Day Three: Monday: The drawing at the home of the Hanlon's

What a beautiful home.  A beautiful home cursed by a dog that would challenge even the greatest oil painting portrait artist.  The master of this domain was a woman who had already premeditated what the drawing might be.  She had a theme and a location in mind and we were thrilled to be given specific directions to follow.  We met her in the entranceway to her house, where we were also met by a robust, limping, red-eyed, short-haired, tired, droopy and exhausting beagle of a dog.  This dog sported a palette of browns, spotting a greying white undercoat and waddled over to us as we took off our boots.  Mrs. Hanlon explained to us that she would like to have a portrait of her dog drawn.  Colin and I both panicked for a second and shot each other a look... though we fancy ourselves skilled artisans, there comes challenges in life that can undermine our decades of confidence as visual artists.  Some things are not meant to be duplicated in any form.  In her next breathe she quickly added that we were in no way to draw the beagle that stood bow-legged before us - that there was a much grander animal in the household.  A genuinely grand animal indeed!  She brought us to a animal that one might only hear about in folklore - a jet black Giant Schnauzer.  This is an animal that looks very much like a Scottie that has eaten a stick of uranium.  As the dog had gotten up in the years and was a bit blind and surly, she had opted to keep it corralled in a beautiful reading room while we drew.  We were able to see it through the glass door, and make our observations of its mammoth size for our drawing.  

She had selected a corner of the room that housed her kitchen space.  We cleared outa short table with a ___ plant on it and set about drawing those two organic forms - a fuller, robust version of the ___ plant and a respectful, accurate drawing of the giant dog in the next room.  Mrs. Hannon went about her own business and we settled into a nice bout of drawing.  The mini-speaker system was coopted for a jaunty round of Fleetwood Mac and David Bowie, and we were able to focus on drawing quickly in silence - interrupted only by the dry clawing sounds of the beagles footsteps plodding across the kitchen floor. When the drawing was wrapped up, she took the brave steps of bringing the partially blind, yet enthusiastic mythical beast to the drawing for some attempts of dual documentation.  We got one decent picture of the dog and its green shadow.  As these photos unfolded, the beagle was recharging on a nearby floor pillow.  Recharging for what, we are not sure.  Furniture was placed back in its original positions and we went about putting on our boots and heading off to our next appointment.