Happy New Year Everyone!
Now that the hubbub of the holidays has come and gone, I’m more or less settling in for the long winter and hoping to get going in the studio again. The end of the year analysis is over, and my only real goals for this year are to focus on artwork and getting more fit and more healthy. Maybe this year it will actually happen!
This past week I spent time adjusting the image of the oil painting above titled “Remembering Willie”. It’s a small painting of my childhood horse that I plan to use in an ad in Horses In Art magazine. Since I was having problems getting a good print out of it, I finally (after four years!) took the time to read in my Photoshop books about the proper settings for printing to my desktop printer and for working with images destined for commercial print publication. To my surprise, it only took about a day’s reading and experimenting to grasp what the proper settings needed to be, and the image has now been sent off to the magazine for the Spring issue.
Solving this problem is a big load off my mind, and now I’m sorry I waited four years to take the time to tackle it. There is still much more to be learned about color correction in Photoshop, so I’m going to continue working with the books and the program this winter while I have more time.
Just before New Years, I arrived at the barn for our Christmas party to find my horse standing in the aisle surrounded by humans with his leg wrapped up. He was lame again, feeling sorry for himself but definitely enjoying all the sympathy. Long story short, this time it turned out to be a hoof abscess and he is now well on his way to soundness. So, I’m hoping to start riding again this coming week. Oddly enough, there were so many horses lame at the same time at the barn that I don’t think anyone has been riding much this month. It will be very good to get back with my barn buddies and get my riding workouts in again.
I’ve picked out reference for a new painting and begun the preliminary preparations so that I can start on it this week. The subject is a palomino mare that was my horse’s best friend when I first bought him. She was a favorite of mine, too. Here’s an ACEO I did a few years ago from the same reference photo, and I was so pleased with how it turned out, I’ve wanted to do a proper painting of Glory ever since.
Also waiting on the studio wall is the Belgian painting that I really MUST get back to and finish.
And that’s all for today.
