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. 

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. 

Palomino Painting; Glory's New Background

Today Glory got a new background and some refinements. 

I’m not yet sure if maybe the background isn’t a little too dark. I’ll let it sit for a few days and then decide whether to leave it or repaint it. The eye also got some “refinement” that didn’t turn out as expected so I’ll be working on it again. 

Next up is painting the mane and forelock and then she will be pretty much done. 

This is a better, more true photo than the last one even though the background is a bit more green. 

Your comments on the background would be welcome. 

Holiday Horse Print, "Scotch Bar Lochinvar"

"Scotch Bar Lochinvar" limited edition  reproduction, $35

What with the holidays and all, this is a busy time of year. No matter what my good intentions are, it’s not likely that I’ll get in a lot of painting time. So, it occured to me this morning to actually do something rash and shocking; promote my prints for sale! I have plenty of them, after all, and they make wonderful holiday gifts. So, here goes. 

“Scotch Bar Lochinvar”, 13x15.5 inch limited edition reproduction on archival stock, $35. The subject is my own handsome horse, Scottie, in his much younger days. The print is a good size and looks wonderful matted in a wood or metal frame. 

It can be ordered directly from my website AND Free Shipping in the USA! Order it here, but please let me know if you have any difficulty ordering. 

http://www.equineartist.com/scotty.htm

While you're on the website, check out the rest of the prints available here;

http://www.equineartist.com/horse-prints.htm

Day Two; Ancient Egyptian Chariot Horse Sketch

Just a short post today to give proof that I actually did a little art yesterday.

Having wasted most of the day on Facebook, I didn’t get to any art until evening. I wanted to sketch an Egyptian chariot horse since I’ve long been fascinated by that ancient culture. I spent about half an hour looking through a thick book on ancient Egypt that I picked up from the bargain table at Borders, but only found one picture of chariot horses, and it was too small to see many details. So, I just went with memory of other pictures I’ve seen.

The sketch took another half hour or more with lots of erasing to get proportions right. I didn’t worry about being accurate with tack and just enjoyed the process of sketching like I used to do as a kid. Obviously, I’m a little rusty so a lot more sketching is in order. But, it was fun, and that’s the important thing; learning to just enjoy the process again instead of enduring the drudgery of getting the image “just so”.

For now that’s enough.

Riding Into The New Year

Happy New Year, everyone! Did you all have a satisfying holiday season, and are you ready to plunge into this new year with renewed optimism and determination?

As for my part, I’m doing something different from my usual New Year routine. Instead of spending days on the end of year analysis and setting goals for the incoming year, I’m starting off by spending some time in the studio. Maybe this way I can keep the momentum going and not get side tracked by extraneous “stuff”.

Since “Easy Rider” was still on the drawing board, it is the first piece to get attention, and I’m getting very eager to finish it. There will be many adjustments to make as I work out the lighting issues, but it’s looking good so far. But, there’s something about that left foreleg that isn’t quite right. Could the head be a tad too large? Was there some distortion in the reference photograph that I didn’t notice until seeing the drawing in the small version? Hmmm.

This equestrian dressage drawing is approximately 11 x 14 inches in pencil on paper.

For my next project, I’ve already picked out a photo of a kitten; our own beloved Annie whom we lost last Christmas. I’ll be doing that in pastel before plunging back into the oils.

Alpha Mare Gets a Makeover

Whew!! That’s one more big job accomplished! Or, as my grandmother used to say, “I’m glad that elephant is behind me!”.

I’ve spent the better part of the last two weeks revising my website which had, frankly, become a bit of a shambles. I had started to revise it a couple of times but never completed the job, so there were pages with three different designs, and the site had lost its uniform look. More importantly, I had rearranged some galleries but neglected to change old links and the result was duplicate content. Google doesn’t like duplicate content.

My visitor numbers have dropped dramatically over the past two years to a point where they are now less than half of what they once were. Knowing that there had to be a reason for this, I did some exploring, both on the website pages and in my stats and came up with some answers. I hope. I found a lot of broken links, among other things. Google doesn’t like broken links.

One of the things I did was to go through my Sitemeter visitor logs and write down every single page that visitors visited during a 10 day period, excluding those who only visited one or two pages. I wanted to see which are the more popular pages and how visitors were navigating around the site. Then I compiled the figures into a spreadsheet and sorted them by number of visits. This was invaluable information as I decided which images to keep and which to leave on the site; which galleries to keep and which to combine with others.

My mantra with this revision was to simplify the whole site, so the first thing I did was to decrease the number of different galleries by combining some together. For instance, the old jumping and dressage galleries were combined into an all english riding gallery. From there I proceeded to make a list of paintings and drawings I wanted to take off the site. Mostly these were paintings which were either old portraits or just not up to current standards. Some had been sold and didn’t really fit in anywhere or serve any purpose. I figured there was no point in showcasing a bunch of old portraits if I’m not accepting commissions any longer.

I made a bunch of other changes that I won’t bore you with and have ended up with a “new” website which I think is both warmer and softer in feel and cleaner in look with the artwork better arranged for greater impact. I’m hoping that the Google gods will now smile on my website again, raise its ranking in the searches and once again bring the hoards to my doorstep, metaphorically speaking.

Perhaps you could help the cause by visiting my new website and letting me know what you think. You can visit Alpha Mare Equine Art by clicking on the link.

Meanwhile, back in the studio, I’ve decided to resurrect the pony drawing at the top and work on it again. It’s the preliminary drawing for a painting, but I got stuck with what to do about a background. I’m thinking now of going simple with mainly a toned canvas. The title is The Little Inspector, and I’ll get to work on it very soon.

But first the house needs cleaning.

Thanks for visiting, and please come again.

The Forsythia Are Lovely This Year

Can I distract you with that statement from the fact that I haven’t posted in two weeks? Or, perhaps you hadn’t noticed.

Yesterday was an exciting day mostly because I was a guest artist on a fellow Equine Art Guild member’s blog. Linda Shantz paints mostly Thoroughbreds and has plenty of her subjects to choose from right in her own backyard. This month she’s doing a painting a day which is something I haven’t had the courage to tackle yet. Her blog posts are always entertaining because Linda is a good writer as well as a gifted artist with a great sense of humor. Please check out her blog for today’s painting and my guest spot from yesterday.

My only regret is that I was so sick with an intestinal bug when I wrote my guest blog post that it came out less entertaining and engaging than I would have liked. It discusses all the changes I made from the reference photograph while creating The Green Team painting.

The other exciting part of yesterday was that I made some really good progress on revising my website. To make a long story short, I had revised some pages and “galleries” over the past year or so but not others. The result was that there was no uniform “look” to the pages, lots of broken links or links to pages which contained duplicate content. These are all things which Google frowns upon and could explain why my website visitors have been dwindling for the past year.

The time had come to tackle the whole website and give it a new, fresher brighter look, and yesterday the last of the major web pages was revised. I have only the image pages to do yet, and they should be easy compared to the rest. In the process, I’ve deleted a lot of pages and quite a few of the images to help streamline the site and show only my best work. I would love it if you could take a look and let me know how you like the new design, navigation and arrangement.

Now, as for the forsythia, it IS lovely this year! After several days of gray, rainy weather, the sun came out this morning, so I took a tour of the flower beds and took the photo above of my oldest forsythia. It’s the one the deer keep pruning into a mishapen mess despite my best efforts to protect it.

As luck would have it, just after I snapped this photo, my camera announced that the CF card was full. I was standing under the Burning Bush, and a chickadee alighted just inches from my face. I mean INCHES! He was not the least afraid, and I had no way to take his picture! Of course, by the time I went back out with another card in the camera, he was gone.

It’s clearly time to burn those photos to backup and empty those cards because I don’t want a repeat of that experience the next time I have camera at hand.

As soon as I get this website revision finished, I’ll be back in the studio and out in the yard. Next up will be a dressage drawing and a pony painting that’s been lingering around for years.

See you next time, and thanks for visiting!

Quite A Scare!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Winter Scotch - Finishing The Horse

I'm not a fan of getting older, but my body has other ideas. Since the beginning of the year, I've been exercising regularly which is something I haven't done for a long time. One day I do leg exercises and the next I do shoulder and neck exercises. These were all prescribed by the physical therapist for various injuries and the arthritis I have in my neck and shoulders. Unfortunately, this week I suffered a setback when my shoulders and neck pretty much seized up, and I could barely lift hand to mouth to feed myself. (that might be a good thing if it weren't so painful!) Lifting my saddle around to clean it was just too painful to even contemplate, so it still sits in the laundry room in pieces as does the bridle.

Clearly, a change in strategy is in order.

My horse is advancing in years also and has been lame in the hind end for over a month now. He had his second chiropractic adjustment on Friday and will soon be going on a joint supplement. I ordered a quarter sheet from Dover last week which I hope will help him to warm up safely when we ride which I should be doing more often, for his benefit and mine. He's now wearing his winter blanket since we've had so much sub and near zero weather of late, and I'm sure he appreciates that immensely, even though he gets it dirty by taking his morning roll in the arena after his breakfast grain. He'll be 24 on April 15.

Several years ago I decided that when Scottie can no longer be ridden, I will quit riding. At this point, I'm not sure which of us will give out first!

Yesterday, I was recovered enough to work on this painting again and managed to pretty much finish the horse last night. Although he could use some adjustments, I'm so happy with how he turned out that I'm debating whether or not to just finish up the background and call the painting finished. The horse looks just like Scottie, and this painting will remain in my collection no matter what.

It's time to start thinking of what to work on next.

Winter Scotch - The Horse

In today's painting session I tackled the horse and almost finished him.

You know how horses look like plush toys in winter with their long coats, especially when the fur stands on end on a cold day? Well, that's the look I'm aiming for with this horse. One problem I encountered was that in the reference the horse is dirty from rolling in the indoor arena, so that confuses his form, making it hard to tell what is highlight on the coat and what is dirt. So, I had to go with what I know.

There isn't much left to do on this painting, but I may not be able to paint tomorrow. That's frustrating. But, my saddle and bridle need cleaning before I go riding in the afternoon.

Plan Ahead!!

Something about Bard's painting has been nagging at me, and I've been reluctant to continue with it until figuring out just what. I knew his head was not quite right but couldn't put my finger on just where it was wrong until I printed out some of the reference photos last weekend. In studying them for what must have been the 24th time, I noticed for the first time that he has a dip and then a convex curve to his nasal bone. "That's it!" I shouted to myself. It was a Eureka! moment. In comparing the painting to those photos, the difference was at last visible.

The other thing that's been bothering me is a nagging feeling that the color in the photos wasn't accurate, so on Thursday I took my prints to the barn and compared them to the real Bard. Yup, they are way too red. Bard is more of a dun color without dun factors, which means that his coat is more brassy and gold than red and orange. Boy, was I glad then that I hadn't continued with the painting, because it would have meant painting him all over again!

Of course I should have planned ahead, printed out those photos sooner and taken them to the barn months ago. But I didn't for a variety of reasons that we need not reveal here. It's best not to go there. Now that I have things figured out, I'm eager to get to painting again, but the next few weeks are really chopped up with appointments, meetings and a trip to Ann Arbor. I've resigned myself to the idea that I'm just going to have to paint in little bits of time whenever I can fit it in and not worry about paint drying too fast or any of that. Bard has been on the back burner far too long as it is. He needs to be finished and out the door so that I can get back to other artwork and finally have some new finished works to put up for sale.

Speaking of which, sales this year have been particularly dismal what with the economy problems and all. It's been quite a long time since I took any prints or note cards up to the gallery in Central Lake which was pretty much out of all of my work, so yesterday I gathered some prints and note cards and then did something I haven't done for several years. Back when I was doing booth shows, I hand colored some of my early black and white prints, and they sold really well. It occured to me that now might be a good time to try that again. Above you can see the results of a hand colored version of my print, "Gotta Scratch". It took me about an hour to layer on the colors with colored pencils while watching TV, and I plan to do many more of these for holiday sales for the gallery and for my website.

In the past I hand colored another older print which also sold well. When I get one done, I'll show that one to you, too. We artists are doing anything we can think of to offer something new yet inexpensive to our collectors in these dismal economic times when everyone is cutting back and waiting to see what the future brings. This is definitely something I can do until I have new paintings to offer. The hand colored prints will be offered at a slightly higher price and offer something that is one of a kind for a very attractive price.

Hopefully, it's a win-win for artist and collector and a good plan for the days ahead.