A Case of the What Ifs

The other day I got the bug to "do something" with my website. It started out innocently enough. I was just going to get rid of some broken links to a stats program I'd tried a few years ago and do a few other little maintenance things but then got a case of the What Ifs. That's always dangerous and sure to lead you astray from whatever urgent project is on the schedule for that day.

I've been wanting to redo my website for a long time but just couldn't spare the time to learn Deamweaver and do a proper job of it. I'm still stuck in the Dark Ages of website design, you see, with my wimpy little Home Page WYSIWYG program that only runs in OS 9, so my options are currently very limited, along with my knowledge of all the new cool stuff for making a website look sophisticated and professional.

At any rate, when the What If's struck I wondered What If I changed the table color to white instead of the teal green (that I love) in order to give the website a fresher, brighter look. So I did it. Hours and hours later, I had completely redesigned the Horse Paintings page and a couple of others and stumbled off to bed.

Of course, this morning the new design didn't look as hot as it had yesterday, and of course I couldn't leave it that way without trying out a few other What If ideas. So I did.

I think I'm happy with it now. For the time being. Until the What Ifs strike again. The main pages are done, and with the new design set, I can revise the rest of the pages one or two at a time. It's not fancy; it still looks kind of old fashioned by today's standards, but it will do until I can learn Dreamweaver.

Here is the Horse Paintings page newly spiffed up for the world to see. I hope.

Today's image is one I took at the Horse Shows By The Bay Dressage Show in Traverse City last summer. It's a definite future painting, and on a cold, blustery day in March, it reminds me of how hot and dusty it was that August day.

A Little Update

I couldn't help myself today. It was one of those days where I just can't seem to settle down to anything important and end up wasting most of it. I have a lot of those days. 

But one thing I did accomplish was spending another half hour on Easy Rider getting a little more of the horse finished. You can't see it very well, but I also worked on the arena markers. If I hadn't had to stop to fix dinner, I would have kept going even though I'm supposed to be working on tax stuff. Anything is better than working on taxes, right?!

I apologize for the poor quality of this photo. It was getting dark, and the light was uneven. I'm still trying to come up with a good way to photograph this drawing, and will try the tripod and cable release next time. 

There's really not much more to say except that it's SO nice to have something new to work on and to feel excited about it. Tomorrow I'll tone a canvas for The Peppermint Kid, and then I can start painting again! What better way to procrastinate some more?

Easy Rider Survives Disaster!

I had a good week: rode my horse twice, exercised four days in a row and began work again on an old drawing I had started and abandoned two years ago. I managed to do some artwork every day, even if it was only 15 minutes. All put together, in fact, I had a spectacular week!

The drawing I'm now working on is "Easy Rider". I took the reference photo on a cloudy day at a dressage show, and although it doesn't depict some fancy dressage movement, I was attracted by the relaxed feel of both horse and rider and the beautiful blood bay color of the horse. The title immediately popped into mind and so it stayed. You can see the ref image above. 

When I started on this two years ago, the first thing I did was replace the background with one that was more interesting and less cluttered and then worked out the format in a small thumbnail. My intent was to do an oil painting from this image, but first I needed to work out a sunny day lighting situation with shadows and highlights in the right places, much as I had done with The Peppermint Kid. In a moment of what must have been temporary madness, I decided to do a large pencil version first. After tracing the enlarged drawing onto paper, the work was put aside  and gotten out from time to time, but I never quite got the time to start work on it again. 

During one of those sojourns on the drawing board last year is when the near disaster occurred. It was one of those rare occasions when I clean house, and I was gingerly vacuuming dust off the drawing table when the nozzle grabbed the drawing and pulled it up. Ack!! Horrors!! My heart sank to my toes as I flipped off the vacuum and rescued the drawing. It suffered a couple of creases and a stain of some sort, and I briefly thought it was ruined and almost threw it away. But, hating to let all my effort go to waste, I flattened it as best I could and put it back on the shelf to consider another day. 

There it stayed until this past week when I got it out again and decided to use it as a learning drawing if nothing else. Miraculously, the creases seem to have disappeared, but the slight stain still remains. My first challenge was to draw the trees on the left. Now, I'm pretty confident that I can paint believable trees, but drawing them is something else. I consulted my tree drawing books, but they were not much help. I went through my reference photos and found some close ups of a maple tree in our yard. They were just what I needed, and I set to work drawing the trees, experimenting as I went. The result isn't too bad. 

Today I allowed myself to shade the horse's face, and now the drawing looks as if it's getting somewhere. It'll be easy to work on it a little at a time in between painting sessions or on days when I don't have the time to get out and then clean up paints. I'll show you its progress from time to time as it takes form and comes more to life. 

This drawing is 11 x 14 inches on regular sketchbook paper.