My Muse, My Horse, My Scottie

Two weeks ago today I lost the love of my life, my muse, my dream-come-true horse, my beloved Scottie.

Scottie had a long and well-loved life. I bought him as a still green four year old. I had just started riding lessons in middle age after many years away from horses. For you see, I'd had a bad riding accident when I was 13 which left me even more fearful of riding than I had already been. Soon after I gave up riding but never stopped loving horses. 

My lesson horse was Scottie, a very handsome sorrel Quarter Horse with a very laid back disposition. One thing led to another, and several weeks later I bought him at the urging of my riding instructor. 

You would think that pairing a green horse with a timid rider would not have been a wise combination, but contrarily it turned out to be a perfect match. Not that those early years were easy. Scottie tested me in little ways; never truly naughty or dangerous ways but just willfulness. If I insisted long enough he gave in and did my bidding. Sometimes I went to the barn with a churning stomach full of butterflies. Sometimes I came home thinking of selling him and giving up on horses again. But, I never did, and in the end it was a confidence building experience for me. 

Through the years we took riding lessons sporadically, mostly of the classical dressage nature and gradually became a perfectly matched team. Scottie liked to work but not too hard. He was rarely a horse you had to hold back; mostly he was a horse you had to put out a lot of effort to get to work a little harder. But he always tried. He was always a perfect gentleman. Never once in the 28 years I owned him did he ever buck or refuse to work at all unless he was in a lot of pain. 

Most of all, Scottie loved to go on trail rides. And so did I. In the early years we boarded at different farms where we had access to trails and people to ride with. Twenty two years ago I found a private farm which took in a few specially selected boarders of a mature age and whose owners had the same horse care philosophy that I did. It had an indoor arena for winter riding and miles and miles of very hilly trails for fun the rest of the year. 

That's where Scottie spent his last years, and he loved it there. He found a best buddy to play "wild stallion" with. He lived in a herd on pasture year round where he could eat grass and good quality hay to his heart's content. Most of all, he loved grass. There were run-in sheds and the big indoor arena where the horses could come in away from the flies and sun or snow or pelting rain. It was idyllic for any horse and a very healthy environment.  

It was idyllic for me, too. With new barn friends close to my own age, we rode the trails together often and had many adventures. Some of those trails were really steep and scary to this still timid rider, but Scottie always took care of me, negotiating them with nary a misstep. Sometimes we went off trails through the woods, dodging tree branches, shoving them out of the way and stepping over downed tree limbs and other brush. 

The years took its toll on both of us. I developed debilitating leg and knee problems which kept me from the barn and from riding regularly. Scottie developed Cushings disease and as a result suffered a severe sinus infection that threatened his life. A trip to Michigan State University Large Animal Clinic saved his life and revealed he had severe periodontal disease. From then on he was under the care of a veterinarian dental specialist. He lost most of his teeth, and the rest were worn down to the gums. 

As a result of his dental problems, Scottie could no longer chew hay and lost weight. A year ago I retired him and retired myself from riding. In spite of massive amounts of grain daily, Scottie lost weight rapidly this winter. He developed another bad abscessed tooth infection. His liver was failing, and sometimes he couldn't get up on his own after lying down. 

At the end, the decision I'd dreaded making for so many years was an easy, but sad, one to make. It was time to let Scottie go. It was the kindest thing we could do for him. He was tired and suffering and giving up. We put him down in the arena surrounded and comforted by the two people he loved most in the world. We told him it was okay to go now, and he slipped away peacefully. 

Scottie is buried up on a hill in the pasture along with his herd mates Jack and Mellissa and Stutz. Mikey will join them eventually. From there you can see almost all of the farm. I think he will like it there. 

"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. 

"The Twilight of My Years"

Reference photo for "The Twilight Of My Years"

In a few days I'll be having surgery to correct a crooked leg that is causing all kinds of problems the older I get. Age is catching up to me, very much against my will. I won't go into the gory details except to say that it won't be pleasant and recovery will be a long process.

I took this photo of my horse, Scottie, two years ago when he was very sick and loved it the moment I saw it onscreen. He and I seem to be following a similar path in our senior years. He recovered from his bad sinus infection, a consequence of Cushings Disease and is now on medication to control the Cushings. But, he still has chronic hip issues and worsening arthritis in his neck. He doesn't always get around very well.

This past year for me has been one of a string of issues with shoulders, hips, knees and ankle. I don't always get around very well, either.

I loved the wistful, pensive look captured on Scottie's face in the photo. It's as if he's trying to see into the future to see what's ahead for himself. I'm feeling very much the same way as I contemplate the aftermath of this surgery. Therefore, now seems the appropriate time to paint this image and try to capture what we are both facing in our "twilight" years.

Tomorrow I'll transfer the drawing to canvas, and after surgery I'll have plenty of time to work on it. I've always envisioned this to be a fairly large painting (for me). It will be a 24x20 oil on canvas, and I have hopes of it going to a museum show later this year.

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. 

Another New Oil Painting

"Recumbent" 9x12 new oil painting

It’s been so cold and stormy this winter that none of us have been riding much in the past two months. In fact, I haven’t been going to the barn much at all, even to check on Scottie. However, last Saturday the farrier was coming, and I never miss that if I can help it. 

Not only did Scottie get a pedicure but also a thorough grooming and his stretches which he loves. Stretches means lots of treats and you’d better be quick with them, too! Afterward, I turned him loose in the arena without his blanket, and like any self-respecting horse, he had a good roll. It must have felt really good to roll in the sand without his blanket on, and he made the most of the opportunity. 

I had brought my camera and caught some good roll sequences as well as other pictures. The photo above is the start of a new painting from one of those photos. So far it’s only traced onto a canvas board, and this time I tried something new; I drew over the pencil lines with ink in hopes of preserving the lines better. 

The reference photo for the new oil painting of my horse, Scottie

My original intent was to do this as a quick painting and enter it into an online show at the end of this week, but time is just too short, so I’ve decided to wait and  take my time with it. I love the flow of lines in the image and think it could make a good painting if I do it right. The working title is “Recumbent” for now. I’m hoping that something more catchy will come to me later. 

A snowy day

The photo of Scottie coming into the barn shows how pretty the snowfall was that day, and I think this view will also make a good  painting. 

The other two paintings that I worked on a few weeks ago are waiting their turn on the studio wall.Each needs a long block of time for the next session, and I just haven’t had it or felt like it while battling a stubborn sinus infection for the past two weeks. 

Since it’s income tax prep time, I may not be able to get in the studio much for a while, but I certainly will try. 

Back To The Drawing Board

It has been back to the drawing board and also back to Square One this past ten days. 

I thought I was all done with twice daily trips to the barn since Scottie's lump has shriveled up to almost nothing, and I did have a week to myself. But, a little over a week ago, Scottie came in for breakfast very lame in his bad leg. We thought he had reinjured his tendon, so I resumed twice daily trips to the barn to cold hose his leg. The vet came out two days later and quickly diagnosed him as having another hoof abscess. She dug out a hole on his sole to let it drain and wrapped it and left directions for me to change the wrap every 48 hours or so. Since then I've been going to the barn daily to check on him, give him some sympathy and rewrap the hoof. As of yesterday, he is doing much better, and I'm hoping to stay home more again. 

Meanwhile, I've begun one new painting and am doing the preliminary work for another. These two are destined for the benefit auction for Second Chance Ranch and Rescue next month. I've got to hurry to get them done! The first will be a painting of our cat, Annie, which we lost three years ago. She was a beautiful cat, and this should be an appealing painting. I'm doing it in a quick, loose style like I've done the smaller paintings lately. I like working that way. 

The second painting is of two barn swallow babies, and I'm working from one of the photos I took at the barn. I had to do some work in Photoshop to compose the painting, and now I'm trying to figure out the Photoshop settings to  get a good print out of the photo. Yesterday was a small triumph in that I was able to use my big color printer for the first time with the new computer. I had to download a driver and was afraid that none would be available for this old printer, but there was one for the new intel based Macs. My Epson 2200 was a popular printer, and there must be a lot of them still chugging away. 

At the top you will see the photo of Annie that I'm using for the first painting. The canvas is toned, and I'll begin the painting today or tomorrow. Below is the reference photo for the second painting. The lighting and color aren't perfect yet, so it still needs some tweaking. 

It feels good to have new works started, and I'm also anxious to get back to work on the other three which were begun months ago. I'll keep you posted. 

Art and Animal Communication

Oh, my goodness! It’s been such a long time since I last posted that I decided to share with you what I’ve been up to even though I haven’t done much in the way of art.

It is color season now here in northwest lower Michigan, and I did begin a plein air painting of the lake out on the deck last week but didn’t get very far. It had been so long since I set up the french easel that I forgot how it worked and had to fool around with it for a while to get the legs extended and set up. Then I moved the easel about ten times before I found a good spot from which to paint. Next I had to set up all the other paraphernalia like the palette and paints and jar of medium, and by that time it was getting too late in the day and time to fix dinner. So, I packed it all up and brought it inside. I did, however, get one layer of paint on the board.

Since then it’s been one thing after another and I’ll probably have to finish the painting from photographs I’ve taken over the past few days when the conditions and the light were right. If I can get to it quick enough, I’ll have the benefit of being able to observe the colors and so forth from the studio window as I work.

Since my last post, I also met with my local mentor again, and he gave me some very good advice about how to handle this blocked state I seem to be in and gave me a different assignment. He suggested that I put horses aside for the time being and do some plein air painting. However, I found that going outside my comfort zone was not going to work to get me started again. So, I’ll stick with horses and just do whatever strikes my fancy.

Since my other (horse art) mentor seems to have gone MIA and is no longer responding to my emails, I’ll be on my own for now. My hope is that once I’m painting regularly again, I can get back to working with the mentors - or mentor  - again.

Another project that I undertook was doing some much needed reorganizing in the studio precipitated by buying a bunch of cheap canvas boards and then needing a place to store them. The oil and acrylic painting supplies are now moved and consolidated together as are the pastel supplies. The cameras and their accessories are also now consolidated, and I managed to make room for them to be stored together in one place. I went through all the drawers of my big desk, got rid of some things and moved others around so that everything is in better order and more convenient.

Meanwhile, back at the barn as they say, there have been complications and continued issues with Scottie's soundness. To make a long story short, I am now saddle shopping again (Oh Joy!) but may have found one that fits Scottie and that is comfortable for me. The vet has been out a couple of times, and Scottie had an acupuncture treatment the last time. It really seems to have relieved his sore back which is reason for great celebration by both of us.

I’ve been so concerned about him and his depressed attitude that I also consulted with an animal communicator who was able to reach Scottie and ask him my long list of questions. It was very enlightening, and he told us that he’s having problems in his hock or stifle, so the vet is coming out again to explore that possible source of his continued lameness problems.

I’m really fascinated by this animal communication thing and would love to learn to communicate on my own.
 Apparently, it’s now widely accepted, and my own experience with it has made me into a believer.

Last weekend my husband John and I went for a drive and stopped at this longhorn cattle farm where some cows were eating breakfast right up by the fence. I’m sharing a couple of them with you here. I’m amazed by the varieties of colors and coat patterns on these longhorns and how they skillfully maneuver their horns so that they don’t poke each other.

The rest are photos of the view from our deck taken just this morning. The leaves are falling fast now, and it won’t be long before the trees are bare and snow is in the air.

Oh, dear! Did I just say that four letter word beginning with “S”?

Ride, Ride, Ride!

Viburnum in Bloom

I spoke with my mentor about the still life setup I showed you in my last blog post, and he agreed that it was too ambitious for the small size of the painting (8x10 inches). So, I’m just going to use some pieces of fruit instead and that little blue pitcher. Tomorrow I’ll set up the new still life and concoct the medium mixture he wants me to use, if I can get the top off of the turpentine, that is. Don't you just hate those child proof caps?

I managed to get in some much-needed weeding this week, too. Yesterday I unearthed a baby brown snake which was only about 6 inches long. I haven’t seen a snake in a very long time, so this was kind of exciting in a good way. Snakes don’t bother me, but bugs are another matter.

My viburnum is blooming now for the first time ever! I’ve had it for about ten years, and it just hasn’t done much until now. It’s very pretty with the large clusters of white flowers.

We’re dealing with the invasion of the caterpillars again this year, and they can be really nasty! I cleaned a nest out of our flowering crab apple tree, and they promptly built another. I took that one down and seem to have gotten all the caterpillars that were in the tree this time. So far, they haven’t built another nest.

Over around the barn it’s much worse although the trees haven’t been denuded as much as they were last year. When I brought Scottie in from the turnout on Thursday, there were hundreds of caterpillars of all sizes marching along the boards of the fence and along the electric fence wire seeking out another feeding tree. Fortunately, they haven’t been much of a problem on our trail rides, and we just flick them off when they occasionally land on us. As long as they don’t bite or sting, I can handle them.

We went on another trail ride Thursday night, and I rode in the arena yesterday afternoon. I’m really going to make an effort to ride more often this year which will be good for both Scottie and I. A weekly sketching session of live horses will be excellent practice for me, too.

Before riding yesterday, I took some photos at the barn. The horses were out on pasture for the first of two sessions per day, and they were busy stuffing their faces as fast as they could. Normally when you go out amongst the horses, you’re mobbed by at least two if not more, but yesterday they were much more interested in grass than in a human in their midst.

I got some pretty good photos, too; even some to use for paintings.

This week will be busy because my kids are coming home for the Memorial Day weekend, and I need to do some serious house cleaning and meal planning. But I don’t want to miss riding or delay that still life any longer. It’s going to be a very hot week, so I’ll put off any gardening until it cools off.

That’s all for now. I hope to have some art to show you next time.

Horse In Winter - Day Two

Exciting is the best way to describe today's work session! I love to begin the color stage of any painting, so after dispatching the obligatory daily household chores, I headed into the studio and squeezed out a nice assortment of colors on the palette.

Too bad that you can't see them yet. It's too early in the process, and today I was mostly playing around with the background, keeping the paint very thinned down. First I brushed a layer of Cadmium Yellow Light over the whole surface, but it was so diluted with Gamsol that it showed up as only a whisper. After that, I painted some sky and then did the initial layer of white (tinted with a hint of blue) snow.

Now I was ready to get really wild with color and brushed some pink and lavender into the snow to see how they would look. YOU can't see them, but they ARE there, and will probably be added again at a later stage. If you take photos of snow, you'll quickly notice that it's not pure white. On a sunny day, it reflects the blue of the sky and yellow tones from the sun's rays. Like white horses, you can work a lot of colors into snow and still have it be believable.

Most of the session was spent on painting the first layer of color on the horse and making adjustments to him. I adjusted his top line quite a bit, moving the withers back slightly, moving the croup back slightly and giving it less slope. I also added just a bit to the hindquarters, giving the horse much more balance and making him look much more like my Scottie. As the painting progresses, there will be other tweaks to make, such as to the left front and hind legs, but he is good for now.

It feels SO good to be giving more priority to the artwork each day, and so rewarding to have a new painting in progress. If this painting isn't dry enough to work on tomorrow, I just may start another new painting. Hmmm, what shall it be?

Painting and Tweaking - Bard

We've had incredibly gloomy weather for the past week or so which has made photographing Bard difficult. But today is quite a bit brighter (although the wind is howling and the snow blowing), and I was able to get a good photograph of Bard without the easel light, making for more even lighting over the canvas.

Last Friday before I left, I managed to squeeze in 45 minutes of painting time and threw a light coat of paint on the shoulder and neck. The purpose was twofold. First to reach a color tone that was closer to the head and second to add another layer of paint so that there would be the same number of layers, roughly, on all parts of the horse.

This week I've tweaked the head a little more and am now working on the neck. Yesterday the light was so low in the studio, even with all the lights on, that it was hard to work, so I didn't do a whole lot. I hope to get much more done today as soon as I finish this post.

In case you're wondering, Bard is not a particularly overweight horse. He has a cresty neck because he was a stallion for the first 6-8 years of his life. It's hard to believe that this docile, mellow horse was once a snorting stallion. He does definitely "come to life", however, out on the trail sometimes since he LOVES to go for trail rides and gets impatient with a slow pace.

Back On Track

The news about my knee wasn't nearly as bad as anticipated. The x rays looked good, so the conclusion is that I must have torqued it wrong and over stressed it with all the gardening. And, I have been reminded in a very painful way that I need to get back to doing my exercises. But, at least I can walk normally now.

After this little interlude, I managed to finish mulching the flower beds which was the end of the urgent gardening for this summer. Pictured above is one of the new flower beds; the same view as in an earlier blog post but this time with plants and mulch. The plants are so small yet that they don't show up much, but, trust me, they ARE there: heuchera, ferns, lavender, fox glove, shasta daisies, bee balm, dusty miller, Asiatic lilies and some snap dragons. Oh, yes; and a new lilac bush.

In the middle of this area, you can see a bare space. That's where the old driveway used to be, and it's all hard packed gravel, going down at least a foot or more. I gave up on it for the time being so it will remain an eye sore until we dig it out and put in some good garden soil. Since the gas line goes through this area, we have to be very careful about digging.

My plan is to install edging blocks all along this bed to keep the grass and weeds from creeping back into the beds. We bought them on sale last year. I'm also using some plastic landscaping edging along the fence for the same purpose. Where it's already installed, it has done a nice job of keeping the weeds and grass at bay.

Around the maple tree in the background we plan to install a tree ring of more landscaping blocks that match the ones in the beds up close to the house. Smaller ones will be used for another tree ring around the flowering crab tree which is in the foreground above. These two rings will function to give some unity to the landscaping, connecting the house beds to the fence area along the road.

Last night I was finally able to get back out to the barn and even managed a short ride. One of the other boarders had just finished riding Scottie and turned him out, so he wasn't exactly enthusiastic. And, all of my riding muscles have now atrophied, so they need building up and some major stretching. Needless to say, the ride didn't go particularly well, but it was still good to get back on my horse and enjoy some social time at the barn.

The photo below is of the two of us before I turned Scott back out. He looks a little odd because I'd put the roll on fly repellent around his eyes and on his nose to give him that war pony look. He's also a little miffed that I wasn't allowing him to graze, and it took some coaxing to get his ears forward. By that time the shadows had advanced to put us in shade.

When the two of us are side by side, he looks pretty big, but in fact he measures a "mere" 15.3 hands. I'm only 5 ft 1 inch and shrinking, so to me he IS a BIG horse!

Horse Shows By The Bay

On Sunday I dragged myself over to spend some time at the big "AA" level hunter/jumper show, Horse Shows By The Bay in Acme, Michigan, just outside of Traverse City. This is its fifth year of existence, and it gets bigger and better every year.

Of course it was hot, but there was a nice breeze blowing, and by going as much as possible from one patch of shade to another, I managed to put in a couple of hours without collapsing. There is a lot of walking at this show, especially if you are going back and forth between rings to catch action at certain times, and I was grateful that my bad knee and back survived without too much protest.

I wore my floppy canvas hat which worked great for shooting and was pretty cool as well. I ignored the fact that I look pretty dorky in it, and only ran into one person I knew; my barn owner who already knows that I'm a dork and a little odd.

My main reason for going was to shoot the toddlers in the Lead Line class. It was held in the new Grand Prix arena, and I was allowed to go down and shoot from the in gate so managed quite a few shots as the kids waited for the class to begin. They are SO cute on their spiffy little ponies! Some were so small that they hadn't a clue what was going on and didn't care; they just wanted their naps.

I was quite disappointed to find that this new arena is not photographer friendly. It sits down a slope from the rest of the show grounds, and spectators are limited to sitting a ways up the hill for the show jumper classes. So, that is not a good vantage point for getting photos of jumpers to use for paintings. It didn't matter much on Sunday because I had forgotten to put the long lens on my camera before I left home, so I didn't even bother going back to shoot the big jumper Grand Prix class. Instead, I wandered around shooting show scenes and a little of the hunter rings but the light wasn't good and most of the jumps too far away, so those shots didn't come out well at all.

On my way in and out, I took some shots of horses being bathed to get more references for wet horses if I need them as I did for the Mural Mosaic project. I didn't get down to the pony ring but hope to catch some of the ponies when I go back on Friday this week when the dressage show will also be going on. Last year the dressage and ponies were in adjacent rings, so I went back and forth for most of one day.

My one complaint about this show is that it's very difficult to find a list of classes so that you know what's going on in each ring at any given time. In the past I was able to plan out ahead of time where to go at what times to catch the action that I wanted, but not so this year or last.

By clicking on the image above, you can go to my website and see a small portion of the photos I took on Sunday.

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!

A Taxing Week

For over a week now I've been working on tax issues and tax reports, all very left brain activities for an artist with poor math skills. It might seem odd for such a person to be "bookkeeper" for a business, but trust me, that's better than leaving it all to my husband who absolutely hates paperwork and anything having to do with taxes. So, I took on the job in order to keep us out of debtor's prison or at least in economic solvency. And of course, I have to do it all for my art business, too.

Doing the annual art sales tax form was particularly challenging this year because I had to refund a portrait deposit last year on which I'd paid sales tax in 2006. Because I owed less in sales tax this year than the refund in sales tax would be, I spent the better part of two days trying to fill out the form in various ways to get the figures to come out "correctly". No dice! So, in desperation I called the state and was told that I would have to file an amended form for 2006 rather than include the refund on the 2007 form. I dutifully proceeded to do just that only to discover that the refund would only amount to $1.89 because of the discount I got that year for filing on time. I figured that the state would probably spend upwards of $50 to refund me that dollar eighty nine, and realized that cash strapped Michigan needed the money more than I do. I didn't file the amended report.

Don't you just love tax season?

So, after dutifully rushing to the post office to mail the tax reports by the deadline, I switched to Right Brain mode and did some work on the portrait of Bard. Earlier in the week I had toned the canvas a really nice neutral gray using Torrit Gray from Gamblin. It's a gray that Gamblin makes once a year from all the leftover pigment of that year's paint production. For those of you non artists, mixing all the colors together is one way of producing a very nice gray. Every batch of Torrit Gray, according to Gamblin, is slightly different because it's made up of different proportions of pigments.

By yesterday the canvas was dry, so I proceeded to enlarge the drawing and prepare to trace it onto the canvas. That's when I realized that the canvas was badly warped and wobbled on the desktop like a teeter totter. I could get a whole finger under one corner with room to spare! Not only was the whole frame warped out of alignment, but one of the stretcher bars was also warped. This would definitely not do since the canvas would be impossible to fit into a frame properly. And, of course, I didn't have another one of the same size which means that Bard will have to wait until I can get another canvas. But, I did decide to use this canvas for testing colors for Bard and such and went ahead and traced the drawing onto it.

By the time a new canvas arrives, I should be about done preparing our income tax stuff to send to the accountant, and then I can give Bard the concentration that he deserves and my right brain craves.

Don't you just love tax season?

I've attached a detail from one of my last pastel horse portraits just so I have some art to show you today.

The Tweaking Stage

Bard has now gone through the tweaking stage as every work of art does. You think it's done and then you see little things that need changing. The tweaking stage could last forever if you don't put your foot down at some point and say, "Stop! Enough is enough. It's as good as it needs to be."

There also comes a point when you have to put the reference photos aside and ask yourself, "Now what does it need, artistically?" Maybe something in a reference photo just doesn't look right in the artwork or isn't working compositionally. That was another step I took today. I set aside the photos and went with what I know and what gave Bard more roundness and form. 

You may not be able to see any difference from the former version because the changes were mostly subtle. I did darken the inside of his ears, added more shading on his cheek and lower neck and reshaped his shoulder among other things. And, I'm calling it good unless my client requests any changes.

I did start back to work on an old drawing also today, but it isn't far enough along to show you yet. That's just a little tease to get you curious and coming back. It's a much larger pencil drawing of a dressage horse and rider. 

A Stormy Day in the Studio

Today was a perfect day to stay home and get something accomplished. We've been under a winter storm warning since last night when temperatures dropped from 44 degrees to a low of 7 this morning. The wind howled all night and continues to do so today although we aren't getting much snow. I love stormy days in winter and the cozy warmth of the house, knowing that my horse is safe and also warm in the barn where I board him.

So, today after washing some really grimy saddle pads in the laundry tub, I got back to work on the portrait of Bard. I thought it was going to be an easy portrait, but it hasn't turned out that way. After tracing the line drawing onto some drawing paper, I began the shading process and immediately things went south. Bard didn't look like Bard anymore! How could that be? So today I studied and studied all the reference photos, made a change here and another there and gradually Bard reappeared in the image. 

When you're doing a portrait and trying to get an exact likeness, a very small change can make a big difference. My challenge in doing this value study is to keep the light source consistent at the same time I remain faithful to Bard's facial features. He has a typical Quarter Horse head but it's also on the lean side. Getting the shadows and highlights in exactly the right places is very important to getting a good likeness. Since I don't have a reference photo in sunlight from exactly the same angle as the pose my client wanted me to use, this has been a real mental exercise.

Above you can see how far I've gotten up to today. The photo isn't very good because I neglected to check the camera settings and shot it at a slight angle, but it will have to do until the next update. Click on the thumbnail to see the larger image on my website (if I can figure out how to do that).