Sudan, Palomino Horse Painting

 

"Sudan" 24x24 inch oil painting

While I'm toiling away preparing tax stuff to send to the accountant, I've decided to share some of my older artwork and portrait work with you and share the stories behind them; good, bad and downright ugly. It should be fun. 

First up in the spotlight is "Sudan", one of the last commissioned portraits I accepted. Sudan was a nice looking palomino Arabian Quarter Horse cross gelding. His owner wanted me to depict him in his summer and winter coats since he turned much lighter in his winter woollies.

Although I got to see him in person, I didn't have my camera with me and had to rely on photos provided by the client; almost always a challenge. I was downstate visiting my elderly parents and didn't have the camera with me at the time.  

The most challenging part of the portrait was selecting the photos that were the best AND which worked together the best. Once I had the composition worked out, the painting went rather smoothly. It was delivered to the client on another downstate visit to my parents. 

 "Sudan" might not be up to my current painting standards, but it was one of my best at the time and for that deserves a bit of recognition. 

I hope you enjoy him, and thanks for stopping by. 

"Impromptu" Revisited - A Horse Head Drawing

"Impromptu" a horse head pencil drawing

Saturday, September 12, 2015 was an exciting day for us die hard Michigan fans. The University of Michigan has a new football coach, as almost everyone in the country knows, and yesterday was Coach Harbaugh's debut in the Big House where he once played on that same field years ago. 

As a native of Ann Arbor, child of a professor and University graduate, my roots with Michigan football run deep. Many is the time, from a youngster through college and into adulthood, that I cheered on the Wolverines and sang Hail To The Victors within the awe inspiring walls of the Big House on crisp Fall afternoons. The stadium truly lives up to its name. 

On this particular Saturday I chose to revise this little drawing while watching the game. It was done back in July, if you remember. It had been an exercise in drawing a horse head using no reference whatsoever except my own knowledge of and experience with horses. But, I wasn't completely satisfied with the results, so on this day I gathered pencils and erasers and set to work tweaking here and changing there as I cheered on the Wolverines. 

Unfortunately, the paper support only allowed minor tweaks and very little erasing. For that reason, the drawing is now as good as it's going to get. It's better but there are still changes I'd like to make while keeping to the exercise of using no reference. Perhaps I'll throw a sheet of tracing paper over it and rework the outline and create a completely new drawing from that. Perhaps in colored pencils this time which is a medium I haven't used in many years now. 

Meanwhile, Coach Harbaugh got his first victory in The Big House, and the great tradition of Michigan football has been revived. 

GO BLUE!

SOLD! My First Horse Art Sale

"The Dressage Clinic" 16x20 inch pastel, Sold

Pictured above is the very first work of art that I sold that wasn't a portrait. I'd been doing horse and pet portraits for years but had never managed to sell an original work of art before. 

This pastel painting came about by way of an exercise in a color drawing class in art school. I liked the exercise of exploring lost and found edges of objects and thought it would be fun to explore using horses as subject matter. Before that I had done a couple with deer in them and sail boats but dropped the technique until years later. 

After getting back into horses again and moving my horse to a new barn, I discovered dressage and a fellow boarder who was a dressage rider. One weekend, three of us from the barn went to a dressage clinic at Bay Harbor Equestrian Center outside of Petoskey, Michigan to observe. The clinic instructor was none other than Steffen Peters, a well known and accomplished professional dressage rider and Olympian. I took my camera and got a lot of pictures despite the poor lighting in the large indoor arena. 

From the best of those photos, The Dressage Clinic emerged. The process is a bit complicated to explain. It involves cut outs of horses and riders laid down on the paper and rubbed over with pastel dust along the edges. First, of course, you must arrange all the cut outs in a pleasing array of different sizes. After this stage was complete, I went on to add details to the figures with colored pencils, leaving some areas to be "lost" and some "found". 

For those of you who are not familiar with dressage, a dressage test consists of riding from letter to letter spaced out around the dressage arena. The letters tell the rider when to transition from walk to trot or to canter a 20 meter circle or whatever the test calls for. That is what the letters in the painting reference. 

This painting is far from my best work, even at that time, but it does mark a milestone in my advancement as a professional equine artist. I went on to create another better dressage clinic piece with a different color palette, but it would not photograph well, and I finally destroyed it. I haven't done any more since. 

Below is another pastel painting using the same technique. This one depicts a

foal playing. The title is Playtime, and this one also sold. 

"Playtime", 11x14 pastel, Sold

This is an excellent exercise in manipulating shapes, sizes, harmonious colors and lost and found edges. Maybe some day I will do another. 

PS A "lost" edge is one that disappears in the picture. Lost edges can be very important in a painting or drawing as they help to draw attention to the "found" edges and points of interest by deemphasizing other edges and areas. 

"Scotch Bar Lochinvar"

My horse, Scottie

My horse, Scottie, turned thirty a few days ago. That is a remarkable achievement for a horse, and considering how gravely ill Scottie was just two and a half years ago, it is doubly remarkable. 

The picture above is one I took when Scottie was almost five. It has always been one of my favorites. In fact, I created a drawing based on it and then had limited edition reproductions made of that. See below. 

"Scotch Bar Lochinvar" pencil drawing of a horse

After a thirty year absence from the horse world, I started taking riding lessons in my forties and bought Scottie a short six weeks later. The first day walking into that horse barn, I had such a strong feeling of coming home that I knew right then and there that I was meant to be in that world and vowed never to abandon it again. The sights, sounds and smells of that barn and the horses were all familiar, burned into my psyche from the years spent in barns as a youngster and a deep passion for horses for as far back as I can remember. 

At that time I was a middle aged woman who was trying to conquer my fear of riding and a life long shame of being what I considered then to be a coward. It was a huge step for me; a make it or break it one. If it didn't work out, I would have lost nothing, but if it did I had the world to gain. I was lucky to find the perfect trainer to take me on that journey, one who understood my fears and guided me gently along the way with no admonishments to Cowboy Up or Just Do It. That was the last thing I needed to be told. 

Scottie, it turned out, was my lesson horse. Scottie was a four year old, slightly green, unregistered Quarter Horse (which is a story in itself). But his temperament was such that he was being used for lessons by the trainer. He was a perfect match for me, and as it turned out, he was for sale!

I made a deal with my husband, and Scottie was mine! Little did my husband realize the consequences of his wife's passion, but he has been supportive all through the years.

Buying Scottie was just the beginning of immersion into the world of horses, and it led to my first ever horse portrait and the beginning of my career as an equine artist. So, in a big way I owe it all to Scottie and my trainer, Lisa, who helped me overcome my fears; not completely but enough to live in the horse world as an owner/rider and to meld my two life passions: horses and art. 

Hard Choices

"Daisy" an old pastel portrait

It’s been a very difficult year. Not battling cancer difficult or losing a loved one difficult but difficult in other and multiple ways which combined together have become a mountain. 

First, of course, was the surgery to correct a crooked leg back in March which laid me up and off my feet (or TWO feet anyway) for far longer than expected; months longer in fact. It was difficult to be dependent on my husband for almost everything for nearly four months when I tend to be an independent, do-my-own-thing type of person. 

Also difficult was leaving the complete care and riding of my horse to one of my fellow boarders and not being able to see him for weeks at a time. It was hard to hear that he was “thriving” and “never looked better” under someone else’s care. Did that mean that I haven’t been a good horse mom all these years? 

Now that I’m back to riding him, his back is sore again. The vet says that either his saddle doesn’t fit him right or “it’s a rider problem”, neither of which I wanted to hear. I am now actively looking for a new saddle, a road that we’ve been down before with great difficulty. He is “hard to fit” it seems.

I also have to face the possibility that maybe I’m just too heavy for him at his age (29). So, what to do? Do I retire him even though he’s still rideable? Do I continue to ride him while I try to lose weight on a crash diet? Or, do I just not ride him until I can lose weight and let him lose the conditioning he gained over the winter? 

By far the most difficult thing has been to figure out over months of time that my online friends, some of whom I’ve known for years, weren’t really friends at all but more like acquaintances, at least in their minds. That one really rocked me to the core. How could I have misjudged so badly? 

I was once admonished that “to HAVE a friend, you have to BE a friend”. It’s always been very hard for me to trust people enough to let them close.  Now I’m left wondering how I could have failed so badly at being a friend, and where do I go from here? 

On the art front, things haven’t been much better. During my lay up I managed to start two new paintings, but when I ran into a road block with one of them, I totally lost momentum and haven’t been able to get it back since. It’s difficult to see the artwork of artist friends (or acquaintances) online who have advanced over the years while I have stagnated. The truth is that there are hundreds of horse artists in the world who are far better than I, and I keep wondering why I should bother continuing to paint when the chances of catching up to them are so slim, especially at my age. 

The truth is that I don’t have the passion to paint or the drive to create that so many other artists seem to have. Some do artwork every single day. I can go for months without doing any and don’t really miss it. I wonder, if I shouldn’t just give up on being a professional artist and just create for myself when I feel like it. Or, should I pack up all the art materials and equipment and sell it all? 

But then, who would I be? What would I do? 

So, here I am struggling to recuperate from a surgery that may not have solved a problem and dealing with issues which need to be resolved one way or another. 

Hard questions. Hard Choices. 

Horse Painting; Glory From Start To Finish

My usual studio setup for painting, with references nearby. 

Whenever I create a painting or drawing, I take progress pictures along the way. By the finish, I’ve got lots of photos that I don’t need. Some are blurry, some are crooked and some have bad color. I’m starting to weed them out as the art progresses now, but I have a lot of old art photos that need to be purged. 

Today I did a purge of the Tribute to Glory pictures, and it occured to me that you might like to see how the painting progressed from start to finish all in one post although most of these have been shown before. So, here goes! 

The first step was to tone the canvas with a nice palominoey yellow. Then I drew the horse directly on the canvas using my reference photo as a guide. I added white to the mane and blaze in order to define them from the beginning. 

Next I did a value painting in gray to establish the lights and darks. I liked this stage so much that I thought about leaving it as is. This is a technique often used by the Old Masters. 

The next step was to add a thin layer of color over the whole painting. 

Following that I laid on a second layer of color, a little heavier this time. You can still see the gray underpainting showing through. 

At this point I realized that the proportions of the muzzle were too narrow and Glory’s dished face did not show as well as I wanted. I made a number of corrections to the face and muzzle and jaw line and also thinned the hindquarters  to keep them from dominating too much by painting over them with the background color. 

The colors change from photo to photo due to different lighting conditions. 

In this next photo I’ve begun applying a third layer of color and have gotten as far as the throatlatch. You can see a definite line between the layers. 

In this photo I’ve finished the third layer of color and have added some highlights to Glory’s coat. She is almost done!

At this point I decided that Glory needed a larger eye and painted one. I have also made other corrections along the way at each stage; ones that aren’t as visible but affect the whole. 

And finally the painting is done! Glory got some eye lashes, the mane and forelock were finished and a final layer of color went on the background. Notice that I softened the line of the hindquarters  by blending some background color over it in order to push it further back in the picture plane. 

Here is my reference photograph. This is a small 4x5 film print that is not the best image but somewhat captures Glory. I took some liberties in my painting to portray her more as I remember her and gave her a deeper gold coat than she had in reality. The final result is a painting both of tribute to Glory and one that I hope will be a popular image. 

Who doesn’t love a palomino?

Hummingbird Syndrome and a New Horse Sketch

"Goldilocks" palomino filly sketch

I’ve been suffering lately with a case of Hummingbird Syndrome; easily distracted and flitting from one project to another without finishing any of them. 

PAINT PIGMENT PROJECT

Having put the paintings aside to ponder on them, I decided to inventory my oil paint pigments to figure out which ones were getting low and needed to be ordered. That done, I decided to research each of those pigments and make notes on them as an educational project to help make better choices when choosing which colors to use. This turned into more of a project than initially anticipated! Some of my tubes of paint are so old that they don’t contain any information on them as to the pigments used or their toxicity and lightfastness; all information that is included on more recent tubes of paint. 

What followed was research online at the websites of various paint manufacturers and other art related sites. To my dismay, Grumbacher does not include pigment information on their website while Winsor-Newton, Daler Rowney and Old Holland do. Of course, I have a lot of very old tubes of Grumbacher oils. To supplement what I couldn’t find, I consulted the Artist’s Bible; Ralph Mayer’s Manual of Artists Materials and Techniques. Pretty dry stuff that and also incomplete for some pigment numbers found on newer tubes of paint. The book was last revised in 1991 so is now out of date. 

I’ve almost finished this project, and it’s been very illuminating. For instance, a company may change the pigment or pigments used in a particular named color over time. And what one company calls Burnt Sienna may contain totally different pigments from what another company calls Burnt Sienna. Each pigment has different qualities of lightfastness, opacity, drying time and toxicity, so it pays to know what’s in the tube. It’s also a good reason to stick with one or two brands of oil paint. 

FOAL SKETCH PROJECT

One evening while watching TV, I sketched the above drawing of a foal. The next morning I worked on it some more and added some background. It turned out so well that I had to share it. Then I thought about doing more sketches, something I should be doing daily anyway. So I got out some more photographs to copy. 

HORSE PEDIGREE PROJECT

My horse, Scottie as a four year old

But, before I could do anything about that, I was distracted again by a photograph of my horse as a four year old just before I bought him. Having scanned that and a few other photos and the sketch, I posted it on Facebook to share for Throwback Thursday when people post old photos of themselves or family or childhood pets; that sort of thing. 

Before I knew it, I started researching my horse’s pedigree and found some resources online. The biggest find online was a website where you can type in the name of a horse and get that horse’s pedigree that may go back hundreds of years. For instance, my horse is an unregisterd Quarter Horse, but his sire is registered. In researching his sire’s pedigree, I was able to track back as far as the foundation sires of not only the Quarter Horse breed but the thoroughbreds whose blood are part of the breed through a Thoroughbred named Three Bars. Three Bars goes back to the Godolpin Arabian, Darley Arabian and Byerly Turk all of which were used to improve the Thoroughbred breed back in the 18th century. Their pedigrees in turn go back to the 1600’s. That’s where I stopped. 

Finding these three horses in my horse’s geneology was nothing short of magical. It took me back to my childhood of reading Marguerite Henry’s books, Album of Horses and King Of The WInd. I adored Album of Horses and spent many hours reading and rereading it and even copying some of the drawings and paintings. 

A SPOOF ATTACK!

Meanwhile I dealt with a spoofing attack on my email account. Some spammer was using my email address to send out hundreds of thousands if no millions of spam emails. Although the spam wasn’t going out of my email server, all the returned spam emails were coming into my email server. By the thousands! The highest count was over 9000! A call to my website host was not of much help except the advice to just wait it out and the returned mail notices would go away as the spammers moved on to use someone else’s email address as the From address. This blitzkrieg lasted for five days, and thankfully, yesterday morning it ended. Abruptly. 

The website tech guy advised me to sign up for a newer hosting package that included more perks and better spam filtering at a lower cost. So, of course, I had to look into that but couldn’t find much on the website. 

CATCHUP DAY

With all of these loose ends dangling at this point, I’ve dedicated today as a catchup day. Putting aside horse geneology and website hosting changes, I will endeavor to finish the pigments research project. Going through my horse’s folder and throwing out old farrier receipts, vet visit bills and Coggins test results is also on the schedule after which I will file it away again. And make a separate folder for the geneology finds. 

But first the bathroom needs to be cleaned. 

Twilight Horse Painting; Two Steps Forward and One Step Back

Horse oil painting on canvas

That’s how it goes sometimes with painting. Almost every painting is a struggle at some point. 

The background on the Twilight painting is now pretty much done - unless I decide to change something. Painting that foreground grass was one of those two steps forward and one step back sort of things. 

Painting blades of grass is like, well, watching grass grow. I had half of the grass painted and had to wipe it out and try again. Thankfully, with a little more planning, that grassy hilltop came together at last. 

Now all that remains is to finish painting the horse with the final layers. Two steps forward and one step back? I hope not!

"#64" New Event Horse Oil Painting

Work in progress of  an event horse. Oil on canvas

Since I'm still not very mobile with this broken leg and can't go work out in the flower beds, I have to content myself with creating greenery in my paintings. 

Yesterday's painting project created great strides forward with the other new big painting. I laid down the first layer of color on the background and am so far very pleased with it. It will compliment the bright chestnut color of the horse very well. 

The working title is "#64". It is a 20x24 inch oil painting on stretched canvas of an event horse at a horse trials on his way to a dressage test. The horse's name was Fuel Efficient, the event was the Encore Horse Trials near Chelsea Michigan about 2000-2002. I got a lot of good pictures that day and met and made friends with the show photographer, Rebecca Baucus. I'll be forever grateful for her friendliness and shooting tips. 

Sadly, show photographers are having a very hard time of it these days. They spend a lot of money on equipment and training, spend long hours shooting all the horses at shows and then long hours going through the photographs, creating proofs for clients and handling the sales of prints to owners and riders. Believe me, they earn every penny they make! But, today with digital cameras taking over from film cameras, anyone can shoot at shows, and many unscrupulous "photographers" poach customers from the official show photographers and take income away from them. Many professional horse photographers have given up shooting at shows as a result. 

The side effect of this is that some show photographers are hostile toward artists who are at shows to shoot reference photos. We have to walk a fine line to avoid interfering with the professionals as a result. I carry business cards with me but do not pass them out unless asked. I turn down any request to shoot someone's horse and sell the prints, and I stay out of the way of show photographers. I have also introduced myself a few times so that they know who I am and why I'm shooting willy nilly all around the show grounds. 

The other thing we artists have to be careful about is not violating the privacy rights of the owners, trainers and riders by painting their exact likenesses. Technically, we should get model releases from them all, but this is extremely impractical. The simple solution is to change markings on horses and facial features on humans, particularly kids. 

I used to enjoy going to the shows, seeing all the fine horses and riders all spiffied up and watching the action. Shooting dogs is a side benefit. Every show has lots of dogs in attendance, either with the barns who come to show or with spectators. I'm hopeful that once the leg heals I'll be able to get around better again and can again take my cameras to shows to "shoot" horses. 

Prancing Foal Pastel Painting

"Feel So Fine" Pastel horse foal painting

It's Throwback Thursday on Facebook, so I thought I'd share this older pastel painting of a lively colt which is still available for sale. 

Bullet was a five week old Morgan colt just turned out with his mother on a late Spring morning. His youthful exuberance is expressed in this painting as he prances about in the lush Spring landscape. 

The painting is 12.5x14 inches and is available framed for the special price of $225. Please contact me if you're interested in putting this speedy Bullet on your living room wall. 

You may email me at karen@equineartist.com

New Horse Painting, "#64"

New Oil Painting of an Event Horse

It is Day 7 after surgery, and I’m itching to get some work done. Mobility is very limited - hopping around on one foot using a walker is very tiring I’ve discovered. The walker is my main mode of transportation since the wheelchair won’t fit most places in the house. 

I have two canvases toned and ready for drawings to be transferred to them. This is the second large image planned for one of the canvases. It’s an image I’ve long wanted to paint but haven’t because an artist friend painted a very similar image first several years ago, and I didn’t feel right about doing my version so soon after hers. But now the time is right. 

Shown is the outline drawing waiting to be gridded and then transferred to the canvas. The working title is “#64” until I can come up with a better one. The horse is a chestnut eventer, and the photo was taken at a three day event in downstate Michigan about 2002-3. Something in this photo speaks to me although the image isn’t particularly dynamic or dramatic. Maybe it’s the lighting or the gesture. Whatever it is, it’s enough to get me excited about painting it. 

Tomorrow’s challenge will be to enlist my husband to help get out materials for doing the grids and getting the image onto the canvas. There are just some things in the studio that I can’t reach right now. My drawing table is in the attic, but I have a small portable drawing board which should work nicely for the gridding. It also has a rule attached to it to be sure the grid is square. 

I will share as work progresses. 

Glorious Glory; A Horse Painting Update

Here’s an update on the Glory painting. 

I have finished Glory herself except for the mane, forelock and eye and some touchups once the background is finalized. She is coming along nicely, and I’m very pleased so far. 

It’s always nerve wracking to paint when I haven’t been for a long time and my self confidence suffers terribly the longer it goes on. But, what I’m finding with Glory is that I’m going a lot on instinct. That tells me that I know a lot more than I think I do and haven’t lost much ability in the intervening time. 

In other words, I’m better than I think I am. And not as good as I’d like to be. 

For that matter is any artist ever as good as she’d like to be? 

Getting Back On The Horse or Facing Easel Anxiety

"Tribute To Glory", 12x12 inch oil on canvas

Do you know that old saying about how you need to climb right back on the horse after falling off? Well, the same is true for artists after an extended period of not creating. 

The truth is that I haven’t done much artwork over the past ten years or so for various reasons, and that has taken a toll on my self confidence and creative abilities. Fear of failure blocks me so often when I even THINK about going in the studio to work on a painting that too often I turn around and leave or find something “urgent” to do instead. There are currently six unfinished paintings on the studio wall that have all been there for a year or more. Most of them I haven’t touched in over a year. 

Well, I finally had to face the truth that the only way to polish up my rusty skills and improve my art was to actually DO it, no matter the outcome. Reading all sorts of articles, going to workshops and listening to podcasts just isn’t going to get me anywhere but more discouraged and bogged down. 

So, I’m committing to putting artwork at the top of my priority list, right after healthy activities and riding. The housework will just have to suffer a little while longer. It’s never been at the top of my list anyway.

To start with, I've committed myself to finishing a couple of paintings before starting anything new although my brain is overflowing with painting ideas that are calling out. First up on the easel is “Tribute To Glory” because it is the closest painting to being done. 

One of the down aspects of not working on a painting for months at a time is that you lose momentum with it and you forget how you were going about it. Even though I’d written notes on what colors I used to mix the horse color and the background color, I still had to mix a lot of paint before I found the mixes that matched well enough with what was already on the canvas. 

The other issue that’s come up for me is wanting to work in another style but being unable to switch horses in midstream, so to speak, on one painting. That will never do, unless I want to start all over again. Nope! 

So here is the latest progress on “Glory”. I’m working in thin layers of paint on a stretched canvas in oils. You can see where I left off just under the jawbone on the neck. Naturally, the next session will involve some tweaking before continuing down the neck. 

That in itself gets to be discouraging. It seems as if I paint paint paint then correct correct correct, then paint some more and correct some more. I suppose that’s true for a lot of artists, but I do wish that I could get it right the first time most of the time, anyway. 

This image is a bit contrasty and the color is a bit off, but maybe next time the sun will be out and I’ll have a better version for you to see. 

That’s all for today. Thank you for taking the time to visit and read and look. I hope you enjoy. 

Never A Dull Moment

Lamb oil painting on linen

It seems like there’s never a dull moment around here. Just when I thought there would finally be plenty of time for painting, Scottie developed another hoof abscess. 

But, I did work on the lamb painting a little bit more, adding the first layer of color to the lamb, mostly white, but also defining facial features and shadows. This should give me a good base for further adding more color and definition in my next painting session. 

I’ve also been giving some thought to the polo painting and have decided on some of colors for the leg wraps and rider’s shirt. Still to be determined are the saddle pad and helmet colors. After that I can proceed with this painting, and I’m really anxious to work on it. 

As for Scottie, I’ve been making daily trips to the barn again to soak and dress his foot, and I think the abscess has now begun to resolve. The vet was out on Monday and drew blood to test him for Cushings disease again since he has such a long, wavy coat. She is pleased with his appearance and condition this Spring versus how thin he came through last winter, and she gave me some advice on conditioning him over the summer. 

While waiting for her to arrive, I got busy with the clippers and clipped his lower legs, hocks, jaw line and belly. I also tidied up some of the trace clip I did in March during the hots spell we had, so he looks a lot more like himself now and less like a stuffed pony. The vet referred to his “poodle cut”, but Scottie and I don’t care. 

There is a bison farm on the way to the barn, and last Saturday I had the good fortune of having the camera with me when there were some bison in the pasture next to the road. Better yet, they were fairly close to the fence, so I stopped and took a few photos. Two cows, two yearling calves and a bull obliged my picture taking with only curious looks. I wasn’t sure whether to expect a charge or not and didn’t want to trust the flimsy fence to stop it, so I didn’t get too close. Maybe with a little luck, next time there will be some newborn calves to photograph. 

This weekend I will be taking a two day class in life drawing at the museum in Traverse City. Much fun is promised, and I’m very much looking forward to it. I haven’t done any life drawing since art school many years ago. Maybe I’ll share some of my drawings next time. 

Here is Scottie with his poodle cut. His mane seems to be getting lighter, and I’ve noticed that there are quite a few gray hairs in it now. 

Little Lambsey Divey

Spring lambs on the farm

 We had a pretty nice Easter this past weekend at our house. Both of our adult kids were home with their new cars, and now Mom doesn’t have to worry about them breaking down on their long drives home. 

On Saturday we took a drive over to the old family homestead near Gaylord to see how the place had survived the big storm of a few weeks ago. All was well as they didn’t get the heavy snow and wind that we did. Because it was so much colder inside the unheated house than outside, we ate our picnic lunch beside the pond and then drove around the two tracks looking for wildlife. We flushed two partridges, but that was all. 

I was happy to see a poppy plant in the old flower bed which I had missed digging up last year. There were also some daffodils that were missed, so I’ll be digging them all up and moving them to our house some time later. 

My favorite part of that trip was when we stopped at a farm on the way home to photograph a herd of ewes and their lambs which were right up by the road. I got lots of photos, and some of them are good enough to turn into paintings or drawings. I can’t wait to paint one of those cute lambs! And what could be more perfect than lambs at Easter time!

For Easter Sunday, we all went to brunch at a local restaurant, and since it was another gorgeous sunny day, we took another drive afterwards over toward Lake Michigan this time. We managed to find Rex Beach, a beach on Grand Traverse bay that another artist had told me about, and I was thrilled to find that you can drive practically all the way to the water! I’m looking forward to doing some plein air painting there since it’s so much more accessible and at the same time more remote than any of the beaches we explored last summer. Since it was extremely windy and very cold, we didn’t linger long before retreating back to the warmth of the car and heading home. 

Rex Beach, Lake Michigan

When we got home, my husband took some photos of me outside and in the studio to use on my website and so forth. I don’t get dressed up and put on makeup very often so this was a good time to do the photos. The old photo on my website is about 20 years old now and needed to be changed for something more current. 

The artist, April 2012

Both of the kids have now gone home, the taxes are completed and waiting for our signatures and the house is clean (for a change). I am now looking forward to resuming daily activities and getting into the rhythm of Springtime activities. And, I’m determined to start back with some artwork again to refill my meager inventory of completed works. 

It was quite disappointing that the painting class I had looked forward to had to be cancelled for lack of interest, as was the acrylics class I’d hoped to take. Maybe when the snowbirds return for the summer, they’ll try again to fill those classes. I’m hoping so, anyway. 

After our record-breaking hot spell last month, it turned cold again, and all the plants that had begun to green up and grow went into a holding pattern waiting for the return of more warmth. This is the perfect time to get out in the yard and clean out the flower beds and plan where to move plants this year before they all get too big and in the way. I was pleased to see that the daffodils and tulips I planted last Fall have come up and some even have buds on them. So far we’ve had one lone yellow tulip bloom, but I’m hoping for more. 

The artist in her studio

A couple of weeks ago, Scottie and I went on our first trail ride of the year; a short one; but it felt awfully good to get out of the indoor arena. Scottie wasn’t as enthusiastic as I, but I hope that will change, and we can have another summer of good trail rides. He will be 27 next weekend, so every ride is a plus at this point. 

That’s all for this time. Be back in a week. 

Horse Paintings: One Old and One New

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.