Finished Belgian Oil Painting

detail "Meet The Green Team" oil on canvas

 To celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, I finished an oil painting today with the working title, “Meet The Green Team”. You may remember this painting from previous blog posts. It’s been around so long that it’s almost an oldey moldey.

I’m totally elated to finish this painting for several reasons. It’s been “under construction” for almost seven years! I needed to finish it to send to a show next month. And, someone is interested in buying it! She lives in the same state where the painting will be going to the show which should allow her to buy it at the show if she can make it there.

This painting also represents a milestone of sorts for me besides being the first major work of art that I’ve completed in several years. I really challenged myself with this painting by making some significant changes from the reference photograph. As you can see in the reference below, one of the horses is a bay and both horses are sweaty  having just finished participating in a horse pull. I wanted to paint a team of Belgians so decided to change the bay to a sorrel and elminate the sweat from the horses. I didn’t care for the rusty trailer so decided to change that, too. One of the reasons it took so long to finish this one is that I ran into problems because I didn’t have good references for what I wanted the horses and trailer to look like. It took a lot of revising to get it to its finished state.

reference for painting

Finished painting, 12x16 oil on canvas

Next on the schedule will be finishing the taxes so they can go to the accountant, and then it is back to painting again. “The girls” are waiting to be finished: “Glory” and “Girls Play”.

The Green Team Revisited

I’ll keep this very brief today, but I did want to share with you the fact that I’ve finally gotten back to work on this painting which has been languishing on the studio wall for over a year now.  You may remember this painting of the Belgian draft horses at a horse pull which I started a very long time ago.

Having finished one small painting and started another in the past two weeks, my confidence was restored enough to tackle this one. To be perfectly frank, I’ve been dreading doing the trailer because my references for it are so poor. I’m having to guess about reflections and hope for the best. After two working sessions what you see above is where the  painting is now. I’m not sure about the reflected grass on the lower part of the trailer, but I’ll address that later when the paint is dry. I think a glaze over it with some blue will tone it down and make it more believable.

As I mentioned, I have someone interested in buying the painting, so I really MUST get it finished! In the next session, I'll work on the horses, and that will bring it close to being finished.

Last night at the barn I had kind of a funny moment with my horse, Scottie, that goes back to the talk with the animal communicator. I was saddling him up and tightening the girth. I was debating whether or not to take it up one more notch which seemed kind of tight when Scottie turned around and gave me a disgusted look. I could almost hear him saying, “Now you KNOW  I told you that I don’t like the girth so tight, so why are you doing it again?” I let the buckle out, and he was happy.

And, That's A Wrap!

What a whirlwind of a day I had today!

Not to bore you with a long list of what I accomplished, let me simply say that I wrapped up and mailed off an assortment of business and personal tax forms, got money transferred to pay the taxes, created and mailed my entry for the AAEA Mackinac Island show, made arrangements for an ad in Horses In Art magazine and last but far from least, I finished the Belgian draft horse painting. Whew! I never expected to accomplish so many important and stressful tasks in one day.

As they say in the movie industry, "That's a wrap". Now, on to new art and long neglected projects.

I think I’ll just leave it at that for tonight. Thanks for visiting, and please come visit again. Bring a friend if you care to!

Don't Count Yer Chickens!!

You know that old saying about not counting your chickens before they hatch? Well, I pretty much ignored that sage advice when I more or less committed myself to entering this painting in a juried show and to using it in an ad in Horses In Art magazine. As you know, the painting is far from finished, and both deadlines are coming up this week! Now my chickens have come home to roost!

Friday was more or less a bad studio day. After painting the lower part of the trailer, I painted the neck and shoulder of the left hand horse. When I finished painting that evening, I realized that:

1. The paint was not going on smoothly despite having oiled the canvas ahead of time.

2. The highlights and shadows were not in the right places, consequently the bones and muscles were not in the right places.

3. The highlights had gone dull and the whole horse image had gone flat, showing little volume.

Making 3-d images believable on a 2-d surface is all about creating volume in your subject. Well, this poor horse had none and would have to be repainted. That night I figured that there was no way I could possibly get the painting done enough to send off the entry by Tuesday at the latest. Actually, it was kind of a relief because that left the beautiful weekend free for doing some much-needed yard work.

But, by yesterday morning I was feeling very disappointed at the prospect of missing a second invitation to an AAEA member show and felt as if I was letting the Academy down and setting a bad precedent in their minds. So, after lunch I sat down in front of the painting to study it and determine what needed to be done and if it would be possible to work on it that day.

The first consideration was whether or not the paint was dry enough to paint over, and it was. It occured to me then that the reason I’d had trouble laying down paint the day before might have been because I was trying to use up leftover mixes of paint from the previous day which had probably begun to dry and had become somewhat sticky. Fresh paint would solve that problem.

Secondly, I studied the painting and my reference photos and saw some places where I’d gone wrong in laying in the muscle masses and the scapula.

Thirdly, when I flipped on the easel light, a light bulb went off in my head as well. The highlights on the horse were much brighter under the light than they were when the light was turned off. Since paintings are rarely hung with lights directly on them, I would need to compensate.

After getting out a fresh palette and mixing up fresh paint, I began to make corrections to the horse. The paint went on smoothly and didn’t lift the layer underneath, so I kept going until the neck and shoulder were done to my satisfaction. After dinner, I began painting the head and got as far as the nose band of the halter before quitting for the day.

While I was painting, I thought I was getting this ole work horse show ring shiny, but this morning he is looking dull again. Clearly, more adjustments need to be made, but those can be done when he is dry in another day or two. I’ll just add some bright highlights in a few places and he should come alive again.

The first image above shows the BC view (before corrections), the second is after corrections were made.

I don’t think I’ve said this before, so let me mind my manners and thank each one of you for visiting my blog. I hope that you’ve found it informative and entertaining and will come back again for another visit. Please feel free to leave comments, especially to let me know whether or not you enjoy this blog. I’m always open to constructive feedback.

Quite A Scare!

The night before my mother died, I got a cell phone call from my horse’s caretaker letting me know that he was colicking. Talk about stress! There I was 250 miles away, and suddenly faced with the very real prospect of losing both my mother and my horse within 24 hours. I was already worried that the doctors wouldn’t be able to keep my mother alive long enough for my sisters to arrive the next morning and worried that neither would be able to come at all due to snow storms in their respective home areas. That was on top of the certain fact that I was about to lose my mother.

For the next 4-5 hours I was kept in suspense until the call came that Scottie’s gas colic had resolved and he was recovering after a visit from the vet. Still, I worried until the next morning when a second call came to report that he was just fine but would be watched closely for a day or two. Shortly thereafter, my two sisters arrived at the hospital, and we gathered around my mother’s bed to say our goodbyes.

So, when I arrived at the barn yesterday to deliver the board check and found that Scottie was not with the other horses in the arena and was nowhere it sight, a feeling of dread and deja vue swept over me. There I was in street clothes; no boots and no knee brace. Fortunately, it was cold enough that the ground was only semi-soft and not mud, so off I went into the turn out, calling Scottie’s name. No response. I checked both of the run in sheds, but no Scottie. Now I was REALLY worried and anticipated finding his prostrate body lying somewhere in one of the pastures. Since the gate to the pastures was open, I went a little further and looked into the distance. There was Scottie happily munching on the leftovers of breakfast in the second pasture. This time when I called his name, he looked up and then went back to eating. I felt a wave of tremendous relief, and since he seemed to be just fine, I didn’t bother to risk wrenching my bad knee to go visit with him.

After heading home, I worked on the Belgian team painting a little more and repainted the railings on the trailer to make some corrections. I’ve also repainted the vertical supports. Today’s image is a close up of this area, and you can see that the horses are still in a rough stage, with pencil marks still visible.

In today’s painting session, I’m trying to decide whether to finish painting the rest of the trailer first or whether to start painting the left hand horse. I don’t want to waste the big gob of blue paint left over from yesterday, but if I paint the trailer first, I risk smearing that wet paint as I work on the horse. It probably makes the most sense to keep the momentum going and paint the trailer side and take my chances with wet paint. Since I’m on a tight deadline now, I don’t have time to wait for paint to dry before tackling the horse.

Today’s first photo is a close up of the painting showing yesterday’s progress where I evened out the widths of the corrugations. I’m quite happy with the way it turned out although the bottom rail still needs to be straightened.

The second photo shows our beach full of ice bergs as the lake ice broke up on Monday. Yesterday the ice was all gone, and we had snow flurries all day. But today is sunny, and three swans glided by this morning, enjoying the new open water and expanded feeding grounds. It won’t be long before some brave water skier in a wet suit skims the waves to be the first of another summer season of lake activities.

Whatever Happened to Spring??

Our snow was pretty much all gone until last night. That's when the Winter Storm Warning began for us, and now we have plenty of the white stuff again, along with high winds and drifting. It's a good thing my husband hadn't taken the snow blower off the tractor yet.

I've worked a little more on the Belgian painting the past two days and have made a little more progress. Most notably, the inside of the trailer has been painted, and this has given the painting more depth. Later I'll give some tone to that interior so that it isn't such a dark hole, but it's an improvement for now. I also painted the chrome strip on the roof, added more highlights and put in the reflections of the horses and the grass. I may need to add more grass color to make the reflections more believable later on, and after that, the whole trailer will be glazed over with a darker blue.

Now that the trailer is well under way, I can turn my attention to the horses again; the part I've been anxiously waiting for. In the next step, the left hand horse will be painted and made darker as was my plan from the beginning. The painting should really come alive with this step.

Since it's tax season, I've also been working on taxes, and they will be my focus until today's paint is dry. I can't wait to get the taxes done and to the accountant so that I can spend more time on art again. That should be enough incentive to keep going and not procrastinate any longer, like I've been doing along with just about every other American.

Going Blue With The Green Team

Yesterday was the official start of Spring, so what did we get during the night?! You guessed it; snow! The weather warmed up during the day, and by night fall the new snow is almost gone. There's still plenty of the old snow, but it's receding little by little. Alas, the crocus are still buried under piled up snow along the driveway. When they pop their heads up, we know that Spring is really here!

Today I worked on the Belgian painting again and got a little further on the trailer. Not much, but a little. It was fussy, time-consuming work to paint all those lines and try to blend them and keep them straight, and I'm glad that part is done with. It will need another layer of paint, but the next layer should be easier.

It's amazing what you DON'T see when you're working up close on a painting, as I was today. It wasn't obvious until I shot the photo that the rails on the trailer are off on the right side. I'll have to fix them on the next go round.

When I paint the rest of the trailer; which I hope to do tomorrow; it will make a big difference in how the painting looks.

One Fine Day

Yesterday was just a glorious day all the way around! Our temperatures hit a balmy 70 degrees fehrenheit which is most unusual in these parts for mid March.

I spent most of the day painting in the studio on this painting after dusting it off. It's been almost a year since I last worked on it; hard as that is to believe; so the first step was to wipe it down with turpentine to soften the paint slightly for better adherence of this fresh layer. Next, I oiled out the part that I was going to be working on and began the paint application. You can see that I've painted the upper part of the trailer and will finish it before moving back to the horses.

My mentor had suggested using a straight edge for getting edges nice and straight in paint, and I happened to think of my old plastic triangles from my old graphic design days. They proved perfect for this task! They were designed for using with ink pens and, unlike a straight edge, there is a slight recessed area underneath the edge of the triangle. This prevents the ink or paint from bleeding under the edge and then smearing. I used a large triangle and a small one to make the edges straighter as I painted. A bristle brush worked well and probably better than a sable or blend for this purpose, and there were no smears. The chrome strip on the roof still looks messy from the underpainting, but I'll clean that up once this layer is dry and the chrome strip can be painted.

Due to the tediousness of painting all those edges, I can see that the trailer will be a time consuming project. It's obvious already, though, that it will improve the appearance of the painting tremendously.

The second half of my day went equally well. I headed to the barn in a short sleeved t shirt and had a lovely ride inside where it was actually colder than outside. There's still far too much snow outside for Scottie and I to go on a trail ride, but we hope to soon. He is still sore, and we are both very out of shape.

When I turned Scott loose after our ride, instead of eagerly heading off to join his buddies, he stayed by my side nuzzling and licking me as if to say how much he's missed me or perhaps to comfort me. I swear sometimes that he reads my mind!

I headed home from the barn with a very full heart and a feeling of deep satisfaction. It had been one mighty fine day.

Going Green with The Green Team - Belgians

On Friday I had what seemed like a somewhat panicky email from Mary at Horses In Art magazine wondering if I would "please" join the Equine Art Guild group ad in the summer issue since they had only three artists signed up. That issue will be going to The Draft Horse Classic in the fall, so I did a little quick mental figuring and decided that I could use The Green Team for the ad, even though it's not finished, and it would be appropriate for a show of all draft horses. The images in those ads are fairly small after all.

Yesterday morning I was supposed to go riding, visit with my barn friends and then come home to work on "the boys". Didn't happen. The arthritis had really kicked up, and I was hurting a lot. I had worried all night about our cat, Annie, because she hadn't seemed to feel well for the past couple of days. She has digestive system problems, and I wondered if she was taking a turn for the worse and wondered if I should take her to the vet. In the end, I decided to stay home, keep an eye on Annie, and catch up on some reading time after taking an Aleve. The thought of sitting on a moving horse or sitting at the easel held no appeal whatsoever.

By today, the pain had pretty much subsided, but time was short, so instead of laying on a heavier layer of paint, I opted to glaze green over the blue trailer in an attempt to build up some luminosity and depth of color. This time, remembering my difficulties with the Bard portrait a few days ago, I oiled out the canvas first, and the paint went on really smoothly.

After that, I set up the camera on a tripod, shot the painting and adjusted it in Photoshop. Just to be sure, I printed out the image in a nice big size with my Epson 2200 printer and was very pleased with the results. The image is now ready to send to Mary by tomorrow which is the deadline she gave me.

And, just in case you're wondering, Annie seems to be fine now. In fact, she stole a piece of cheese from my dinner not once but twice while I was watching 60 Minutes! It's a good thing that she's very lovable and cute!