Sunday, November 22, 2015

Grief Therapy

It's not been any secret that I've had difficulty painting since we lost our precious Maltese, CiCi.  I've been trying to work through this painting block by attempting to paint various Maltese dogs but have had limited success.  Below are a couple of attempts:

The first painting is a watercolor which is not normally my go-to medium.  This painting has lots wrong with it as you can see but did enable me to sort of break out of the painting slump.


Maltese dogs require a lot of care and grooming but are the sweetest, most cuddly and loving dog you can imagine.  No, we don't plan to get another one nor do we plan to get another pet of any kind.  It's just way too sad to lose them.

Below is a pastel of a cute little puppy awaiting a new home.  Yes, it was tempting to make it ours but we just aren't emotionally ready.






I also got some photos of an online friend's Maltese and Morkie (Maltese and Yorkshire Terrier mix) when we had a meet-up and which I hope to paint in the near future. 

I know these paintings will never take the place of C but it does help ease some of the pain and makes me feel close to her once again.


4 comments:

Jennifer Rose said...

very cute and fluffy looking pups :)

art can do wonderful things to help heal

Jan said...

Thanks so much for your comment, Jennifer. I agree totally about the healing aspect of art!

Sue Clinker said...

I haven't been able to get onto Blogger properly for a couple of days so just catching up now.

I'm glad that your painting block is lifting and that working on these cute Maltese characters is kind of therapeutic (but bittersweet). I love the second picture as it seems to be a smiley face where the first dog looks sad.

The best one of all is the portrait you did of Cici herself ... the love shines through!

Jan said...

Thanks, Sue. Doing these sketches helps for some reason.