The Day Everything Changed

Happy Friday everyone!

It's become harder and harder to find the time to draw like I used to, so this post is actually dated from a year and five months ago (!). Believe it or not, this story takes place literally two days after I posted last time on the blog, so it's timely in that regard, I suppose. Anyway, exciting things have happened over the past 17 months and I wanted to write about the day it all started. 

This post is narrated again by Oreo, although Ran makes a couple of guest appearances throughout the story. Enjoy and have a nice weekend!

Story 5: Easter in Collingwood

Hope everyone is having a nice spring! It's May in Toronto and the weather finally seems to be warming up, which is great because the constant rain/cold was beginning to get us down. Anyway, here is a story about our trip to Collingwood in April...it ended up being exciting in more ways than we expected. Enjoy!

Story 4: "The Adoption"

Happy 2019! 

My first posting of this year will be about how it all started... the story of how we adopted Oreo (Rory) last March from Grimsby, Ontario. I thought it would be a nice way to celebrate a belated birthday with him too, as he turned 5 years old on January 30th. Happy belated birthday little guy!

I hope you like it. It's a story that I've been wanting to tell for a while now so I'm glad it's finally finished.... between night classes, a full-time job and Christmas, it's been a struggle to find any spare time. Anyway, I had a few more stories up my sleeve so stay tuned and I'll make an effort to update my blog more often. One of my co-workers recently complained about my lacklustre schedule, so I don't want to disappoint too many more people.

Thanks for reading and stay warm y'all (:

Third R&R story: "The Sleepover"

Happy September! I hope that everyone had a good long weekend with lots of sunshine and relaxation. Summertime sure flies by quickly.

I am proud to say that I finished the third Ran and Rory story (see below). I hope you like it...it's about how Ran and Rory (Oreo) finally became really good friends after first ignoring each other. I guess some quality "together" time in the same house will make even the shyest dog come out of his "shell".

Thanks for reading!

 [narrated by Ran the dog]

For the past couple of weeks, Ritsy and I have been staying at Rory’s house with Matt and Maki. Ritsy is selling her condo so that she can buy a house with a basement, out of which she plans to run her own dog grooming business.

At first, me and Rory just ignored each other. I still couldn’t understand him and he smelled funny.

But soon after, we became really good friends!

Now we do everything together and even chase each other around the park. So much fun! We even stay at each other’s houses each week and cuddle together on the couch. Rory turned out to be a really great little guy and I don’t think he smells funny anymore.

THE END (and Ritsy did end up buying a bungalow with a basement 😊)

Drawing for charity auction, plus a random sketch

Happy Sunday!

Today, I finally finished a small drawing for the Animal Alliance of Canada, a local animal charity who is planning an art auction for October as a fundraiser. All artworks are to be 4" x 4", so I decided to create a drawing of Ran (mother's dog) in a snowy background, since he's mostly white and would look cute surrounded by snow. Here is the drawing (below):

Pen and pencil crayon drawing of Ran

Two versions of the dog drawing

I started off with the puppy more centered on the page, but decided to make him bigger and closer to the bottom for the final. I might finish the other one off in a similar colour and give it to my mother in a few months (when it's actually snowing). Ran is pretty photogenic–always smiling and happy. I based this painting on a photo of him that I took last week, below (with the red body harness). This is how he looks ALL the time. 

Ran the dog--just over a year old

In other non-dog related news, I also did a small drawing of Matt walking into a flying cicada. It was pretty funny to see, as cicada's only come out once every 17 years (!) and they're humungous. We were heading out to a new bar in our neighbourhood when this happened and I remember it was totally weird to see such a large insect flying drunkenly into his face. Matt recalls the insect having "red eyes" and making a loud noise as it heading directly for the side of his eye. Bizarre!

Cicada hitting Matt on the side of his face.

Anyway, wish me luck with the auction! Woo-hoo!

Also, I've just created and Instagram account, so feel free to follow me there too. I haven't posted anything there yet but I'll start doing so real soon. Have a great week!

Drawings for our parents

Over the past month, I spent some time making illustrations for my mother and M's parents, for no particular reason (see below).

I have more free time these days, so I thought that they would be nice gifts for our parents, since they're easy for me to make but personalized enough that they might enjoy them. I always feel a bit awkward that M's parents are always so nice to me and I never really do anything for them in return (except show up at their house). Hopefully these small contributions can act as a form of appreciation, as I know that it's difficult to accommodate a finicky vegan city girl at the best of times. 

In other news, next week is Ran (the dog)'s first birthday! Yay! He is the light of my mother's life and such a wonderful companion that we decided to buy him a cake and celebrate in the park. Awwww.....dogs are such amazing creatures. 

M's parents with Shelby the dog

Drawing of my mother and Ran the dog