Playing With Photos

I thought I'd play with one of my photos for today's Wacom/Photoshop/Digital painting experiment.  Here is the result.

This is my horse Abbey and her pasture mate, Jewel.  Every so often I get a chance to take a picture of them running (NOT Abbey's favorite activity!).  I played with the background a bit to make it abstract..  nothing terribly fancy, but I learned a bit in the process.

Signature Style

Poniesdevon Rufty Tufty, Commission, Work in Progress

If you're in the northern hemisphere, I bet it's cold where you are.  I know it's cold where I am. We've had glimpses of beautiful weather (for which I am grateful!), but this week has been COLD, and getting colder.  Right at this moment it's 27.  Yeah, you northerners (and I am a Yankee myself) might not think that's cold, but it's cold enough.

My hubby, bless him, is a rural letter carrier for USPS.  He got up this morning with an awful headache and not feeling well at all, and off he went to bring the mail, cold or no cold.  I hear a lot of people complain about their mail carriers, but you know what, thank them once in a while.  It's not the easiest thing in the world.  Anyway, Russ got up at 5something am, and off he went to work.

And I thought, I sure am glad I don't have to do that.  So honey, you're the best, just wanted you to know.  Thank you for doing what you do.

Cause I don't have to.  So I thought, the least, the VERY least I can do, is get my non-9-to-5 self into the studio today and do some work.  So I did.

(For the record, I do have a "day job" typing medical transcription, and I also make jewelry, but all in all it is pretty cushy and I can do it in my jammies and I am spoiled rotten).  Oh, and I did some hard core cross training today -- I am serious about this getting in shape thing, for once!

I listened to last week's Artists Helping Artists podcast while I worked on Tufty's background.  This episode was one of those gems that you MUST listen to if you make art.  It was about Developing Your Signature Style.  I've only been at this for 3 years, and only seriously for one of them, so it's a subject near and dear to my heart.

One of the points that was made was that your painting should tell a story.  So I thought... hmm... what if I did an ACTUAL story with each painting?  But maybe that defeats the purpose.  Maybe people want to come up with their own story when they look at a painting.  What do you think?  Then again, just writing the story doesn't mean I have to share or publish the story... but in my writer's brain I think it might help the process.

Hope that wherever you are, you are safe and warm, and appreciating the fact that you are safe and warm.  As for me, I am about to head into the cold to feed the horses.  Be well! :)

Where Inspiration Lives

Saturdays aren't always delicious, but this one was.  I got up (lateish for me), I exercised (this is a new daily thing), I spent a few hours editing my jewelry photos while my hubby hung out with me and read stuff from the news site he was browsing.  He had a union meeting to go to this evening, so I headed to the farm by myself to feed the horses.  Yesterday I had to break ice off the pond, which is something I truly hate doing, so today, instead, I just brought water.

"V" is a big, gorgeous black mare my friend owns, whom no one has been able to touch for years.  Every day, when I feed her, I'd do a little more.  Pause so she had to stand near me.  Then, offer the bucket I was carrying so she could eat out of it while I was holding it.  Then, I'd offer for her to sniff my hand (no way!).  The other day I offered feed in my gloved hand but she spooked.  Tonight was the first time she took grain out of my hand and acted like it was no big deal.  It was a BIG DEAL to me, but I didn't tell her that.

"V" this summer, running with Abbey & Storm behind

 

 

My horses and I do something I call "no agenda time" which means I just hang out with them... no riding, no training (well, technically it's part of training, but they don't know).  They followed me to this gigantic, ancient pear tree in their pasture, which has huge roots for me to sit on.  Abbey, my mustang, came to me and nuzzled my hands. Everything was colored in shades of pink and purple, even my dirty horse.  But oh, the sky.

January Sunset

The landscape is pretty drab in January and I eat up every bit of beauty I can find.  Might have to paint this.  With a horse in it :)  (they were behind me).

Anyway, after the sun had set I stood to go, but lingered a while.  A huge shape floated into the treetops of the big pear tree (the one whose branches are in the top of this photo) -- a great horned owl.  I sat and watched him for several minutes before he spotted what he was looking for and swooped away.  The painting of an owl is in my future, too.  Couldn't get a picture in the dusk.

Then, I came home and painted.  I am not normally an evening painter, so it felt a little weird, painting by entirely artificial light.  But, I made some good progress on Georgie, whom I think I will have done tomorrow.

Georgie - getting close to done :)

And now it's dark, and the house is quiet.  I'm counting blessings, and there are a lot of them... some curled at my feet or in my lap, some out in the pasture in the dark, some that come and go, and one on his way home.  Life is good.

I'm Playing Hooky

I'm supposed to be typing. I'm also supposed to be finishing jewelry orders. But...

... I got new toys. YESTERDAY. And didn't have time to play.

So I transferred this image onto a panel..

Sort of. What the heck, transfer paper?

And then loaded molding paste (acrylic) into a henna cone. Because henna can be messy I feel a little bit more comfy with an acrylic medium on the other side of that cellophane.... way less toxic.

And here he is henna-fied, white on white. Gosh, I kinda like him just in white... The base coat now needs to be touched up but once the molding paste dries (this stuff holds texture!) I'll go back in with the high flow paints and either try a wash or fill in some color.

And hey, there's not a thing to clean up right now, and if it wasn't bedtime I could finish this guy today!! Which is awesome because a new painting a day challenge is looming on the horizon! I'm excited!

B is for...

 ... Barrel racer!

Since I couldn't put the finishing touches on my little Appaloosa baby (I painted on it yesterday evening so the layer isn't dry yet), I took the next step with my "B" painting, roughing in horse, rider and barrel.

So here's the scoop on this brave little rider.  Mahala is seven and she has Down's syndrome.  Thing is, that doesn't matter one bit to her buddies Dusty, Rainey and Grits (this is Grits).  Mahala competes in barrel racing and has quite a few wins under her belt. 

There's another picture of Mahala telling Rainey secrets that I want to paint another time, but for now I thought I'd paint her doing what she loves... going fast!

This is 16x20 so it might take me a bit to finish it and get on to C (darnit that one's not little either... D and E will be though, I have them planned at least that far). 

I'll finish up the little Appy tomorrow and maybe work on this some more, and I'll tell you about why Mahala is such a huge inspiration to me.

Here's a quote from Mahala's Facebook page that mom  (which you should be a fan of because she's awesome):  "I may not do things just like everyone else, and it may take a little longer for me, but I CAN do them. Besides what does it matter how long it takes?? We get in too big a hurry in life anyway and forget to LIVE!!!!!"

Ride on girl!

Apple-oosa

Does it look like an appy yet? Well, he is just a baby.

Painting time has been practically nonexistent toward the end of last week, with the usual crazy busy weekend, and today my hubby is home with a kidney stone (ugh, again... poor guy) and I had to go to Cookeville to get my CSA produce and run some other errands.  BUT, I sneaked in some painting time this evening, yay!  Only I didn't have time to go see my horses.  Seems like I get one or the other.

I think this guy is one session from being done.  What do you think of the background this way?

Speed

See, this is why I need to practice drawing. I had a heck of a time getting the sketch for this painting on the canvas and ultimately I said the heck with it, I'm painting. And so I did. I know the pony's head is not big enough. It will be, though.

Background first. I wanted something not very distracting, but something that adds to the feeling of speed. What do you think, did I manage?

I'm going to tease you with the cool story behind this painting the whole time I'm painting it. Your tidbit for today: the girl is Mahala and the pony is Grits, and they are a huge inspiration to me. More tomorrow ;)

Hello, Friend

I worked on the background today, added his shadow, put in buildings and also shortened up his nose a lot and added a bit of mane. The rule with oil is, paint the background first and paint it over the edges of the foreground objects. I estimate two more sessions to finish him, maybe three.

And here is round one for sketches today - the ubiquitous gallop thumbnails. I may sketch some more later if I get my "day job" work done quickly.

Hope your day is full of horses, or art, or whatever makes your soul sing like those two things do mine.

Back to my Comfort Zone

People tend to play in their comfort zone, so the best things are achieved in a state of surprise, actually."  -- Brian Eno

This occurred to me last week....

I was thinking about life, and art, and painting.  There's a long story attached to the fact that I want to spend more time with my horses.  I'll tell it some other time.  But I was thinking about art, too, and I realized...

Horses are what I want to paint.  And skies, and other animals.  But mostly horses.

A few days after I came to this realization, I went to the Fragrant Mushroom Gallery where my jewelry and my art is sold.  Cherri, a fellow animal lover and the friendly face at FMG, had a group of great animal loving ladies there (I sort of missed what organization they were working with, I need to find that out... I offered to do a painting for them for a fundraiser).  While I was talking to Cherri they were fighting over the two horse paintings I had there at the gallery and one of them bought them both :)

More recently... actually after I attempted the horse the other day in watercolor... I decided I really prefer to work in oils.

Now that the weekend from hell is over and the dust is starting to settle (mostly), I'm back at the canvas, and today I roughed in this handsome guy who seems to see a friend over the fence.  It's 11 x 14, and this is the very rough, work in progress version.  I hope to finish it by the end of the week, because my goal for June is to finish at least two paintings a week.  The other goal is to do more sketching.  Mostly horses.

I started drawing horses as soon as I could hold a pencil/crayon/marker, and never took much interest in drawing anything else until I took painting lessons a few years ago (of course, I skipped a LOT of years of drawing in between... a little sad about that but better to start some time than not to start, right?).

I'm also extra extra excited because Rachael (the lady who bought the 2 paintings) wants me to do a commission painting of her 30 year old TWH mare.  I love the idea of painting a beloved horse for someone.  I'd also like to do a series of paintings depicting the relationship between horses and people.

So prepare for some horses.  And other animals.  But mostly horses.  I'm giving in to my obsession.

Part of the problem with drawing horses obsessively when I was a kid is that some of those left-brained "this is how you draw a horse" things still persist, so I feel like some of my drawings come out pretty adolescent.  Oddly enough, I'm so much more comfortable painting.  But I feel like my inability to draw and sketch is kind of a liability, so my other goal this month is to sketch 2-5 pages in my little index-card-sized sketchbook (I am not as intimidated by this little sketchbook as I am bigger ones).  So, I started with the bottom middle one and you know, I think even in six drawings that I did tonight, I think I made some pretty major improvements and challenged myself with positions and angles I don't normally draw.  Expect a little sketch collage like this hopefully every day, and we'll see where we get by the end of the month.  Since legs/hooves are my nemesis I focused on them a bit today.

Cob

I think my commitment for June is going to be to draw 2-5 sketches per day in this little index card sized sketchbook. It is small enough that the big blank page doesn't intimidate me. I think as I gain drawing confidence I'll want to draw bigger. I hope. They don't have to be fancy, they can even just be doodles, but 2-5 pages, every day.

And, I want to paint horses. But at the same time I don't want to be afraid to paint other things.

So a watercolor horse on Aquabord. The gorgeous white horses Crystal Cook paints - and the fact that both my horses are white - have inspired me to try a white horse in watercolor.

I got the shetch done and transferred :)