Animal Art Challenge, letter H SFA

Three of the H animals got votes this week- hedgehog, hippopotamus and hare.
I’ve not done the hare yet, been distracted with getting a rescue cat but that’s another post!

I have painted a hippo mixed media ACEO and hedgehog canvas, which can apparently both be classed as SFA. A new term I’ve learnt this week thanks to artist Brenda Cumming from the Folksy art chat forum. It is commonly used in America and SFA stands for ‘small format art’, which includes any art under 14 inches in size. ACEO (art card editions and originals) on the other hand are always the same size 2.5 by 3.5 inches but can also be classed as SFA. It’s a good term to use in your tags for smaller paintings.

Bluebell Wood hedgehog wFor my hedgehogs I decided to paint them in a bluebell wood. We have beautiful woods near where I live in Devon in the UK & I wanted to paint a spring scene to brighten up the grey gloomy weather we’ve had here this week!
It is an acrylic painting on a 7 by 5 inch canvas with the hedgehogs painted with glass paint on acetate. I used a flash for this photograph, which shows how the hedgehogs catch the light.

 

Hippopotamus w
Hippo ACEO

My animal business this week does great work helping the deaf. I used to work with deaf blind people and know how invaluable a canine companion can be. Most people have heard of guide dogs for the blind but Hearing Dogs is less well known.

Hearing Dogs was launched at the world famous Crufts dog show in 1982. Since then we have created over 1,600 life-changing partnerships between deaf people and hearing dogs in the UK. There are currently over 750 working partnerships in the country.

“We train hearing dogs to alert deaf children and adults to important household sounds and danger signals such as the alarm clock, doorbell, telephone and smoke alarm – providing independence, confidence and valuable companionship.

Hearing dogs alert their deaf recipients to household sounds by touching them with a paw or nudging with a nose to gain attention. The recipient then asks the dog ‘what is it?’ by voice and/or hand command and then the hearing dog leads the recipient to the source of the sound. For danger signals such as the smoke alarm, the hearing dog will alert the recipient in the same way, but when asked ‘what is it?’ the dog will lie down to indicate danger.”

It takes around 18 months to train a hearing dog but they do such amazing work. It makes you realise how intelligent animals are.

Next week is of course the letter i and any suggestions are welcome 🙂