Pencil, pastel, & watercolor (NFS)
For many years, the kitchen-table in my longtime friend Newby’s big, drafty, resolutely non-modernized, wildly disorganized 1850 house was Command Central……the spot from which Newby placidly dealt with everything……ranging from the squawking parrots, the eternally barking and fiercely purebred Sealyham terriers, the constant flow of visitors dropping in for tea or drinks, and 2 grown daughters to the trials and successes of the many “orphans” (I was one of them) who came to regard that big, old house as their second-home.
I loved that life, that house, and, of course, Newby.
I painted this from a photograph I took on the morning after a Christmas when I took Kate (astoundingly bossy even as a puppy) up to meet her godmother for the first time. As supposedly “detailed” as this portrait might seem?….I left-out a lot of the detritus/piled-up stuff. We used to joke that, one day, it would all collapse around/onto Newby, but it never did.
Here’s a jolly, winter song for Newby and Miss Kate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAv1lxzaYQE…