A Florist Shop and a Fat Dachshund

Not much happened last week, other than a sketch outing and a vet outing.  Life in the Atomic City is kind of on the quiet side, which is precisely how we like it.

The sketch group met at a florist shop, a fine place with lots of stuff to draw, including fake plants that looked real to me.  I was drawn to the cactus display, though not to some of the other things around it, so I took a little artistic license and cut some things out and moved other stuff closer together.  The rules for Urban Sketching are, after all, only guidelines.

I'm quite pleased with the results.  I also tried a little framing device, which is a little wonky here and there but hey, it's freehand, so you get what you get.  We get 1-1/2 hours to draw, and I spent 30 minutes on composition and an underlying rough pencil sketch, 30 minutes on pen work, and the last 30 minutes on watercolor plus a few white pen highlights.  I finished at precisely 11:30.  Whew!

Then we shared our work and took the group photo:

The veterinary outing was for Pippin's annual check-up and vaccinations.  The new vet determined that little Pip, as I suspected, was overweight.  He should weigh 15lbs, and he currently weighs 16.7.  This means cutting back on his food, and he was NOT pleased at the news:

Here he is back at home, showing me his svelte figure, and explaining that the scale lies:

And here he is begging for just one more treat, pretty puh-leeze:

And here he is after I denied him:

Then he decided that he didn't need to suffer alone, so he pointed out that Truman looked overweight, too, and should thus join him in his new horrible diet plan.

And now Truman is not pleased, either.  Darn that Pippin!

Well, in fact, Truman has his check-up this Thursday, so we shall find out then!