The door to 2015

Happy New Year and may Janus the god of beginnings and transitions be good to you. It doesn't seem possible that Val and myself have been doing this blog for a year but it's been a fascinating challenge to produce work each week even though the Muse is sometimes hard to find.

We're already into the first month of the year and although the birds are feasting at the bird feeders and the squirrels are inevitably fighting with them for the peanuts, most wildlife is keeping as warm as it can out of sight and  it takes a brave soul to be prepared to stand outside sketching the red kites and occasional hare that we see on our dog walks.  So this week I have been keeping warm myself and turning back to my favourite subject of all.....our little lurcher Poppy.

Through an interest in gilding, I was searching through some medieval pictures on line and saw one from the Duc de Berry's Book of Hours. My eye was caught by the hound in the corner of the picture ....

 

Of course, I couldn't help comparing the rather stylised image with some pencil sketches I've done of Poppy

 

 

 

 

 

There's definitely a close affinity to those medieval hounds though, don't you think? No doubt she lives in luxury in comparison but because of the all round wonderful being I think she is, she deserves it and is my beautiful beast to start 2015.........