goat | Ruth's Artwork

Pygmy Goat Portraits with the Nib Pen

I’m a day late on posting, but I have a good reason. The whole weekend was taken up with the football playoffs, and unlike last week when we went 0/4 on our favorites, this week we were 3/4. And our team won for a change. Hooray!

I had a productive time in the studio last week. As I said, I was going back to the nib pen for a change and I finished four small animal portraits. I like the feel the pen and ink gives to the animals and only one didn’t turn out the way I’d hoped and is destined for the circular file. I remember at a watercolor class I took a few years ago, I made a comment that a few of my paintings were destined for the circular file and the teacher was horrified. After all these years I certainly have a good idea of what I like and seems successful to me and what is hopeless. I was particularly uninspired by this teacher and her subject matter and it showed. She just couldn’t believe that I said out loud that I didn’t like several of my paintings. I am not such an egotist that I think everything that I do is great or even just good. Sometimes, in the art world, I think that more could be culled from the beginning and placed in the circular file. I don’t believe that something is art just because someone says it is. Or maybe it is art, just BAD art.

Anyway, back to the animal portraits I did last week. I really enjoyed working with the nib pen again. It has probably been close to 25 years since I used them. Once I got heavily into architectural art in the early 80’s the animal art kind of fell to the side. I became somewhat enamored with my Rapidograph pens. They were easy to work with and seemed well suited to use on the buildings. Since I have been spending more time in the studio, I think the animal art is refreshing for me. They are the opposite of the linearity of architecture.

Here are two of the three portarits that I did (the fourth really is destined for the circular file).