"The Hunter" by Lesley Spanos. Acrylic painting on Ampersand Aquabord, 5" x 7". Copyright ©2012 Lesley Spanos, all rights reserved.

His prey drive is off the charts. He’ll hunt relentlessly, even in knee-deep January snows, stalking small animals until he has icicles growing on his whiskers. He’s the King of the Back Yard, but indoors, he’s just our big, cuddly boy.

"The Ancient One" by Lesley Spanos. Acrylic painting on Ampersand Aquabord, 5" x 7". Copyright ©2012 Lesley Spanos, all rights reserved.

Only Miss Lish knows the secrets behind the scars on her ancient face, and she’s not telling. At age sixteen, she has the mug of a battered boxer, nose dented and one eye in a permanent squint. Perhaps she broke her face diving for cover under a piece of furniture, or maybe her former owner accidentally shut her head in a door. I shudder to think about the pain her injuries must have caused her.

What she lacks in beauty, she makes up for with her wisdom and kindness. She came to live with us in her retirement years, after a lifetime of caring for her elderly owner. She shows her appreciation by gathering gifts at night, leaving them at the foot of my drawing table. It’s so cool to go into the studio in the morning and discover a neat pile of stuffed mice on the exact spot where I stand to paint. Fortunately, she doesn’t have access to live critters, so I don’t have to experience the horror of finding dead mice or snakes.

"Blind Side" by Lesley Spanos. Acrylic painting on Ampersand Aquabord, 7" x 5". Copyright ©2012 Lesley Spanos, all rights reserved.

He’s not really blind, just blinded by blinders. Trainers put all sorts of interesting contraptions on these harness race horses so they won’t get distracted by things – real or imagined – during a race. Some setups look like they were cobbled together with baling wire.

This one is posted in the Daily Paintworks Up Close Animal Challenge created by artist Taryn Day

"Chomp, Chomp" by Lesley Spanos. Acrylic painting on Ampersand Gessobord, 6" x 8". Copyright ©2012 Lesley Spanos, all rights reserved.

Artist Carol Marine says in her Daily Paintworks Horsing Around Challenge  that she and her family woke up one morning while camping in Missouri to see this horse grazing near their tent. She snapped a photo of the scene, and posted it for artists to interpret.

I’m not a relaxed camper. If I heard a “chomp, chomp, chomp” from inside a tent in the early morning hours, I’d freak out. What else could it be but the Langoliers?

"18" by Lesley Spanos. Acrylic painting on Ampersand Gessobord, 16" x 20". For personal use only, not for sale. Copyright ©2012 Lesley Spanos, all rights reserved.

The Superbowl has come to Indianapolis, and to commemorate it, I present my first football painting, ever! I’ve always longed to paint the game, but the NFL is extremely protective of their rights (as they should be), so that’s a line I’ve never crossed.  I’m able to take my camera into games, so I have hundreds of tempting references I can’t use. If you’re an artist, you know how frustrating that can be. Finally, this week, I decided I’d go ahead and do a painting, just for me. I think it’s okay as long as I don’t sell it. I hope. NFL lawyers, if I’m wrong, kindly email and I’ll smash it to bits for you.

Number 18 is the Indianapolis Colts’ Peyton Manning, one of the greatest quarterbacks, ever. He’s more than just a sports celebrity to the city of Indianapolis. He’s a civic-minded hero who has done great things for our city. He won’t be playing in the Superbowl on Sunday, but he’s on everyone’s minds as he tries to regain top form after surgery on his neck. We wish you the best, Peyton, and hope to see you around Indy for many years to come.

"It's What I Eat For Breakfast" by Lesley Spanos. Acrylic painting on Ampersand Aquabord, 5" x 7". Copyright ©2012 Lesley Spanos, all rights reserved.

The idea for painting breakfast comes from Carol Marine’s Paint Your Breakfast Challenge on Daily Paintworks. For me, breakfast is the same every morning: 4% fat cottage cheese mixed with freshly ground flax seed and a variety of oils  – flax, hemp, fish, and coconut. I like the stuff, but my husband can barely choke it down, so for his sake we top it with berries.

A few in-progress images archived along the way:

"Portrait of a Parisian Waitress" by Lesley Spanos. Acrylic painting on Ampersand Gessobord, 14" x 18". Copyright ©2011 Lesley Spanos, all rights reserved.

I couldn’t resist painting  a portrait of this lovely waitress from a photo taken by artist/photographer/traveler/blogger Lee Brown. Lee generously lends some of his travel photos to artists in the context of his ADNW painting challenges. Participants get one month to submit their interpretations of his image.  There’s some cool stuff already posted. Go see it here.

I don’t know what I liked more – the quality of the light, or the shape of her hair and all those wispy tendrils. Both were tons of fun to paint.

"Every Stroke Counts" by Lesley Spanos. Acrylic painting on Multimedia Artboard, 5" x 5". Copyright ©2011 Lesley Spanos, all rights reserved.

A little exercise never hurts. This painting exercise called the Limited Stroke Challenge was posted by artist Nancy Colella on Daily Paintworks. It’s purpose is twofold:  She wanted us to use every stroke efficiently, and to remind us not to be stingy with the paint. Nancy says, “The result will be a rather abstract, simple painting with wonderful surface quality and a “effortless” feel!”

(The part about being stingy with the paint made me think about how varied the goals of artists can be. Artists who paint primarily to sell originals can pile on the paint, creating beautiful textures that beg to be touched. Artists like me, who paint with reproduction in mind, have to think about how the piece will scan, and how it will look in print. Thick, juicy strokes can look cheesy in a flat print.)

We were told to plan in advance how many strokes we thought we’d need to create the painting, then paint it in that many strokes. Hash marks keep a running tally. By definition, a stroke ends when the brush is lifted. Some people did some amazing work in under 30 or 40 strokes, but having done a few 100 stroke paintings with great difficulty, I knew my limitations! I felt it was a sufficient challenge to assign myself a maximum of 75 strokes.  I went over a tiny bit, using 78, because there were some things at the end that I HAD to fix. If I’d had another 25 strokes, I could have fixed the drawing enough to be happy with it.

78 strokes from start to finish. Each stroke is recorded by a hash mark on the paper. You can see how I was falling apart at the end by how my hash marks trail off the paper. Oh, and that's tea in the cup, not coffee, because I was in the tea-drinking portion of my day. The coffee part of my day ends around noon, then I switch to fully caffeinated tea. Later, it's decaf tea. After that, wine. Maybe if I'd waited for the wine part of the day, the painting would have been looser.

UPDATE:

It was bothering me. There were things I had to fix before I could move on to the next painting. So I did. The drawing is still a little wonky, but it’s better than it was:

"Every Stroke Counts" (final) by Lesley Spanos. Acrylic painting on Multimedia Artboard, 5" x 5". Copyright ©2011 Lesley Spanos, all rights reserved.

"Sunflower Medley" by Lesley Spanos. Acrylic painting on Ampersand Aquabord, 5" x 5". Copyright ©2011 Lesley Spanos, all rights reserved.

The hubby bought me sunflowers again, so I painted them. The red ones came from an Amish woman at the farmer’s market, and the yellow ones were from Fresh Market.

In other news, Liquitex added more of my acrylic paintings to their Inspire site: Bumble Bee Bop, Rivalry, Portrait of the Chicken as a Young Cockerel, and Little Big Dog. Liquitex Inspire is a beautifully designed site featuring the work of a variety of artists who use Liquitex acrylics.