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 The book was last revised in 1991 so is now out of date.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. 

Sketch Book Drawings - Page One

I’m going to be brief today because I need to get out for my walk and then into the studio.

But, I have another reason as well. Having spent the weekend in front of the computer going through my inbox and reading a backlog of artist blog posts, I’ve come to realize that people probably don’t read long winded blog posts. I know I skipped a lot of them because I simply didn’t want to take the time if the subject matter wasn’t absolutely riveting. Mostly, it wasn’t. So, here goes.

I’ve been reading a book called, The Van Gogh Blues by psychologist Eric Maisel. He specializes in working with creative people and has written a number of books for creatives. This book is helping me immensely in finding my way back into the studio by giving me many insights into my personal life and my life as a creative person. Turns out I’m not so unique in my struggles after all! His main point is that creative people are born questioning everything and therefore have difficulty finding meaning in their lives. Because of a lack of meaning in their lives, creative people are prone to depression which keeps them from being creative which causes deeper depression. So, the book is all about finding your own personal meaning and keeping depression at bay. I’m not sure that “meaning” is the word that I would have chosen. “Worth” or “value” come to my mind more than meaning, so I just substitute them in my mind as I read.

The book explains to me why I had such difficulty in high school algebra (or was it geometry?) understanding the difference between a hypothesis and a theorem. One is supposed to be a proven fact and the other is something to be proven. Poor old Miss Chipman was totally exasperated with me trying to explain the difference, and I was equally exasperated trying to grasp it. We never did come to an understanding.

But, I digress. As part of my “art therapy” if you can call it that, I’ve decided to do some daily sketching. Last night I did the sketches above of a Friesian colt. They are freehand sketches. That is, I pulled some standard photo prints out of a reference box and copied the photos as nearly as I could. As you can see, one effort was a total flop and had to be redone. The others are reasonably good. They are done with a ballpoint pen to prevent me from doing endless correcting so the false lines are still visible.  I think I draw more carefully if I know I can’t erase.

I’m also thinking of instituting an art challenge on my blog which would involve “audience  participation”. I have to ruminate on that one a bit more, so stay tuned for more info.

And, stay tuned for more sketches from the sketchbook!

PS I've just noticed that I have some new followers! Welcome all!  Thank you for joining me. I hope you find my posts just a little bit riveting.

Lady's Colt

“Lady’s Colt” 8x10 inch oil on canvas board

The subject of this painting is an eight day old Morgan colt. I don’t remember his name, but his dam is Lady who belongs to a friend of mine. This is the third in a series of one hour paintings I’ve been assigned to do by my mentor.

This time I deviated from the assignment by using smaller brushes. As a result, it took me longer to complete this one than the others; more like two hours, fifteen minutes. Still, that’s very fast for me, and it’s very rewarding to finish a painting in a few hours versus the weeks and months it usually takes me to complete an oil painting.

I’m very much enjoying this new style even though I haven’t gotten the hang of it yet. It’s been a boost to my ego to find that I can paint something fast and loose and have it look like what it’s supposed to look like and not a big mess. Below is a close up of the little feller so that you can see the looseness of the brush strokes. The legs are shorter than they should be because I ran out of room at the bottom of the canvas. Clearly, I should have placed him higher or made him a little smaller. That’s one of the hazards of drawing directly on the canvas without a preliminary drawing for perfect placement.

I have no idea if these little paintings are marketable or not. I just know I’m having a whole lot of fun doing them!

Kentucky Dreamer Comes Home

It had been quite a while since I took anything new up to the gallery shop which sells my art in Central Lake. Adams Madams is a fabulous shop with an outstanding mix of home decorating merchandise, crafts and artwork. It is light and airy, and everything is temptingly displayed. Unfortunately, the past two years my sales have been very low, and I’ve been wondering whether it is my art that just isn’t appealing to people now or if it’s been the economy. I got my answers.

After speaking with the owner and her assistant who handles the art selection and the merchandise displays, the answer seems to be the economy. They both raved about the quality of my work and the reasonable prices, but people are now coming into the shop with a set budget to spend there; between $25-$50. That’s not much in a shop with so many temptations. The interest in horsey products has also dropped off I was told which impacts my sales even more. But they both made some suggestions, and I came home with some hope that sales will turn around. Clearly, diversifying my offerings is in order.

I also brought home the original drawing, “Kentucky Dreamer” because it’s been there for quite some time now, and I’m thinking of entering it in some local shows. Either the mats have changed color slightly or my eye is better now because it needs to be rematted with better color mats. That should improve its appearance considerably.

"Kentucky Dreamer" is 11x14 inches and is a delicate pencil drawing of a young Thoroughbred foal. It's available for sale if you're interested. I named it before I even heard about the horse movie, "Dreamer", in case anyone wonders about that coincidence.

My drive to and from the shop and later to the barn has me thinking about doing some plein air painting in the beautiful Fall light. Our weather just couldn’t be more gorgeous on this last holiday weekend of summer. I didn’t even mind too much the hordes of bicyclists who descend on us every Labor Day weekend for their tours on our scenic winding back roads. You really have to slow down and watch out for them because a lot of these roads don’t have paved shoulders, and you can be on top of them before you see them.

Already some of the trees are beginning to turn, and the light has that soft diffused look that is so characteristic of Fall in northern Michigan. Yup, it’s time to paint outside.