Art! Attempting to draw humans.... scary!

I have drawn animals my entire life.  When I was younger I never had any interest in drawing humans, but as my art improved I started wanting to branch out.  I have loved experimenting with different mediums (charcoal, colored pencils, chalk pastels, oil paints, etc.) and I've enjoyed branching out with landscapes, but I was always too afraid to try drawing humans because I'm awful at proportions.  Today I was feeling brave so I decided to just go for it.  The result is above.

This is completely free hand drawn with a reference photo (no tracing).  I'm extremely critical of my work, so all I see are the faults, but my family has praised the result so I decided to call it done and stop trying to "fix" it.  After stepping away for a bit I'm pleased with the result aside from the glaring proportion issues.  It will get better with more practice.  I really like the pose, the face shape and the hair.  I also like the individual features, but I do wish they were the correct size.  Oh well.  Please let me know what you guys think!  Feedback (good or bad) is helpful.  :)  Thanks guys! 

Clicker Training Buddy - Session 2 and 3

Session 2 - May 23rd - On Buddy's second session we reviewed sit, which he did perfectly and I started adding in the voice command.  Since it was going so well I decided to try down.  The cool thing about clicker training is you don't have to force the dog to do anything or try to trick or lure them into doing anything.  You just wait and they learn to think for themselves.  So I sat there with my fist (treat inside) on the floor to get him to think about going down because I'm impatient and I like to give the dog a hint. 

The thing with Buddy is he just sits there and stares at me or he goes in circles around me.  Completely by accident he ended up under my arm and I just kind of smushed him gently to the floor.  He laid down, so I clicked and gave him the treat.  It took no time at all for him to figure it out after that.  It was funny though because he kept going under my arm to lay down.  Silly pup!!  Eventually I had him laying down all by himself without any assistance from me.  I haven't started adding the voice cue yet.  I try to keep sessions short so that he stays interested.

Session 3 - June 6th -  I reviewed sit and down with him.  He got sit immediately, but it took him a minute to remember down (it had been a couple of weeks).  He picked it up very quickly though, so I decided to move on to the next thing.  Since he's very mouthy and nippy (herding breeds yay), I decided to teach him to hold something in his mouth.  The awesome thing about clicker training is that if they do something wrong (like jump on you), you teach them the opposite behavior (sit).  It's a positive way to correct misbehavior and it works great. 

I picked out one of his toys (a bone) and held it out in front of him.  He didn't want to bite it, but he was panting because he'd been playing really hard so I just stuck it in his mouth, clicked and gave a treat.  Within less than a minute he was biting it on his own.  We obviously have to work on holding it in his mouth for longer, but with dog training you have to work on one criteria at a time.  New behavior, then duration, then distance.  You don't do more than one at a time or they get confused.  Anyway I don't want to rant about dog training, but I'm definitely excited to be getting back into it.  :)

 Sorry for the crappy cell phone pictures, but he is SO cute!

That smirk!!

Introducing Buddy!

Sorry for only having one picture.  I'm on a computer I don't normally use for blogging so I just emailed this picture I shared on IG to myself.  This is Buddy, my parent's new puppy!  My dad rescued him off of a busy road where someone had dumped him.  He saved his life!! When he stopped Buddy was standing frozen in the middle of the road.  When dad got out of the truck Buddy ran underneath it.  Luckily with a little coaxing he came to him.

They took him to the vet the next day (this was three weeks ago) and they said he was only four weeks old.  Can you believe someone would dump a four week old puppy????  He was wormy, hungry and slept a lot at first, but now after deworming, shots, a bath and good food he is a whirlwind of energy!

It's anyone's guess what breed he is, but we're pretty confident he is at least part Australian Shepherd.  He doesn't seem fluffy enough to be a purebred.  We also thought Catahoula because of his color and webbed feet, but we're not totally sure.  It will be easier to guess as he gets older.  With his color and ears I still definitely think he's mostly Australian Shepherd.  I will get some current pictures of him soon (this one was a couple of weeks ago I think).  Maybe I can break out the good camera this weekend.  I might have to go out of town though so we'll just have to see.

So the reason I decided to blog is because today was his very first clicker training session (he's 7 weeks old now)!  I want to blog about it like I did with Jackal because it's a great way to keep track of what we're working on and what worked or what didn't.  So I broke out the clicker and his dog food with the intention of just charging the clicker (click, feed treat, click, feed treat, etc. until they know what it means).  He was doing so great that I actually taught him to sit too!!! In the very first five minute session he's ever had.

If you're not familiar with clicker training the way it works is you use the click to mark the behavior that you want.  It's such a wonderful method of training because it teaches dogs to problem solve and seek good behaviors.  So all I did was sit there and watch him.  When he sat down naturally without me having to touch him or lure him into it I clicked and gave him a treat.  In less than a minute he was sitting so fast I could barely click or say the word sit fast enough.  I was having to toss the treat on the floor just to get him to stand up (Jackal was the same way when he was a puppy). 

So he knows how to sit.  He obviously doesn't know the word yet, but that will come in time.  I'm telling you this puppy is SO scary smart!!!!  He's going to challenge my creativity I'm betting.  I think we can outdo Jackal's record of forty tricks for sure!  Anyway I'll try to get pictures and video sometime for you, but I'm not making promises on when.  For right now I'm just super excited to be training a dog again.  I've missed it so much!

P.S.  If you want to see a video of Jackal doing all forty of his tricks you can look back at this old post here http://myfarmerlife.blogspot.com/2012/04/jackal-40-tricks-video.html.  That will be our goal to beat someday.

P.P.S.  There has been things going on at the farm, but I haven't had the time or energy to post about it.  Most of the goat kids are sold.  I'll try to do an update post sometime, but I don't know when it will be.  I have lots of pictures I've taken with my new camera, but just no time to edit or upload them.. Oh well.