The Peppermint Kid Finished at Last!

Happy New Year Everyone! (that is the two or three of you who actually read this blog). And let me thank you for coming to visit and sharing your comments over this past year. I really do appreciate your interest.

We had a very white Christmas this year because it's been snowing almost daily since mid November. Our kids made it up here for the holiday and back home again while dodging the bad storms, and we had a nice family time, lots of goodies to eat and many laughs.

I'm now back to thinking Art again.

On the day that we lost our Little Annie, I busied myself as much as possible and was able to put the finishing touches on Bard's portrait and sign it. What I should have felt was great elation, but all I could muster was a sigh of relief. 

After the hubbub of Christmas died down and the "kids" went back to their respective homes, I was able to get a good photo of Bard (in spite of non stop dreary days!) and then proceeded to clean up the image and do some test prints. The finished portrait has now been added to my website, and I'm contemplating offering his image as a limited edition reproduction.

Today I put things away in the studio and put The Green Team back on the easel. I'm anxious to get busy with this painting, another one that's gotten long in the tooth while waiting for completion. It would be really nice to start something new as well, but I haven't decided what yet. Possibly a fox hunting scene? A pony image? Or, perhaps a winter scene would be appropriate for this time of year.

I must remember to take my camera to the barn when I go tomorrow. Maybe with some urging, the two youngsters can be induced to provide some action. That would be fun!

Letting Go...

Annie 

2000 - 12-17-08

You brought such joy yet suffered so much.

Bravo! Horse Prints Again!

To my great delight and profound relief, a two year ordeal of sorts has now come to an end. I'm now able to offer all of my horse prints again and two new ones as well!

As reported in earlier posts, my computer hard drive turned up its toes two years ago without so much as a warning gasp. Since I’d been using an outdated operating system (Mac OS 9.5) it seemed like a prudent time to upgrade and have the latest version (OS X) installed on the new hard drive. That meant that almost all of my old software also needed to be upgraded, including Photoshop, which I use for working with images. I bit the bullet and ordered Adobe Creative Suite CS2 which includes Photoshop along with several other software programs for designers, artists and photographers.

I immediately ran into a big printing problem that has left me dead in the water for the past two years. It seems that the new Photoshop is far more complex than the old, and there are now many more choices of settings than there had been in the old version in order to print something - like my home made reproductions of artwork. The odd thing has been that new images taken with my digital camera print just fine, but the older images, like my reproductions and business cards, came out very dark with over saturated colors. Since I’d only been printing a few of each image at a time, it wasn’t very long before I sold out of the more popular images which ultimately decreased sales since there were fewer images to choose from.

I asked for printing advice online and got a little but never had the time, until this past week, to really crack open the Photoshop books and just try different settings. To make a long story short, I made what turned out to be one key change in a setting and was gratified to find that the old images now printed much better. After many experiments with different settings, adjustments to the image files and many test prints, I was finally able to match my old print images and have now printed some out to replenish inventory. The wind is back in my sails, and although it may be too late for Christmas sales this year, there is at least the increased possibility of future sales in the new year.

I owe it all mostly to the rush to produce a reproduction of “In My Dreams” which I talked about last time. I’ve now added it to my inventory along with the image you see above. Now offered as a limited edition reproduction, “Khatrina”, is an older oil painting that has always gotten a lot of attention on the website and in note card and mini print sales. Arabian images are always popular, and I hope that will prove true for “Khatrina” as well.

The final step to get the ship moving at clipper ship speeds was to revamp the “Prints” page on my website, which I completed last night. It now matches the new design, and all of the prints, minus a few poor sellers, are now available for purchase online once again. Perhaps in these desperate economic times, people will be tempted to spend a little for a lovely horse print to brighten their walls and their moods in place of new saddles or riding boots.

Having spent quite a bit of time reading my Photoshop books over the weekend, it turns out that my solutions weren’t necessarily the “correct” ones, but they work for now and I’m very happy with that. I can learn about calibration and working spaces and profiling later. The big thing is that I can now offer some of my most popular images for sale as reproductions again.

I call that an early Christmas present.

It Happens Every Time

Just when I think I'm caught up with all the urgent projects, jobs and obligations, something new and urgent pops up to send me back to Square One. So it was this week.

I had left for Thanksgiving vacation with all the bills paid, laundry done, financial matters under control and Bard just a whisker away from being finished. I had been concerned about the winter weather and all the driving we had to do, but the weather cooperated, even for our whirlwind one day trip from northern Michigan to southern Michigan to have Thanksgiving dinner with my mother in the nursing home (where meal portions are designed for Lilliputians).

Finally, I thought, Life was under control again.

But that was not to be. The week went something like this....

A planned trip to the barn was aborted when my car developed a squealing noise and the Check Engine light came on. I carefully did my errands in town and limped back home and called the garage to arrange an appointment.

I received a call from my mother's nursing home wanting me to sign some papers which were then faxed to me. She had recently been in the hospital for 2 and a half days, and they required her to sign new admission papers to the nursing home! What followed was several phone calls, some of them heated, requesting to know why this was required and questioning various parts of the papers. I didn't get satisfactory answers, so I called some local nursing homes to see what their policies were and found they were different. To make a long story short, it was frustrating, took a bunch of time out of my days and ended with me passing the buck to my brother-in-law who has power of attorney for my mother. It seems that I couldn't sign the papers for her after all! Sigh.

The biggest new urgent matter arrived in the form of an email on Monday morning requesting a print of a painting that I hadn't made into a print yet. The man wanted it for his daughter for Christmas. Trouble was, I didn't have a good photo of the painting and wasn't sure I could create a print that would print properly. But I was game to try since it was an image that I'd thought about turning into a print anyway, and What the Heck! It's Christmas season, and I sure could use some sales and a new print to take to the gallery.

I got right to work and was able to take a really good photo of the small painting and set about adjusting the colors and cleaning up all the boo boos that always show up in photos but aren't visible on the real artwork; things like dust spots on the lens and little smudges in the pastel that the camera always magnifies. By zooming way in and using the clone stamp tool with a small brush size in Photoshop, I went all around the outside edges of the horse and rider and tidied them up. The original is a small pastel that was done as a color study for a larger painting, so I hadn't been really careful about keeping edges sharp.

While I was at it, I better defined the mare and foal in the background and made some adjustments to the girl's clothing. All of that took me one whole day.

Then the real challenge came; getting the thing to print properly. After consulting my Photoshop book and another book on digital printing, I changed a color space setting and made a test print in a small version. It was amazingly close to the screen image! Hooray!!

Many test prints later, after trying various differences in settings in Photoshop and the printer driver and different sizes for the print, I finally had an image that I was happy with. That took me another whole day, with interruptions. The final step was to print out the image on the expensive fine art stock and then to make a few extras for the gallery and to sell online.

In the end, what started out to mess up my week of finishing Bard ended up to be a positive thing. I now have a new print to add to my collection; the first in several years! The above print will very shortly be available from my website. The title is "In My Dreams" and it was created for all the little girls who dream of galloping across wide fields on beautiful horses.

And in addition I got a big approval from my client for Bard's portrait which is always a major "Whew!!" moment. It just needs some final touches and it will be done.

On the other hand, we won't talk about how, in all the hubbub of the week, I forgot the farrier was coming today when I made the car appointment and consequently failed to meet her at the barn at the appointed time. But all's well that ends well. She couldn't make it anyway, and we connected later and arranged for another time.

You would think that after all these years of living I would have figured out that there's no such thing as being "all caught up". Something always comes along that demands your immediate attention just when you think you can finally concentrate on some pet activity that you have difficulty fitting into the schedule. It happens every time. And sometimes that's a good thing!

Bard - Scottie To The Rescue

As I said last time, I didn't have a good reference for Bard and ran into trouble modeling his shoulder. After going through my horse's photo album (he has his own, just like my kids), I found one good photo with sunlight coming from the correct position and was able to use it to help me place the highlights and shadows on Bard's shoulder and neck. It even shows Scottie with his head turned similar to Bard's pose. I still ran into trouble, though, since Scottie's shoulder is more lean than Bard's. After several phone interruptions and one angering phone call in particular, I got disgusted, wiped off all I'd done to that point, and started over. The second attempt went better and soon Bard had a believable shoulder, complete with highlights.


I finished up for the day by adjusting the neck, painting in the mane and adding more highlight to the head and then called it a night. All that's left to do now is repaint the background, which I'll do today. Then I can put it aside to dry, sign it and wait until it's dry enough to varnish.

Thanksgiving will be so much more pleasant knowing that Bard is at long last finished and can go to his owner next month.

Click on Bard's image to see it on my website. The other image is the reference I used of my horse Scottie. That's my daughter holding him.

Bard-Entering the Home Stretch

Although the light was better, yesterday was somewhat of a frustrating painting day. The problem is that I don't have good reference for Bard's neck and shoulder in sunlight from the right angle. The main reference was taken on an overcast day so does not have good highlights or shadows, and it's the highlights and shadows that give the horse his form.

Anatomy books are only so much help because what you see on the real horse or a photograph doesn't correspond to the superficial muscles. That's because the underlying muscles and bones also make up the form: the lines, curves, dips and bumps that one sees on every horse if you study closely. And every horse is just a little bit different from every other horse.

So, when working from poor references, one has to rely a lot on knowledge of anatomy, past memories of observations and knowledge of where the highlights and shadows would fall when the light source is coming from a specific direction. Sometimes you just have to "wing it" and try various things until the image looks right. Unfortunately, I never reached that point yesterday and gave up when it was time to watch "CSI".

So, today's version is not quite there yet. The shoulder definitely needs to be redone, and the neck needs more highlights. I may just draft one of my Breyer model horses, a stocky Quarter Horse like Bard, to show me where the highlights should be for the next time I paint. Until then, I'm letting the paint dry. It wasn't quite dry enough in places yesterday which meant the former layer lifted off as I painted over it even though the layers are fairly thin.

Still, I have the satisfaction of knowing that the painting is entering the home stretch, which is always a good feeling. As usual, click on the image above to see a larger version on my website.

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.