“Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.” ― Groucho Marx

I have no idea where this picture came from, just that it showed up on my screen one day and I couldn't help but save it for my own viewing pleasure. How on earth did the photographer get 23 (your count may be different) dogs to all pose in such a cheerful group? Although most dogs get along with one another quite well it's exceedingly odd to see them arranged in neat rows like a football team or an old fashioned school class. Looking at it makes me happy.

“Man is the Reasoning Animal. Such is the claim. I think it is open to dispute. Indeed, my experiments have proven to me that he is the Unreasoning Animal... In truth, man is incurably foolish. Simple things which other animals easily learn, he is incapable of learning. Among my experiments was this. In an hour I taught a cat and a dog to be friends. I put them in a cage. In another hour I taught them to be friends with a rabbit. In the course of two days I was able to add a fox, a goose, a squirrel and some doves. Finally a monkey. They lived together in peace; even affectionately.

Next, in another cage I confined an Irish Catholic from Tipperary, and as soon as he seemed tame I added a Scotch Presbyterian from Aberdeen. Next a Turk from Constantinople; a Greek Christian from Crete; an Armenian; a Methodist from the wilds of Arkansas; a Buddhist from China; a Brahman from Benares. Finally, a Salvation Army Colonel from Wapping. Then I stayed away for two whole days. When I came back to note results, the cage of Higher Animals was all right, but in the other there was but a chaos of gory odds and ends of turbans and fezzes and plaids and bones and flesh--not a specimen left alive. These Reasoning Animals had disagreed on a theological detail and carried the matter to a Higher Court.”

― Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings 


If there's a saving grace for humanity it's that our dogs love us.

♡

the recital underway

It's been some time since I last posted a new picture and now that there is one I thought I'd show you how it progressed from an early sketch to a finished illustration. As I said, an early sketch rather than the chicken scratches I'd be embarrassed to show you.

For some reason unknown to me I can't get the second image in the sequence to load - the one that shows the tonal underpainting. Instead, this is the third with the characters looking pretty well developed.

There was a time when I'd spend a lot of time putting together the elements of a new painting. The paintings themselves took weeks of evenings and weekends to complete. I seem to be much less patient now.

There needed to be a background and after several pencilled in tries and much erasing I decided on a nice walled garden. Deep in a Canadian winter is a good time to spend some imaginary time in a sunny walled garden, especially one that is a home to roses. I thought my little band of musicians would be happy there too.

Of course it still needed more depth and colour as well as something going on beyond the stone wall. Thus, the next day's effort found it looking like this - still a bit wispy but I could see where the picture needed to go.

If you're wondering where (if, of course you've stayed this long) here is the final result:

Finally, after adding more layers of warm transparent hues to give more shape and definition to the main image, I drew and painted the border - a thoroughly relaxing process that took a couple of days. Both during the Recital's development and now that it's done there are things I couldn't change at the time that I wish I'd done differently. Then again, nothing made by hand (at least by my hand) is ever perfect and perhaps that's the charm. It's nice enough. If only changing the way we live on this Earth were as easy..

“Throughout the world what remains of the vast public spaces are now only the stuff of legends: Robin Hood’s forest, the Great Plains of the Amerindians, the steppes of the nomadic tribes, and so forth. Rousseau said that the first person who wanted a piece of nature as his or her own exclusive possession and transformed it into the transcendent form of private property was the one who invented evil. Good, on the contrary, is what is common.”
~ Antonio Negri

♡

canine companions

A few days ago we'd stopped at one of our stations in the park where a family of crows meet us for lunch (their lunch, that is) when I noticed someone shouting and waving from higher up on a cross path. Since a group of people were passing with their dogs I assumed he was greeting friends and we continued on our way. A few minutes later the young man and his girlfriend caught up with us and, gesturing at the big brown dog they had on a leash, asked if she was ours. Our answer was no, but we patted her and talked to them for a few minutes. They'd found her wandering lost wearing just a collar with no tags. When I asked about the leash he told me it was his belt. I wonder how many young guys wear belts these days? After a few minutes they went off in the opposite direction with the plan of putting a note online before taking her to a shelter. We were kind of sad about the sweet natured beast who appeared to have been abandoned.

Later on our walk we decided to take a different path from one of our usual ones. About ten minutes along it I recognized the big brown dog walking behind a different young couple. As they passed I stopped them briefly to ask how they'd found her and heard, 'She'll go off with anybody'. I should have mentioned she needed some identification but they'd kept on walking and the chance was gone. We were glad to see she'd been reunited with her owners and still just a little bit sad because her owners were idiots. She deserved better ones.

Dharma by Billy Collins

The way the dog trots out the front door
every morning
without a hat or an umbrella,
without any money
or the keys to her dog house
never fails to fill the saucer of my heart
with milky admiration.

Who provides a finer example
of a life without encumbrance—
Thoreau in his curtainless hut
with a single plate, a single spoon?
Ghandi with his staff and his holy diapers?

Off she goes into the material world
with nothing but her brown coat
and her modest blue collar,
following only her wet nose,
the twin portals of her steady breathing,
followed only by the plume of her tail.

♡