. I applied the white and gray for the turtle first then added the yellow/brown for the sand. I then darkened the turtle with black and added some highlights with white.  I used white to add water reflections in the wet sand and that was pretty much it. Not the greatest painting I've done but not bad either.

The main centerpiece of my quilt is roughly 33x45" so it's fairly big, especially to be painting with inks.  I wanted my main animal to be the one that speaks to everyone. I chose the Black Rhino for the center since there is a very real possibility the animal will be extinct in the wild in the next decade or two and they will only exist in zoos. I'm thinking about the title of "Footprints" for my quilt but as of right now, I don't have any footprints in my centerpiece. I had thought about putting different animal footprints on the back of the quilt, but I haven't decided yet. I could always finish it and simply change the title. So I will continue working on this centerpiece. Even if I decide to make another one this one is still pretty good and deserves to be finished. I'll probably have to order more ink, though. I finished the rhino.  I'm pretty happy with it but I don't know if this will be in my quilt or not.  I'll have...