More and More Art......

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Original Art for Sale !!!!

If you would like to own original art at an affordable price, just contact me at artbylrain@gbis.com. Take a look at some sample work;

Portrait by Consignment in Pastels

Pastel portraits take on a soft delicate look.

Portraits done by Consignment

I enjoy painting and sketching portraits by consignment. I use photos, either a favorite photo of someone that they would like done in a painting or I take the photos myself. I do either color pastel paintings or black and white graphite sketches. Here are some examples of portraits that I have done by consignment.

About the Artist

I have loved sketching and painting since I was a child. Although I have two bachelor of art degrees, one in English and music and the other in Special Education, and my master's degree in Education, and a degree in Creative Art in Education, I am primarily self-taught in art. My art has also been published in tree books and one art magazine.

My passion is photographing and painting wildlife, but I also sketch and paint people and pets from photos on consignment. Consignment work has also included doing a series of wild cats for a sticker company as well as portraits of horses.

I use several different mediums in my art, such as watercolor, colored pencil, pastels, graphite and pen and ink. My specialty is combining these for capturing realism in graphic detail.

If you would like a painting or sketch done from a favorite photo that you have, just e-mail me at artbylrain@gbis.com and we can discuss the details.

Mixed Media Paintings

When I am doing mixed media I use a variety of different things. Watercolors, colored pencils, acrylics, graphite, pastels and even charcoal. These particular paintings were done with a watercolor underpainting and then Prisma colored pencil and acrylics.

Our trip to the California Coast

I just love the west coastline. I think that Oregon has the prettiest of them all though. They can keep San Francisco, but the rest of the coast is beautiful. I just don't like big cities. Especially big cities with narrow roads and lots of traffic on them. Ugh....I am still realing from our trip to that city and the Bay Bridge. Not for me, nope. I would rather be at a beautiful rocky beach that isn't populated by hundreds of people. Anyway, here is a pretty photo of one of the many sun sets that I photographed while there. I think I took about four hundred photos!

Cali Kitty

Introducing, the one and only, the magnificent, the adorable, Cali Kitty.

Summer Time

Summer seems to bring out the child in all of us. I don't know if it is the fact that the green leaves are dancing in the wind and the warm sun on our backs tend to bring up memories of childhood. I know that we all want to escape now and then to our childhood, and maybe summer gives us a chance to do that. Music helps, too, such as surfing songs from the Beach Boys call to that inner child that is screaming to get out and play. As I look out my window I can see that the snow has melted off Slide mountain and that Washoe lake is bright blue, reflecting the clear blue sky. The sunlight glistens in bright crystals on the water as the gentle wind makes the waves dance in the sage scented breeze. I always think of Nevada as brown but summer is the one time that things actually turn green. Scrub blue jays squawk because the bird feeder is out of peanuts, and my doggies chase each other on the freshly cut verdant lawn. I hear children playing and laughing in the distance, each of them trying to enjoy as much of the summer as they can since school is just around the corner. My mind is restless. I want to get out and walk in the nearby mountain forest but my early morning workout left me too sore to get out and walk so I am going to have to rely on my memories. It is too bad that summer is such a fleeting thing, but then again, maybe it makes us appreciate nature and life more. If things were warm and beautiful all of the time we wouldn't have anything to compare it to and wouldn't appreciate it.

Stop and Smell the Roses

This is a photo I took of our cat "Mango" smelling a rose. This cat, who inspired me to wax poetic one day had me create one of the most meaningful and deep poems that I have ever writte. I will share this original and profound poem with you. It is as follows"
"Itty bitty kitty,
always lookin'
for her mama's tittie"

A More expressive Juneau...

Here is our dog Juneau. I thought he needed some expression on his face so I drew him some eyebrows.

Mother/Daughter Look Alike Contest

This is one of my favorite photos from the Mother/Daughter Look Alike Contest that my daughter and I were in back in '91. We won First Place!!!!

Uh Oh...Bill Paying Time

I am hiding...my husband is paying the bills. This is one of those times that I wish I could cover myself with Harry Potter's invisible cloak. Oh well...it seems like I forgot to put my credit card bill with the others and it is late. Penalty time. That is why I hide. Oh, my husband isn't an orgre or anything like that, but I do not want to get the job of paying those bills like I used to have when I was single. No no no...I hate things to do with money matters except the act of spending it. It really makes you reflect and think about things that I would rather not think about. Hmmmnnn....I think I will take a Loooooooong walk with the dog. At least Harley loves me. (He is the dog, not some other man, by the way)

Why don't my posts show up on my page?

This is very frustrating. My posts don't show up on my page. I am tired of writing them and then them just not appearing. This sucks.

Getting in Shape?

People seldom think about themselves as getting older, usually, they first recognize it in a friend that is the same age as them. "Gee, he sure looks old" they might say. As I approach the age of sixty, Yikes!, I see that things that were important to me before aren't as important now. Other things seems to be more difficult than they were before. It reminds me of the man who said that he wanted to be an athlete when he was in his twenties. When he was in his thirties he knew that wasn't going to happen so then he decided that he would like to be really buff and work out. By the time he was forty, he realized that getting buff was more difficult than he thought so he decided to at least be in the best shape that he could. By the time he turned fifty he said that his goal was not to have titties.

My Passion is nature in its wildest form...

I believe that within each of us is a wild nature that can identify with the primitive forces in wild animals. Whether it be the golden sun glistening on the coat of a wild cougar or the lonely call of a wolf on a still winter night, my passion is to portray the nature of the beast in my art.

This is "Cali Kitty" , our cat in her favorite pose. This painting was done in watercolor and colored pencil. I usually do mixed media work, that is, an underpainting of watercolor, then colored pencil and/or pastels.

Wildlife is my specialty
although I also do people and
pet portraits.

This is me recently at an art

show at Lake Tahoe. I was

drawing in pencil.

Some photos of my paintings...

The Blue River In New Mexico

As the years go by I am reminded by one thing. People can't really own anything. Sure, you can pay payments on land and work the land until you are sweating blood, but the land is never yours. That was most evident when I visited the "Blue" where I used to live. My family and I worked so hard to work the land, provide a garden, pay the payments and now when I go see it the only thing left is a few pieces of cement on the ground to show that at one time there used to be some kind of building there. New people moved on the land and build their home in a different spot. I can find some rotten railings here and there where we had a horse corral and an out building to the ranch, but other than that, one wouldn't know that at one time another family lived there. The native Americans had the right idea. We just share the land, we can never own it. The land will outlive each and every one of us no matter what we do to it. And, come to think of it, can we really own anything else? We can only use things, not own them. you can't take them with you when you die, someone else gets them. Any thoughts on that?

Oh, There I am!

I found the picture that was floating around in space! There I am!

Where am I?

Ok,Ok...I put a picture up about three times. Where did it go? Is my photo floating around in space somewhere?

LL Foster

When I was young no one I knew had a computer much less a blog. It is interesting how time changes thing. Once when I was a teenager I lived in a remote area called the "Blue River" in the White Mountains of New Mexico, right on the Arizona line. We didn't even have telephones there in the 1960's. In fact, they had just put in electricity in most of the scattered ranch homes there. We got snowed in each winter with snow drifts up to the windows and hardly anyone would venture out on those treacherous unpaved, winding mountain roads. The roads were wide enough for two vehicles to barly squeeze through, and in some places the drops below were hundreds of feet down. One Christmas, my family and I were snowed in as usual with only the radio to keep us company. I heard the sound of a horn in the distance and told my parents that someone was stuck on the road. The place was so remote that you could hear for miles away. My dad said that no one but a fool would be out on that road in this weather, but he and my mom dressed in their long johns and heavy coats and went to see. What they found was nearly a miracle of sorts. You see, that past summer my parents had helped a couple whose car had broken down. They let the couple stay at our home and even took them to the next town for car parts. After about a week the parts came in , the car was fixed and the people thanked my parents and drove away. Here, in the remote mountains in the middle of a snow storm was this couple driving a huge truck full of food, gifts and supplies for us. We unloaded the supplies in huge gunnysacks and walked through the deep snow and across the creek to our home. Not only did we have friends for the holiday but we had lots of good food and presents to open as well. That was a real blessing from the Lord.