Good News Abounds!

If anything, today’s weather is worse than yesterday’s. It’s cloudy, a stiff wind is blowing, a drizzly rain is falling, and the temperature is a chilly 56 degrees F as opposed to yesterday’s high of 66! Even so, I prefer this weather to last week’s heat and high humidity. It’s a good chance to catch up on indoor chores without the misery of constant sweating and clammy floors and furniture.

At the height of last week’s heat, I was visited by a newly found saddle fitter who evaluated my saddle and my horse and declared that he could take my saddle apart, narrow the tree and restuff it to fit my horse better. Since it’s a quality saddle in good condition and needs only these minor adjustments, I won’t have to go saddle shopping again! The long and short of it is that this culminated a long-time goal of mine to “do something” about a saddle that I knew was a little too wide for my horse but that is comfortable for me and that I love. Thanks to a Chronicle of The Horse online forum, I was able to find a saddle fitter in Michigan who was highly recommended by other dressage riders. If the fit turns out well, I’ll share his name.

The other thing I accomplished over the past week was to finish weeding the flower beds, plant the wax begonias and install edging blocks along the front of the old garage flower bed. That made a huge improvement in its looks and helps to hold the water in, since one end of the bed is higher than lawn level. All of my new perennials that survived the winter are doing spectacularly, and the foxgloves are now blooming in lovely hues of magenta and cream. I’m going to wait until next year to move plants around after evaluating their different growing characteristics and bloom times. This year I’ll install more edging blocks along the long fence bed and dig out more sections between shrubs which will make mowing the lawn easier for my husband.

In about ten days, Horse Shows By The Bay will begin its expanded three week series of shows in Acme, and I’m hoping to get over there to shoot at least a couple of times. There will be an all-afternoon series of polo matches that are must-sees as well.

In honor of HSBB, I’m thinking of starting a new painting or drawing using one of my images from past shows. There are so many good ones to choose from that it will be difficult to make a choice! Should it be hunters, jumpers, dressage, ponies or a general horse show scene? Or, perhaps I’ll start my planned series of horse show dogs.

There is more good news that Mural Mosaic’s The Horse Gift will be displayed at this year’s Calgary Stampede. That’s the mural I did a panel for last year, so if you’re up that way and going to take in the Stampede, be sure to search out the mural. You can’t miss it; it’s 22 feet high! So far, the mural has been shown at Spruce Meadows, Quarter Horse Congress and the National Finals Rodeo; all top horse venues with lots of visitors. Reports are that visitors are just blown away by it! You can buy your own poster of it, too, or buy a book and put together your own life sized horse poster of the mural. I have books, if anyone is interested.

At the top are my foxgloves blooming. And below is my panel for The Horse Gift.

Poseidon's Gift; Finished!

It took some marathon painting sessions over the past few days, but I was able to finish the painting today and even signed it, the very last thing I do when I finish a painting.

To the strains of Mozart and then some Gershwin (An American In Paris), I repainted the bay horse and the gray, put manes and tails on the horses, finished the galleon and painted two wee horse heads out in the waves swimming for their lives to shore. I even painted water draining off the horses' bellies, and that may be the coolest part of the whole painting.

I'm pretty pleased with the way it turned out after some grave misgivings earlier. In the end it came together and serves the purpose for which it was created; to be a part of the Mural Mosaic project.

This painting is probably the biggest challenge I've given myself to date. It required a lot of research to pull it off, required that I paint something I've never painted before; the ocean and waves on a beach; and required working from less than optimum reference photos. The composition is entirely my own creation. I had no photo to copy to tell me where to put the elements and how big to make them.

There were many times when I thought that I'd bitten off more than I could chew and wished that I'd chosen a simpler subject that wouldn't have taken so much time and effort. But now that it's done, I'm glad I had the courage to go so far out of my comfort zone and do something that would help me to grow as an artist. It isn't perfect, but it's the best I can do at this time in my development as an artist.

And that's all I need ask of myself; to do the best that I can do today.

Click on the thumbnail to see a larger view and a detail view of some of the horses.

Poseidon's Gift; Water World

It took me two days just to paint the waves and the ocean. There were many false starts as I laid on paint, wasn't happy with the results and wiped it off again to try something different. Working without a good, solid reference of large waves coming onshore proved to be challenging, but I did the best I could and can only hope that these waves are a reasonable facsimile of moving water and the power that they represent.

You'll notice that the bay horse no longer has ears. He will get new ones today when I repaint him. With luck, I should be able to finish the panel today and then do some touchups if needed tomorrow.

Click on the thumbnail above to see the larger image. I just couldn't get a sharp image of the panel, but when it's finished, I'll use the tripod and that should yield better results.

Poseidon's Gift; Purple Clouds?!

Here are the results of another two days of painting, and this thing is finally coming together. Click on the image above to see a larger view.

Why purple clouds? Well, one of the challenges of creating these panels is that we have to follow the patterns and colors that are on them while adding our own artistic interpretations of the horse to them. We are only allowed to deviate by 20% in colors and lights and darks. So, purple clouds were a better idea than northern lights in a tropical setting in the daylight.

They ARE rather purple, though, aren't they? When all is dry, I will glaze some blue over them to bring them into a more realistic realm.

Tomorrow I start to paint the ocean and am really looking forward to that!

Poseidon's Gift; The Blood Bay Stallion

Yesterday was frustrating because I wasn't able to paint until late afternoon, but I kept at it until this horse was finished about 11:00pm. It was a challenge to paint a whole horse at such a small size, and I tried to keep my brush strokes more loose than usual and not fuss too much over every little bit.

This Andalusian horse is the main focus of the painting. I chose to make him a rich red bay because his warmth would be a good contrast to all the greens and blues of the ocean waves and therefore attract the eye. As usual, there are lots of corrections to make on him if the paint is dry enough. But, my goal for today is to finish the other two horses and the ship. Then I can go on to the sky and ocean.

I found the last time I painted that some of my alkyds had begun to dry in the tubes and become stiff, so I replaced those colors on my palette yesterday with oils of the same hue. That worked much better.

Poseidon's Gift; Let The Painting Begin!

During the past week, I came to the conclusion that the original pattern on the panel as provided by Mural Mosaic was intimidating me and holding me back. So, I decided the best way to proceed was to cover it over with a thin layer of paint using the local colors for my design.

After designing the waves and combining them with the horses, I traced all onto the panel and began laying on paint. Since time is getting short, I used my alkyds but found that they had become thickened over time and were difficult to work with. They were drying fast on the panel but also drying fast on the palette! I did manage to get a layer of paint over the whole surface and didn't worry too much about staying within the lines or putting in details at this early stage. So, the panel is very much in the Ugly phase right now.

After some advice from my artist friends who are also doing panels for this project, I've decided to switch to oils from now on since they seem to be drying faster than normal on these panels. I'm getting very worried about the time factor because the deadline is fast approaching, so I'll be painting many hours per day from now on and hoping for the best.

I'm not very happy with the waves so they will need to be revised, but first I'll work on the horses and get them to a more finished state before doing the background again.

Click on the somewhat neon colored thumbnail above to see a larger version and how I arrived at the design. At this point you don't see much of the diagonal lines that are an important element to incorporate in my design. Those will come later as I put in the clouds and details in the waves.

Poseidon's Gift; The Horses

I live just a mile down the road from beautiful Torch Lake in northwestern Michigan. One day this week it was particularly windy, and I knew that waves would be higher than normal on Torch, so I grabbed my camera and headed for the beach to catch some waves. Surf's up! Reputed to be the third most beautiful lake in the world, on a sunny day Torch contains all the lovely colors that are in my panel. Besides which I needed more good wave references for the panel painting. The waves weren't as large as I'd hoped, but I got some excellent shots just the same which will help in studying wave action across a large body of water and waves as they break on the shore. To supplement those, a friend sent me some really large wave shots to use, and I'm reading a very good book on painting water titled "Painting the Sea In Oils Using Special Effects" by E. John Robinson. It is one awesome book!

Of course, the most important part of the painting will be the horses, so they were the next objects of my attention. First, again, I did research by going through my reference photographs and pulling out photos of horses walking toward the camera. I had quite a few to choose from and quickly narrowed down the possibilities to just a few. I also did a little research on the internet to find out the breed characteristics of Andalusians and their colors. In centuries past they came in more colors than today which gave me greater latitude to selecting the colors of my horses. Then the fun began as I sketched five horses in different poses and changed them from Arabians, Quarter Horses and a Morgan into Andalusians. They also had to be changed to look as if they were stepping out of water after a strenuous swim onto an unknown shore.

After the horses were drawn to my satisfaction, I made copies of them in different sizes, cut them out and tried different arrangements on a sheet of paper marked in the exact width of the panel which is a 16 inch square. When I found an arrangement that worked the best, I traced the horses and refined them further, adding flowing manes and tails that would follow the directional lines in the panel. Below you can see my horses as they will appear on the panel.

One final step awaits before I can begin the actual painting, and that is to plan the wave action which will be such an important part of the panel and the story.

Poseidon's Gift; The Journey Begins

A few months ago I was invited to be part of the creative team for an exciting new project directed by Mural Mosaic. Called Le Cadeau du Cheval, or The Horse Gift, it consists of a very large mural that is made up of panels painted by the creative team of artists. When all put together, the panels form a large image and yet each panel is an individual work of art in itself. The concept is pretty neat, so I suggest you visit the website to see how these unusual murals are created.

Two weeks ago I received my panel which is shown above. The object is to paint whatever I want on the panel while keeping the same color scheme and values (lights and darks). Anything, that is, related to horses.

The first challenge was to come up with an idea for my panel. The colors reminded me of the sea, so I thought about how the sea and horses are related. Then I remembered the legend of how the Chincoteague ponies came to live on Assateague Island hundreds of years ago. The legend says that they swam ashore from a shipwrecked Spanish galleon, possibly one of the treasure ships sent to the New World to explore and bring back plunder. It is also surmised that the horses brought over on these galleons by the Spanish escaped or were turned loose and became the ancestors of today's mustangs. It seems fitting then, that the subject of my panel be these Spanish horses, probably Andalusians, carried on ships to the New World; Poseidon's Gift from the sea.

I will be updating you as this project progresses and will be posting the images on my website where they can be seen larger. I've already begun, so take a look to see how my panel is progressing.