Drawing On Life; The Art of Karen Baker Thumm

Sketches From Life

2011-11-22T10:02:00.001-08:00

gesture drawing in conte of my horse, Scottie

Fall always goes by so quickly that before I know it, it's Christmas. Before any more time escapes me, I did want to update you on the latest from the studio in this brief post. So, here goes.

Since my last post, I've been busy getting ready for and then going to Deer Camp with my husband at the old homestead and now with preparations for Thanksgiving. It's also time to plan ahead for Christmas and begin those preparations.

In the meantime, Scottie turned up lame once again with another hoof abscess; his third in less than a year! The vet has put him on another supplement in hopes it will boost his immune system and keep him healthy over this winter. I also ordered and put to use new blankets for him. He now has quite a wardrobe of blankets for any weather to come and has been wearing them for the past month. All the old geezers at the barn are now blanketed, and so far the former juvenile delinquent, J Willie, has not managed to damage them. J Willie is finally growing up!

The image at the top is one I did during the summer. It's a gesture drawing in conte of Scottie when I turned him out briefly in a paddock by himself. He was constantly moving, so this was done in something like 15-20 seconds before he moved too much to go on.

Most of what I do at Deer Camp is go through old art magazines while my husband is out in the woods hunting. Since I'm perpetually years behind on reading these magazines, I have no shortage of them to go through. I personally don't find the "how I did this painting" articles at all useful since all artists work differently. But there are other business and studio tips articles that are useful which makes it impossible for me to throw out these magazines without going through them.

Our cat, Molly, sometimes lies down next to me on the couch while I'm reading, and this year I tried to do some sketches of her, too. But, every time I moved to a good spot to draw her, she got up and moved, too. So, I was reduced to doing some quick gesture drawings of her. Like Scottie, she only gave me mere seconds to get down enough information to be recognizable. Below are two pages from my sketchbook. They are crude, I know, but at least I made the effort! And, already I've rediscovered the value of doing sketches from life and want to get into the habit of daily sketching. Or, maybe weekly.

Last night my riding buddy, Ann, and I had a good ride in the arena. We have new footing which makes it much brighter, less dusty and softer under foot. I was delighted that Scottie seemed in really good spirits, was eager to work and moved right out without much urging. Perhaps he's now been on the supplements long enough to really benefit his joints and all his body systems. It's very encouraging that maybe this winter will be better than last year's and a reminder to keep him on the supplements from now on.

We rode to some new age Christmas music which was fun and kind of magical.

When I'm at the barn, time just vanishes, and I treasure all those moments with my horse and barn friends. Last night I was the last to leave the barn. When I turned off the lights and stepped outside, it was pitch dark. I looked up into a sky filled with stars in every direction. There are no annoying yard lights out there to intrude on those moments when you feel that connection to the entirety of the universe.

I just love those magical moments!

Gesture drawings in charcoal of our cat, Molly

Gesture drawing in charcoal of our cat, Molly

A Weekend in the Museum

2011-10-29T13:58:00.000-07:00

"Tribute to Glory" work in progress, oil on canvas

I spent four intense days last weekend attending two workshops at the Dennos Art Museum in Traverse City, and I couldn't be happier about it.

As I may have mentioned, the Society of Animal Artists opened its annual show at the Dennos in September, and I looked forward to seeing that show for months ahead of time. It was not a disappointment when I saw the show for the first time. In fact, I was awed! In fact, I went through the show a total of three times and saw new things in the work each time.

The SAA only accepts the best of the best animal artists for membership, and their shows are outstanding. Many of the top wildlife artists are members or exhibit in their shows: artists such as Robert Bateman, Al Agnew, Guy Coheleach, Nancy Howe, Brian Jarvi, Jan Martin McGuire, Bart Rulon, Suzie Seerey-Lester and Morten Solberg were some of the big names whom I recognized. But there were many more, including several equine artists, and Michigan was well represented by artists Anni Crouter, Kim Diment, Rod Lawrence, T. J. Lick and Rick Pas.

The show is curated for a variety of subjects, mediums and artists from various geographic locations. Although there were quite a few African animals, there were animals from around the world, domestic animals, birds, amphibians and a few bug paintings and sculptures. Sculpture was well represented with quite a few really outstanding pieces. The one which I found particularly touching depicted a baby elephant and its mother paying their respects to an elephant skull. Their emotions are palpable as they lovingly reach out to touch a dead loved one.

The favorite painting of many in one of the workshops was a large painting of a Mexican wolf by Flint artist, Anni Crouter. We got to meet Anni and her veterinarian husband when they stopped by the workshop. My favorites are too numerous to list individually, but I was impressed by a couple of stupendous scratchboard works, a painting of a cape buffalo coming out of a grass fire and Kim Diment's painting of African elephants crossing a river.

As for those workshops, I discovered on my second visit to the museum that two of the local artists in the show were each giving a two day workshop: Rod Lawrence in painting animals and Kim Diment in drawing animals. The price was too reasonable to pass up, and I was thrilled at the opportunity to work with two exceptional wildlife artists.

Rod's workshop was first. Having taken another one from him in the past, I knew that his workshops were very unstructured, and so I planned ahead what I wanted to work on and what I wanted help with. I took the painting of Glory the palomino since I was kind of stuck as to how to proceed and how to get the palomino color I wanted. I worked on that the first day and got this far with Rod's help. (see above)

On the second day, I took the painting of our cat, Annie, and got a good start on it. I had gotten as far as the underpainting and was looking for help with doing her soft long fur. I worked on her back and some on her tail but didn't get any farther.

"Princess Anne" oil on canvas

Rod showed us some of his work, including an unfinished painting of elk, and explained his working methods. He also gave us some insights into painting wildlife, gathering references and getting our work to be accurate.

The second workshop with Kim Diment was more structured and I learned quite a bit, even though some of the drawing information was no more than review for me. The room where we worked contained two large mounts: one of a polar bear and the other of a musk ox. Much of the first day was lecture and us doing contour drawings of one or the other. I chose the polar bear since there wasn't much to see of the musk ox except a lot of long hair. The day ended with us doing ten minute drawings of the animal of our choice from eight different points of view around the animal. The drawing below is #7 for me.

polar bear contour drawing from a mount

On the second day we learned about working in pen and ink, pencil and charcoal. We each worked from a reference photo, transferred the image to our paper and drew it in one of the mediums. I found a really nice photo of a red fox in my swipe file and chose to do it in pen and ink. Kim was very pleased with my drawing as am I.

The two workshops were over much too quickly, but I do feel energized by them and am eager to finish the two paintings which are now well underway. It was a huge help to have received so much encouragement from artists as outstanding as Kim and Rod. And it was great to work with other artists and feel that creative energy flowing around the room for four whole days! I do hope the Dennos will schedule more workshops in the future.

"Red Fox" pen and ink

This was drawn from a copyrighted photograph from an old issue of Natural History magazine and was done as a learning exercise only. I do not intend to sell or display it except possibly in my own home.

Back To The Drawing Board

2011-09-19T06:55:00.000-07:00

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.

How I Spent My Summer

2011-09-07T13:52:00.000-07:00

Sketches of my horse, Scottie, from life

This past summer was certainly a busy one, and I am ready for a slowdown now that Labor Day is out of the way. Real Fall weather arrived with the holiday, with cool days and cold nights, and we even had frost in some local areas the past two nights!

It seems as if much of my summer was consumed by twice daily trips to the barn to treat my horse's lump issues. As you may recall, Scottie had grown a huge, hard lump on the edge of his jawbone back in July which we thought was an abscessed tooth. But, a visit from the equine dentist ruled that out.

Since my last report, the lump began to recede and then blew up again when he went off the antibiotics. To make a long story short, a second vet saw Scott, opened up the lump with a bigger incision and took tissue samples. He went back on antibiotics, and I resumed twice daily trips to the barn. Fortunately, the tissue samples did not show any cancer cells or infection of any kind and I was allowed to discontinue the hot compresses and pulling off the scab each day to allow for drainage. Since then the lump has shrunken once again. I hope it's for good this time!

The thinking is that Scottie got a sliver under the skin on his jaw at some time which festered into an infection. After nearly six weeks on antibiotics and the draining, it is presumed to be gone now. Good riddance, I say!

My trips to the barn were often rushed in an effort to keep up with all the rest of my duties, but I did manage to do some sketching one day while Scottie was in the cross ties. Sketching from life is not something I'm used to doing, but at least I made the effort and share my humble efforts above.

On another occasion, I was lucky to get some good photos of baby barn swallows that were just learning to fly and hadn't acquired much fear of humans yet. They are gone now, but I have the photos to work from for some new paintings. I learned that the mornings are really lovely at the barn and plan to go out to ride then, take more photos and do some sketching and painting in the morning light.

Speaking of which, I have committed myself to creating two paintings for a benefit auction for a farm animal rescue that our vet has established; Second Chance Ranch and Rescue. It's less than a month away now, so I must begin painting immediately! And, I'm really looking forward to painting for this really worthy cause. Normally, I don't donate art, but I do make a few exceptions for local non profits.

Also on the Art front, I delivered two pieces of art to the Jordan River Arts Council for their upcoming exhibition, The Dog and Pony Show. "The Green Team" and "Kentucky Dreamer" will both be in this show which runs from September 11 to October 7. I got a sneak peek at some of the entries, and it looks like a good show.

I have more to share from summer activities, but that's all for now. Perhaps I'll have a new painting to share with you next time.

Day Tripping The Leelanau

2011-08-12T18:42:00.000-07:00

Black Star Farms mansion

My daughter is visiting this week, and for the past two days we have been out gallery hopping. On Tuesday we went up M22 on the Leelanau peninsula to Suttons Bay and beyond.

First we stopped at Black Star Farms and had lunch at the Hearth and Vine cafe which is well known for its scrumptious pizzas. I knew of this farm before it became Black Star because it formerly was a boarding and training facility. There are still horses boarded there and naturally I had to check out the barn and the horses. We peeked into the old barn and visited a few horses including a huge warmblood who appeared to be on stall rest. He must have been close to eighteen hands tall!

Next we drove into the village of Suttons Bay and visited four galleries. I was most impressed by Treeline Gallery which has an excellent selection of art by many local artists and others in a cheerful, well lit environment. The owner was also very personable, friendly and enthusiastic about her artists.

From Suttons Bay, we continued north to Tandem Ciders where Tina bought two bottles of excellent hard cider. That was her goal for the day.

Suttons Bay park

On our way back down M 22 toward Traverse City we stopped at Gallery 22 which is a co op gallery. It has a very nice mixture of paintings, jewelry, glasswork and other artisan works. When the owner found out that I was an equine artist, she expressed interest in my work and gave me an application for participation. Whether anything comes of this is yet unknown, but it's definitely an exciting prospect.

Yesterday Tina and I made our way down Front St. in Traverse City, feeling very much like "fudgies", the local term for summer visitors who tend to buy fudge. Meandering down Front St., we checked out many shops including the excellent Horizon Books, Evergreen Gallery, Spice Merchant and Art And Soul Gallery.

Our next destination was Building 50 in the Grand Traverse Commons. Formerly a state mental hospital, this beautiful old building was built in 1885 and is in the process of being repaired and renovated into shops and living facilities. We checked out Gallery 50, a few shops and Black Star Farms tasting room where Tina got some wine.

On the way home, we drove up US 31 north to a farm stand and got some fresh corn, tomatoes and the last of the sweet cherries. We ate the corn when we got home, and it was delicious!

Every time I visit galleries I feel twinges of envy of the artists who are in them. And I think to myself either, "I'll never be good enough to get in this gallery" or "I could do work as good as this if I just devoted more time to painting again!"

Last night I had a hard time getting to sleep because I was still excited from all we had done over two days of day tripping, and my brain was on stimulus overload. Clearly, I don't get out enough. Tina's visit has been just what I needed to shake up my complacent world and get me moving in new directions.

Stay tuned!

Back In The Saddle

2011-08-02T08:38:00.000-07:00

Scottie's Abscess

Last night we went on our first trail ride in six weeks, and it felt awfully good. I’ve been going to the barn but just not riding much. Between the awful heat and humidity we’ve been having and then Scottie’s lump issue, I haven’t ridden in almost a month.

Three weeks ago, Scottie developed a lump on the lower edge of his jaw that sprouted almost overnight. It was hard and as large as my fist, and I suspected a tooth abscess, especially since he’d had a lump in the same spot a year ago that wasn’t nearly as big. The vet was called, and she concurred. We arranged for an equine dentist to come out this past Friday to do something about the tooth and see what else may be going on.

In the meantime, I went to the barn twice daily to apply hot compresses to his cheek, and Scottie was put on antibiotics. The vet had tried to lance the abscess with an 18 gauge needle, but it only drained a llittle bit and then closed up. The following night, I brought along my husband the human dentist. With a small scalpel, he cut into the cheek tissue and got it to drain a little more. To our amazement, Scottie stood perfectly still for this procedure and only gave a small flinch at the first cut. After that the lump began to go down ever so slightly and has continued to drain.

Scottie had not been seen by an equine dentist in over ten years. I depended on the clinic vet who does the Spring checkups and shots to let me know if he needed anything more than a routine float and she hadn’t. Up here in the hinterlands of Michigan, we don’t have a lot of equine specialists and no equine dentists, so we had to call one to come from downstate. As luck would have it, he was here for the week, so we got him to squeeze Scottie into his schedule.

I was very impressed with Steve Shaver of Equine Dental Services. He espouses a natural horsemanship approach to equine dentistry and doesn’t have horses sedated unless they’re particularly afraid and unruly. Scottie was neither, even though the vet came along just in case.

An examination of Scottie’s mouth revealed that he had no abscessed tooth. In fact, his teeth are in excellent condition for his age (26), but the molars did have sharp points on them from uneven wear, and they had worn a sore on the other cheek. Working quietly and gently, Steve floated Scottie’s teeth, removed a hook on a front incisor and removed tartar from his canines. Scottie was an excellent patient and even seemed to appreciate the treatment to alleviate his mouth problems.

Another view. I clipped him a few weeks ago to make him cooler so he looks a little wierd

My husband came along, and the two dentists chatted and compared equine to human treatments and kept the vet and I entertained. My husband was especially interested in the oversized equine dental tools and remarked that Scottie was a far better patient than some of his own and that his mouth smelled a lot better, too. We got to stick our arms in Scottie's mouth to feel his teeth which was kind of awesome.

In the end, the dentist’s assessment was that Scottie may have bitten his cheek which caused a piece of hay to be imbedded into the cheek tissue which led to the abscess. It seems to be resolving now, and we are resuming normal activities.

While Scottie had that lump and a possible abscessed tooth, I didn’t have the heart to put a bridle on his cheek and a bit in his mouth. But last night I decided it was time to get back to riding. Ann, Kathy and I went out on a lovely trail ride on an evening that was very comfortable. Since we stayed in the woods, the flies weren’t bad at all. In order to stay in the woods we had to go down the steep hill, and although I could tell Scottie was stiff and sore in the hind end, he trucked down that hill with relative enthusiasm, only stopping now and then to grab a mouthful of leaves. He was obviously enjoying the trail ride as much as I was. We stayed out until almost dark, coming back up that steep hill to the barn, resting every so often, and Scottie was in good shape when we got back.

Ahh, it’s good to be back in the saddle again!

PS Be sure to watch Steve's video!

Grass River Adventure

2011-07-09T17:08:00.000-07:00

Grass River, Bellaire Michigan

Over the Fourth of July weekend we had a bit of an unplanned adventure that fortunately ended well. Our grown kids were up for the weekend, and on the Fourth we decided to take a boat ride up the Grass River in our aging boat which is something we only do every few years. Most of the river is pretty wild; in fact, it's part of a natural area that has been preserved from development. The river connects Lake Bellaire and Clam Lake where we live, and it takes over an hour to traverse the whole length which is a no wake zone to prevent damage to the shoreline and vegetation. Because it connects the two lakes, boat traffic can be heavy at times, and since the river is narrow, it is tricky to navigate.

On our way up the river to Lake Bellaire, we passed a couple of muskrat houses and almost ran down a mother mallard and her two ducklings who insisted on crossing the river right in front of the boat! The river was quite busy with boat traffic, but at times, with no boats visible, you had the feeling of being in the middle of nowhere with no civilization for miles.

When we were almost at the end, the boat began to run roughly, so we turned around and headed back home, crossing our fingers that we could make it. The further we went the rougher the boat ran until finally it quit altogether. After a short rest it started up again but soon quit again. This scenario repeated three more times until it finally quit for good just as we got out onto Clam Lake. Fortunately we were close to shore and were able to hail someone in a nearby cottage who happened to be a friend of my husband's. He towed us home where we were very relieved to arrive.

Hard as it is to believe in this day and age, none of us thought to take along a cell phone. By the time we got to Clam Lake it was dinner time, and all the boats had headed back home, so we were pretty much alone on the lake. And the marina down the lake had already closed, so we felt fortunate to have been rescued.

In spite of our misadventure, we enjoyed most of the trip up the river, enjoying Nature at her finest. It was a gorgeous sunny day with perfect temperatures for a leisurely boat ride. Some water lilies were in bloom and we also saw flowers that looked like some sort of wild irises growing along the edge of the water. I took along my cameras and got a lot of photos that might turn into paintings some day. Bald eagles also inhabit the Natural area, but we didn't see any on this day.

Here are some more photos from our trip.

Our boat, a 1974 18 ft. Sea Ray and my son, Dan

water lily and reeds in the river

All decked out for the Fourth of July

This family of mute swans greeted us when we arrived home.

"Lay, Lady, Lay" or The Chicken Dilemma

2011-06-13T12:58:00.000-07:00

Mystery Chicken - Henry? Henrietta?

For some reason, a Bob Dylan song has been running through my head all day; the one that begins, “Lay, lady, Lay”. Maybe it has something to do with the chicken that has adopted our getaway home in the woods and the dilemma that this poses for us.

You see, a week ago yesterday we drove over to mow the lawn and found this chicken hanging around the yard. He/she was afraid of us but clearly was used to humans. Where did “it” come from? Why had it adopted this particular house that is so far from the road and on the edge of a vast woods? How long had it been there, and how had it managed to survive all the predators in the woods?

As we left, we checked the neighbor’s yards along the road but didn’t see any evidence of chickens or chicken coops and fully expected that the chicken would be gone when we returned for the weekend on Friday. Wrong! He/she greeted us not long after we pulled in and unloaded the car. Over the next two days it gradually became less wary and let us get closer and closer. In fact, it was very curious about our car and kept checking it out. That makes us wonder. Did someone dump it off “out in the country” like so many morons do with cats and dogs? And was it hoping our car would take it home?

I managed to snap some decent pictures of him/her (there is disagreement among my chicken raising friends as to what sex it is) and hope to do a painting in the near future. But, now we’re wondering what to do about this chicken who has adopted us. Should we feed it? Provide some sort of shelter for it? Capture it and rehome it?

I’m not too keen on the latter since neither of us has any experience with chickens. Perhaps I’ll consult our vets to see what they suggest. Or, we could call Animal Control, if there is such a thing in that oh so remote county.

I had planned to do some plein air artwork over the weekend, but the weather was so abysmal that I stayed inside and went through old art magazines instead. It was cold, rainy and very dreary, but I enjoyed the luxury of having the time to read articles and cut them out to save. I’m only about five years behind in reading my magazines, you see.

flower bed, June 2011

Much of my time lately has been spent in gardening, and the yard is really looking nice this year, thanks to all the rain and cool weather we’ve been having. The new plants that were put in last year are really filling up the new flower beds, and some have already begun to bloom. It makes all the hard work of the past few years finally seem worth it.

I will share more in future posts as the summer progresses. But, that’s all for now.

Treasures In The Attic

2011-06-04T16:35:00.000-07:00

"Beach Run" circa 1983

This Spring has proven to be very busy. There is always lots of yardwork to do, cleaning out of flower beds and planting new flowers and moving a few which didn’t fit where they were. But last weekend, I took a break from that to do a project which has needed doing for years now.

My kids (both in their thirties) were home for the weekend for Memorial Day, and I took advantage of the opportunity to draft some help with the job. While my son ran the Bayshore Marathon in Traverse City, my daughter, Tina, helped me clear out, clean and rearrange the attic. It’s a small space and had become so full that you could barely get through the door!

The studio full of attic discards

The door to the attic is in the studio supply closet which meant that a lot of what we took out ended up stacked in the studio and the adjacent room. Here is the studio with only a narrow path from the attic to the door. The library was equally crammed with attic rejects: mostly baby furniture, toys, children’s books and odds and ends.

Among the treasures we unearthed from the far reaches of the attic was the painting above. It was done in 1983 when I was still in art school. I don’t remember having any help with it, but the influence of my painting courses is obvious in the thick brushwork and unblended color. I did not have a photo to copy but made up the horse and background from memory and possibly a few reference photos to get the pose of the horse right. Well, sort of right, that is.

I’d been wondering what became of this painting, and there it was, covered with 20 years of dust in an entirely unsuitable environment for storing a work of art. Sadly, this is where many works of art end up when they are no longer treasured by their owners - or artists. Aside from the dust, it’s in remarkably good condition. It is an oil painting on canvas board, which just goes to show that cheap canvas board is still capable of standing up to the extremes of heat, cold and unregulated humidity.

"Almost Home, Hunter Pace" circa 2007

The other thing it shows is how far my art has advanced since 1983, and that is where its value lies. Compare it to another galloping horse painting, “Almost Home, Hunter Pace” (above) which was completed around 2007. By comparison, “Beach Run” is an embarrassment! The best part of the painting is the piece of driftwood in the foreground. For years I meant to repaint that awful sky but never got around to it. It’s just as well because it’s one of those paintings we artists call a “learning experience” which no amount of reworking will improve.

Another treasure I found in the attic was a shoebox of toy horses from my childhood. They’re smaller than I remember them; only about two inches high; and there aren’t as many as I wish there were, but I’m happy to be able to hold them in my hands again and find them a better place to live out their “retirement”. Dusty and Cigarette and Blaze are now resting on my dresser until I find a suitable spot for them. I don’t remember what I named the metal mare and her foal. Niagara, perhaps? That’s where they were purchased; at a gift shop at Niagara Falls.

After Tina and I had swept out the attic and moved things around, she and son Dan went through the toys and books and picked out what they wanted to keep for themselves. After they had left with their childhood memories, I spent portions of this past week cleaning the items to be rehomed. The Barbie dreamhouse and some doll furniture went to my husband’s hygienist’s two little girls who were thrilled with them. The baby furniture and other stuff went to Goodwill in Traverse City. They do so much good for the homeless that I’m only too glad to donate to them and be rid of what we no longer want.

I still have a bunch of toys to wash and books to vacuum before they are donated, but the studio is now almost cleared out. Before I can do any artwork, it will need a good cleaning. And once the Spring yardwork is completed, I will be free to get back to some artwork! I have new references to work from and I will share some of those in my next post.

Art Show Online and Spring Activities

2011-05-15T18:14:00.000-07:00

Things have been hopping around here since I last posted, but that’s nothing new. My daughter came up for Easter, and we went out for brunch to a restaurant we haven’t been to before, the Blue Pelican in Central Lake. We highly recommend it. In fact, we went back there for Mother’s Day.

I got all dolled up for Mother’s Day and had my husband take the above photo of me out on our deck. The photo I”ve been using for publicity/promo is now over ten years old, so it was time for something more current. It turned out pretty well, if I do say so.

If you’d like to take a look at the invitational art show where my work is in Wisconsin, the show is now online. The title is “The Horse In Art”, and it’s a pretty impressive show! I am very honored to be among such talented company and very grateful to have been invited. Do take a look.

Two weeks ago we opened up our getaway “cottage/cabin” in the woods, and I dug up a bunch of daffodils which were hiding in an old flower bed where no one would see them. Two poppies were also rescued from obscurity, and in the following week, I planted all in various places in the home flower beds. It’s the wrong time of year to be planting bulbs, but if I had waited until Fall to dig them up, I probably wouldn’t be able to find them, so it was now or never more or less. Hopefully we will enjoy their blooms next Spring since they seem to be settling in well in their new homes.

Meanwhile back at the barn, we have resumed our weekly trail rides. So far Scottie has been doing very well and is obviously very happy to be going out again. On our last ride Thursday night, I took some photos and will share a few with you here. The leaves had barely begun to open up, but the air was fragrant in some areas with what we think were wild honeysuckle and at others we could smell wild leeks. Trillium carpeted the forest floor as well as other Spring flowers.

It was a very nice ride.

Day Two; Ancient Egyptian Chariot Horse Sketch

2011-04-13T07:56:00.000-07:00

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.

Cat Painting Update and Ice Bergs

2011-04-12T09:14:00.000-07:00

ice remnants on the lake

Isn’t it marvelous that Spring is finally here?! The ice went out of our lake yesterday morning when there was a stiff breeze, so now we have open water again. Actually, the ice is usually broken up on a windy day or two in the Spring and just blows east down the lake from us. The marina to the west helps the process by going out in boats to make waves. This year they posted a short video on their Facebook page showing them using a boat as an ice breaker in the marina area. The ice was pretty thin by then so no danger to the boat.

The first photo is of an “ice berg” out in the lake in front of our house. I took the photo early this morning while the lake was still. It won’t last long with the warm temperatures as the lake waters warm up.

I feel so lucky to live on a lovely lake with all of its wildlife!

Now that gardening season is back, I decided that it’s time to get back to exercising; something I’ve managed to neglect all winter. After walking on the treadmill, I did my “legs and back” exercise routine, and later in the day went for a short spin on Scottie. This morning I had a hard time getting out of bed! Ack! But, if I keep it up, the stiffness will go away.

In addition to exercising daily, I’ve set a goal for myself of doing some artwork every day this week, even if only for an hour. This is in hopes that both goals will become established habits if I keep them up long enough.

"Annie", 6x6 gallery wrapped canvas oil painting

I managed just an hour yesterday on the little cat painting I started a while back of our kitty, Annie, when she was young. Most of the time was spent setting up and deciding what colors to use and then mixing paint. So, I was limited to working on just one ear and the forehead markings before it came time to clean up and leave for the barn. Otherwise, I would have painted longer.

Please note my painting setup here. I came up with this brilliant idea a while back when I noticed some scraps of pegboard out in the garage. Even though I’ve looked at those scraps for years, THAT day the thought struck me that they would be perfect to use on the easel to hold small paintings and paintings whose edges need to be painted. I’d been trying to figure out a solution to this problem for a while now since I’ve been working on smaller canvases lately. How DOES one paint the edges of those gallery wrapped canvases without getting your fingers in the paint?

I had my husband cut a couple of pieces to fit on the easel and cleaned off the garage grime. Yesterday, I used one of them to hold the Annie painting, and it worked great! As you can see, the painting is resting on pegboard hooks. It can be moved from side to side to get at the bottom of the canvas, and I can set the painting at a comfortable working height. In fact, I might just expand this for use with larger paintings, too!

Now, why didn’t I think of this sooner!?

I’ve just had a chat with my gallery owner (Adams Madams, Central Lake, Michigan) who has requested that all her artists replace their pieces which have been in the gallery for a long time with new artwork. She is readying the shop for the coming summer season when the summer residents and visitors will be returning. She tells me that she gets visitors from the Horse Shows By The Bay people each summer as they explore the area when they’re not showing. These people have money to burn, so that gives me incentive to get some horse show pieces done to put in the gallery during the four or five weeks of the show. A series of small paintings of horse show dogs would be perfect as well as some leadline class photos of toddlers on cute ponies.

Ah! I’m getting super inspired!

An Equine Art Show and Getting Framed

2011-04-06T13:48:00.000-07:00

"The Green Team" Belgian horse painting, oil on canvas

The last few weeks have been kind of a blur what with getting artwork sent off to a show and finishing up income taxes and all the usual daily activities.

First of all, I took a break from painting to complete the income tax information and deliver it to our accountant. That is always such a relief to get that out of the way, but I still had plenty to do before I could relax and get back to painting.

When the Belgian painting was dry enough I signed it and then proceeded to spend a couple of days trying to get a good photograph of it and not succeeding. That’s a major disappointment as I really was hoping to offer it as a new print image. I had trouble getting both the horses and the trailer to look right. One or the other would be close to the painting but not both in the same image. I finally gave up and varnished the painting vowing to spend some time learning more of Photoshop so that I can isolate areas of images and change them without changing the whole. That is one of the beautiful things that Photoshop can do.

Next I took the painting to McMillen’s Custom Framing in Traverse City to be framed. The owner, Todd McMillen, and I go way back. We were in art school together many years ago, and his friendship is the only one that has survived from those magical days. Todd went on to get a four year degree from Kendall School of Design in Grand Rapids while I made a failed attempt at being a freelance graphic designer. But that is ancient history.

At any rate, Todd helped me select what turned out to be just the right frame for “The Green Team”. I can’t believe how much that frame has enhanced the painting! You can see it above. At the same time, I took the drawing, “Kentucky Dreamer” in to have the mats replaced. I framed it myself years ago, but the mats were never quite right. Again, Todd’s suggestions were right on the mark. The drawing looks SO much better in its new mats.

"Kentucky Dreamer" Thoroughbred colt drawing

Good framing makes a world of difference in how well any work of art looks, and the professionals like Todd know what they’re doing.

My next challenge was to set up a new Fedex account (which was an ordeal in itself) and box up the two pieces of art to ship to the show. My shipping boxes were in the back part of the attic, and to get to them I had to move a whole lot of stuff that was in the way. The result was a mini reorganization of some of the “junk” up there to make a path.

It took me close to a day just to pack up the art and make sure it was sufficiently padded against any rough handling. I did battle with Fedex again when attempting to fill out and then print the shipping label and the return label. All was finally completed, and last Friday we delivered the box into the hands of Fedex. Now I’m hoping that it makes it to the show on time and in one piece - or two pieces in this case.

So now I can formally announce that “The Green Team” and “Kentucky Dreamer” were accepted into the invitational art show, “The Horse In Art” to be held at the Seippel Homestead and Center For the Arts in Beaver Dam Wisconsin. This invitational show runs from April 17 to June 5, 2011 and is sponsored by the Beaver Dam Area Arts Association.

From what I hear of the other artists who will be exhibiting, I am humbled to be hanging along side their art. And the bonus is that the woman who is interested in buying “Green Team” also lives in Wisconsin not far from the show. She may buy it there which will be a win win win all the way around for her, for me and for the show.

Finished Belgian Oil Painting

2011-03-17T12:48:00.000-07:00

detail "Meet The Green Team" oil on canvas

To celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, I finished an oil painting today with the working title, “Meet The Green Team”. You may remember this painting from previous blog posts. It’s been around so long that it’s almost an oldey moldey.

I’m totally elated to finish this painting for several reasons. It’s been “under construction” for almost seven years! I needed to finish it to send to a show next month. And, someone is interested in buying it! She lives in the same state where the painting will be going to the show which should allow her to buy it at the show if she can make it there.

This painting also represents a milestone of sorts for me besides being the first major work of art that I’ve completed in several years. I really challenged myself with this painting by making some significant changes from the reference photograph. As you can see in the reference below, one of the horses is a bay and both horses are sweaty having just finished participating in a horse pull. I wanted to paint a team of Belgians so decided to change the bay to a sorrel and elminate the sweat from the horses. I didn’t care for the rusty trailer so decided to change that, too. One of the reasons it took so long to finish this one is that I ran into problems because I didn’t have good references for what I wanted the horses and trailer to look like. It took a lot of revising to get it to its finished state.

reference for painting

Finished painting, 12x16 oil on canvas

Next on the schedule will be finishing the taxes so they can go to the accountant, and then it is back to painting again. “The girls” are waiting to be finished: “Glory” and “Girls Play”.

Horse Paintings Progress Report - Deep In The Uglies

2011-03-09T14:01:00.000-08:00

Mute Swans in winter

“Ugly” doesn’t really apply to the above photo, but I thought you might like to see what we’ve been enjoying in our beach this winter. For the first time ever, my husband installed a bubbler in the water last December in an effort to keep the ice from shifting our dock. The neighbors did the same thing, and the result has been a nice large open space of water. It didn’t take the ducks and swans long to find this open water, and they come every day to feed in our shallow beach area. I took this photo on a rare sunny day when the swans were here.

This graceful pair of swans had five cygnets at one time last summer, but by fall only one was left. Now they are alone again and will no doubt have more babies this coming summer. Their presence is a reminder that Spring WILL come eventually!

Tribute To Glory first layer of color

Meanwhile, I put the first layer of color on the Glory painting, and it is now officially in the Ugly stage when one wonders if the painting will EVER be pretty. But, this is only the beginning and, rest assured, it will improve. I hope. So far I’m not sure I like the green background so will play with that in Photoshop to see if I like something else better.

Girls Play Too background color layer

I decided to do the background for Girls Play Too first, and this is my first attempt. It’s also in the Ugly stage and will need much more work. Look closely and you’ll see that I painted over the horse in a few spots in order to get the background smooth. After taking the picture, I cleaned the green off the horse. At this early stage, that isn’t a problem, but later on I’ll have to be more careful because some colors stain whatever you paint them over and leave a slight color tint behind no matter how much you rub or soak the area.

That’s it for today. I’ve now made the executive decision to not try to finish these paintings for the show as I had originally planned. There are just too many interruptions in my days to be able to paint long hours or even to paint every day. I also have to finish the taxes yet and get them to the accountant pronto. So, I’ll be finishing the Belgian painting and will send that with one or two older works. Sometimes I get overly ambitious and bite off more than I can chew, and this is one of those times. I never seem to learn. Sigh.

BUT, on the positive side, I have two new paintings well under way that I am eager to finish. And that is a very good thing!

Starting Over - Polo Painting

2011-03-03T09:36:00.000-08:00

"Girls Play Too" Polo painting on Belgian Linen

It never pays to be in too much of a hurry.

Here is my second painting that I hope to have done in time for the invitational show. I had to start it over because the first time I didn’t give enough attention to placement of the horse and rider on the canvas, and they ended up too high. I was able to scrub off the line drawing with Gamsol and salvage the canvas which is a good thing because it’s Belgian linen.

The second time around, I took more time moving the drawing around on the canvas and even using matboard corners to check how the painting will look when it’s framed with the rabbet overlap hiding the edges of the canvas. I’m much happier with it now and think I got the placement just right.

It never pays to be in too much of a hurry.

I used the same underpainting mixture on this painting as I did for the Glory painting but applied the paint much more thinly which is more my usual method. The underpainting will now dry for a few days before I begin the color layer.

I’m using a photograph I tood two years ago at the Horse Shows By The Bay demonstration polo match. Most of the players were Michigan State University students using a borrowed string of polo ponies. I’ve loved polo ever since my parents took me to a match the summer we lived in Milwaukee, Wisconsin when I was about eleven. This was only the second match I’ve seen and I thoroughly enjoyed it and took a ton of photos. More paintings will come from them.

Since I really don’t know that much about polo, I went online and looked it up to check that the details would be accurate for tack, the field and the rider’s dress. All of the players had some kind of face guard on their helmets at the match I went to which obscures this rider’s face. I found online that not all polo players use them, so it was eliminated from the painting. I also took some artistic license with other elements of the photo. What you see is kind of rough, but rest assured the final painting will be polished and colorful.

I’m really excited about this new painting and can’t wait to get back to it. Meanwhile, I’ll put some color on the Glory painting which will really bring it more to life. Time is short, and I must hurry along. But, not too fast. I can’t afford any more mistakes that delay progress.

And so it’s back to the studio for me!

"Tribute To Glory" - New Palomino Oil Painting

2011-02-24T07:43:00.000-08:00

I’m somewhat of an expert on Things That Can Get In The Way Of Painting. Everything else always seems to be more important, urgent or compelling. Or, I avoid the studio because of that Fear Of Failure thing: wasting time on Facebook or forums or trolling the internet in pursuit of things I don’t really need but must find Right Now.

One of those Things the past three weeks has been a project to go through 40 years worth of business and household records in order to take them to a company that shreds documents for businesses. I suppose it started with the end of the year project to evaluate the past year and prepare for the upcoming year which meant going through last year’s records. It was necessary because we had run out of space for storing records!

Once that project was completed, I felt the need to go through my mother’s papers in an effort to consolidate them all in one box which could be put away in the crawl space until the day comes when it is safe to discard them. It was quite a chore since some of them were pretty disorganized and scattered in three different places, but now that project is also done.

I’ve become a big believer in Feng Shui, and getting rid of all those old records and getting my mother’s papers consolidated and out of sight has gotten rid of a lot of negative energy in the house and especially the studio, I’ve found. Just for good measure, I took all the piles of unfiled papers off of my studio desk and put them in my son’s room to deal with later. Walking into the studio to see a clean desk has really helped me feel much more positive, hopeful and energized about getting creative again.

And just in time, too, because I have a show coming up in April and needed to get some new art done. The first piece I picked out was a photograph of a palomino mare which was my horse’s best friend when I bought him. She was also a favorite of mine. Like so many horses, she came to the barn with some history. For some reason we couldn’t fathom, no one liked her at her old home. She was starved for attention when she arrived, and we were happy to oblige. With kind treatment and care, Glory soon thrived. She could be a little ditsy at times but was otherwise a sweet gentle mare.

Although Glory was a Quarter Horse, she had a bit of a dished face, and this photo of her, which shows it, had always appealed to me. What you see above is the painting to date in the underpainting stage. She looks kind of like a dappled gray in this version but that will change when the color is added.

Glory’s new job was as a broodmare and occasional riding horse. Sadly, she died foaling several years later, and so this painting is my “Tribute To Glory”.

Horse Paintings: One Old and One New

2011-01-23T14:52:00.000-08:00

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.

Accepted! Art in a Juried Show

2010-12-08T10:03:00.000-08:00

Winter has arrived in northern Michigan with somewhat of a vengeance. We’ve been under a winter storm warning for three days now, with blowing and drifting snow. After a wonderful Thanksgiving at the family getaway, we closed the place up for the winter and have already battened down all the hatches at home, ready for whatever winter throws at us.

It’s been quite a while since I last posted so today I’ll just share a few bits and pieces of what’s been going on for me during what turned out to be a very busy month. First I’ll share some exciting news on the art front, and then you can skip the rest if you’re not interested.

Last week I entered two paintings in a juried show at Artcenter Traverse City. The title of the show is Portraits: People, Pets and Animals. “Winter Scotch” and “Yuri” were the available paintings I chose to take, and I’m happy to report that both have apparently been accepted into the show which opened yesterday and runs through the end of the year. Above you can see “Winter Scotch” as it appears after varnishing. Unfortunately, again the photo doesn’t begin to do the painting justice. Some paintings just don’t photograph well no matter what. I think I need to get a polarizing lens for my camera.

I'm very excited about this acceptance since it's the first time I've entered a juried show in some time, and it will be exciting to see my artwork hanging with some of the best artists in the Traverse City area.

Since my last post I’ve consulted two more animal communicators and learned more from and about my horse. I was very displeased with the second animal communicator because she interjected so many personal opinions about various things that I wasn’t sure what my horse actually said and what she added to. The third gal is a local woman recommended by my vet, and she was wonderful to work with. I finally got the final word on the saddle I’ve been using on loan for the past few months and Scottie says it pinches him in the withers so I need to start looking again. Drat!!

I learned one thing that has kind of blown me away about this whole communication thing. You see, there’s a possibility that I will be laid up this winter if I choose to have surgery to rebreak a crooked leg and have a rod or plate inserted to straighten it. Well, I asked the animal communicator if Scottie was aware of this, and he replied that he was and that he is worried about me and worried for himself that he won’t see me this winter. I had told my barn buddies about it in Scottie’s presence a few weeks ago and he understood what we were saying.

Last night I had another moment with Scottie which confirmed that he can understand what I’m saying to him. I was explaining to him that I was going to wear my helmet because I was riding alone and didn’t want to risk breaking my head if I fell off again and that I might go away forever and cross over the rainbow bridge if I did. Immediately he became very agitated, tossing his head and moving back and forth in the cross ties. As I continued to talk to him about how we both have to be very careful not to fall so that we won’t get hurt, he calmed down to his usual quiet self.

Well, I’ve gone on long enough for today. With luck, I’ll get to some painting this afternoon and then I’ll have some progress on the Belgian painting to show you.

Happy Holidays everyone!

The Green Team Revisited

2010-10-29T12:25:00.000-07:00

I’ll keep this very brief today, but I did want to share with you the fact that I’ve finally gotten back to work on this painting which has been languishing on the studio wall for over a year now. You may remember this painting of the Belgian draft horses at a horse pull which I started a very long time ago.

Having finished one small painting and started another in the past two weeks, my confidence was restored enough to tackle this one. To be perfectly frank, I’ve been dreading doing the trailer because my references for it are so poor. I’m having to guess about reflections and hope for the best. After two working sessions what you see above is where the painting is now. I’m not sure about the reflected grass on the lower part of the trailer, but I’ll address that later when the paint is dry. I think a glaze over it with some blue will tone it down and make it more believable.

As I mentioned, I have someone interested in buying the painting, so I really MUST get it finished! In the next session, I'll work on the horses, and that will bring it close to being finished.

Last night at the barn I had kind of a funny moment with my horse, Scottie, that goes back to the talk with the animal communicator. I was saddling him up and tightening the girth. I was debating whether or not to take it up one more notch which seemed kind of tight when Scottie turned around and gave me a disgusted look. I could almost hear him saying, “Now you KNOW I told you that I don’t like the girth so tight, so why are you doing it again?” I let the buckle out, and he was happy.

A New Painting and Barn Fairies

2010-10-26T12:34:00.000-07:00

I started a brand new painting yesterday. It’s my first since last winter, and I’m quite excited about it. In keeping with my resolve to paint only images which excite me and aren’t too challenging for the time being, I chose to do a little painting of one of our cats when she was a kitten. She was four months old when we rescued her from going to animal control where her chances of being adopted were not good. So, she was pretty much out of the really cute kitten stage but grown up enough to tell that she was going to be a beautiful cat.

Annie came to us round about from a neglectful home. In a word when we got her, she stunk! She had feces caked to her behind and other parts, so as soon as I got her home from the initial vet check the next day, she got a bath. As with so many things, she took this scary adventure in stride and bounced back with kitten-like vigor.

Annie was loaded with personality and energy and curious about everything. She was often naughty but so full of personality that she wiggled her way into our hearts. She grew into a beautiful, long haired cat but suffered from some sort of intestinal malfunction for most of her life. Just before Christmas two years ago, we had her put to sleep because she had declined so much.

I still miss her terribly.

At any rate, this little painting is an oil on 6x6 inch gallery wrapped canvas. I started by toning the canvas with a mixture of yellow ochre and naples yellow and then drew the main features directly on the canvas with burnt umber. That’s the first stage you see here. The main thing was to get everything in proper proportion.

I continued by laying on the first few layers of paint, starting with her eyes and making adjustments as I went. The yellow ochre/naples yellow mixture was painted in as the base for her coat. The darker areas are a mixture of ultramarine blue and burnt umber. When I had the main features fleshed (or furred) out, I quit for the day to let the painting dry before continuing.

What has me particularly enthused about THIS painting is figuring out that I can draw directly on the canvas without a preliminary drawing on paper and have it come out well. I’ve only done one other cat painting in my life, and that was a commission years ago in pastel. This painting has really boosted my confidence, and I should have no problem finishing it in record time.

Last night, I had a really good ride on The Great Pumpkin as Scottie is known in the fall. He was moving out better and managed ground poles with no problem. Since Ann and I were the only ones to ride, we played barn fairies afterward while the horses dried off. She swept the barn aisle while I mucked out Elle’s stall. Or, should I say Miss Piggy’s stall?

This morning I got a call from the vet letting me know that Scottie’s selenium level is very low; just as I suspected. If we up his supplement a little, maybe he won’t be so stiff and muscle sore as he has been for so long.

I’m crossing my fingers!

Fall Trail Ride and A Finished Painting

2010-10-20T14:22:00.000-07:00

"Winter Scotch" 8x10 oil on canvas board

Last Saturday was our second annual birthday ride at the barn, and we had a really good time, with one small glitch. We gathered in the morning for donuts and coffee and then saddled up and rode for over an hour. When we got back, we ate a potluck lunch and gabbed some more for a while before going our separate ways.

The weather was perfect; sunny and relatively warm although the wind was chilly. There was still enough color left in the trees to make for a very pretty ride which even the horses seemed to enjoy.

Unfortunately for Shelley, one of her horses suddenly came up lame after a roll in the dirt, and she stayed behind for a while to make sure he was going to be all right. He has an arthritic knee and had once before gotten a “floater” stuck in the wrong place, causing him much pain until he managed to dislodge it again. Before we left he seemed fine, and Shelley promised to saddle up shortly and catch up to us. Our ride was almost over by the time she did on her exhausted mare.

I’m posting some of the many photos I took here.

On Monday I finished the painting, “Winter Scotch” which I did almost two years ago. It’s a painting of my horse, Scottie, in his winter woolies. My goal was to capture that plush look that horses have in their winter coats, and the painting turned out really well after the revisions. Unfortunately, this photo doesn’t do it justice, and I’m going to have to find a better way to photograph it.

That’s all for today. Enjoy the photos.

The road where the bear was spotted last summer

This is a definite candidate for a future painting!

Calling Shelley

Colorful leaves making a pretty pattern on the ground

Back at the barn

Lunch buffet in the tack room

Art and Animal Communication

2010-10-12T13:13:00.000-07:00

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”?

Looking Beyond the Dog Days of Summer

2010-08-24T14:31:00.000-07:00

Gandalf, Norwegian Fjord stallion

Yesterday was quite busy in a good way. First off, I saw my chiropractor for the first time in two years. At her initial assessment, her comment was, “Oh dear!”, so I’ll be going back again regularly for a while.

After that I visited an old friend and longtime riding instructor at her farm. She breeds Norwegian Fjords among many other activities and accomplishments and has some really fine breeding stock. It was an opportunity to deliver in person the painting, “Man On A Mission” a painting of her Jack Russell terrier, Spinner.

In return, I got a tour of her barn and farm and was introduced to her horses: three mares, two foals and her stallion, Gandalf. Of course, I took lots of photos, a few of which I’m sharing with you here.

The lovely mare, Luna. Look at that nice hip!

This little guy was a nibbler, but look at those lovely dark eyes.

Later on, I went on a trail ride with my barn friend, Ann. As we came out of the woods at twilight, the light was hitting these weeds at just the right angle, causing them to glow with this soft mauve light. They were lovely!

Since Scottie is very sore again, the vet is coming out on Saturday, and my riding guru friend-of-many-talents will come out to do an assessment on both of us to see if she can pinpoint the source of our problems and get us on the right track for more comfortable riding for both of us.

Today I also made arrangements to meet again with my local mentor in hopes that he can help me to get back on track with my artwork.

Between the three: chiropractor, vet/guru and mentor; I hope to soon make progress with health, riding and art. It's cooled down enough now that one doesn't feel quite so much like a giant, sweating slug and can contemplate activities that involve actual body movement as opposed to quiet activities in front of a fan.

Sketch Book Drawings - Page One

2010-08-16T08:57:00.000-07:00

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.

A Little Painting; A Little Riding

2010-08-07T12:41:00.000-07:00

"Yuri" Oil on canvas board

When I walked into the studio to work on the German Shepherd painting yesterday, I walked through a cobweb. That was really odd because I’m in and out of that room at least a few times a day, and it was late in the day. Perhaps someone or something is trying to tell me something?

At any rate, I worked on Yuri and gave him a nicer background but was disappointed to find that the black areas had flattened out as they dried. I’ll have to go back in and liven them up again on the final passage. Some dry brushing with some darker “black” should do the trick as well as some tidying up here and there. The painting is in danger of being overworked if it isn’t already, so I must not labor over it too much more.

I try not to use black from the tube in my paintings and have found that a mixture of French Ultramarine Blue and Burnt Sienna give a good black that can be tilted to either the warm (brown) or cool (blue) side. There are numerous ways to make a good vibrant black, and this is just one formula.

The Green Team will have to be next on the easel since someone is waiting for it to be finished and may buy it. I’ll have to sit in front of it for a while to let it tell me what it needs.

We didn’t ride on Monday night because it was too hot and humid, but we had a really nice ride on Thursday. I took along my new small digital camera and managed to get some decent shots as we rode along. One of my companions took the camera and took some shots of me riding at the end, and she got some good ones! Thanks Anne!

The big problem I have with taking photos while riding is that Scottie absolutely refuses to stand still if the other horses are moving. So, I get a lot of blurry shots. He hates being left behind even though he usually likes to dawdle in last place until we turn for home. As we say on the trail, the first horse gets all the cobwebs and bugs! Note our stylish bug bonnets on the horses.

This camera is a Canon G ll, one of the few small digitals that still has a viewfinder. It had good reviews on the Canon site and on Amazon and is just the right size to take on trail rides and for leaving in my car while I tootle about. I don’t dare do that with my expensive slr, and this one has a lot of the same features as the big slrs do. It even does video! I have a lot to learn to use it to its capacity, but so far I’ve been quite pleased with it. I took back the first one because I just couldn’t deal with not having a viewfinder and not being able to see what I was shooting on the LCD screen in sunlight.

We had an easy ride Thursday because Stutz has been lame again and Scottie seemed a bit off when we started out. However, he trucked right to the front this time because we didn’t go down the steep hill this time but went down the gentle hill instead past the chickens on our way out. Thankfully, they weren’t out by the road. We stuck mostly to the sand trails and had a most pleasant ride. It had cooled off considerably, and the bugs weren’t bad.

Here we are about to leave the barn.

Partway through the ride.

This is Scottie and I. I have a Michigan shirt on. Go Blue!!

Isn’t this a gorgeous shot? It was getting dark as we headed back to the barn. This is also about where I was unhorsed a month ago.

Creation and Destruction

2010-07-29T06:28:00.000-07:00

For the first time in many weeks I was able to drag myself into the studio and work on a painting yesterday. It shouldn’t be that hard to get myself in there, but somehow it always is unless I’m already immersed in a new painting. Just like going to the barn, I procrastinate and find more urgent things to do but always enjoy myself once I’m there. But, that’s a topic for another day.

I’ve had an inquiry about the Belgian painting and need to get it finished, but I also need to warm up for it by working on less crucial works. So, I decided to take one of my more successful quickie paintings from last winter and rework it to more completion. This, you may remember, is Yuri the German Shepherd who lives at the barn where I board my horse.

The basic painting was okay, but I never liked the background. The dog needed more finishing as well, giving him more depth and a hair coat. After about four more hours of painting on this little 8x10 inch canvas board, this is what I came up with (Above). It still needs work, namely a toned down background and a few corrections here and there, but those will have to wait until it’s dry again.

Here are the two versions together so that you can see the difference.

On the other end of the creative spectrum, I made the big decision to destroy a few of my less successful works. Some had been hanging around for years with no one expressing any interest in them, and others were works that were just not very good. This may seem like a really drastic step to take, but I found it incredibly freeing. For one thing, I no longer have to look at these failures and wonder what on earth I’m going to do with them for the rest of eternity. For another, it frees up storage space for new works of art. And thirdly I don’t have reminders hanging around of my current failures or of how less skilled I was in the past.

Now, mind you, there are still a few older paintings hanging around that I will keep for a while longer because they represent milestones in my artistic advancement.

Yesterday I visited my hairdresser who also happens to be a neighbor and friend. She clued me in on why none of the neighbors visited during the studio tour. It seems that my own sign which I put out two days ahead of the event gave them the impression that I was going to have regular Sunday open studio hours from now on, and they planned to visit on another Sunday. None of them were aware of the studio tour, which is a good indication that advertising for the event needs to be improved next year.

It was nice to find out that my neighbors weren’t ignoring me after all and is incentive to do something on my own this fall. Now I can look forward to that and concentrate on getting new paintings done.

My First Ever Studio Tour!

2010-07-25T10:08:00.000-07:00

Gosh, where shall I begin? It’s been almost a month since I last posted and a week has passed since the studio tour. I guess the tour is as good a place to start as any.

Last Sunday I was part of a studio tour put on by Parkside Arts Council which featured the studios of Antrim County artists. It was the first annual event, so one could expect problems, and there were a few of those.

I spent most of my time leading up to the tour with finishing the flower beds so that the yard would look nice and cleaning the house. I never did get a chance to work on any art for the event, but now the flower beds are all set for the really hot weather which we’re bound to get now.

In the last few days there was a frenzy of printing reproductions, framing paintings and putting together packs of notecards. We did the setup the day before, and I think it turned out quite well. I had to haul a lot of clutter out of the library, which is adjacent to the studio, to make room to display art, and that resulted in a nice open display area where people could linger over the art.

We didn’t have a very big turnout (maps to the studios needed improvement), and my biggest disappointment was that none of my neighbors came. But I still enjoyed meeting the visitors and telling them a bit about myself and my working process. I didn’t sell anything, but now more people know of my existence and will hopefully spread the word. I would definitely like to do this again!

Here are some of the photos I took of my studio and the tour setup.

Our house is a split level, and this is the entryway. My studio is upstairs, so we blocked off the downstairs with a display wall. All of the art on this wall was not for sale.

This is the library (because it's full of books and sounds high falutin') Both framed prints and originals are hung on the display panels with more in the print rack. On top of the flat files were cookies and apples for snacks. The cookies were popular. On the coffee table I had copies of a book I illustrated and the Mural Mosaic book from the mural project that I participated in two years ago.

This is my small card rack. I also had business cards here. The painting on the wall is a pastel I did many years ago of my kids when they were small.

Here are three originals hanging on the wall of the library.

This is my working space in the studio. When I work, the easel is pulled more perpendicular to the window. It faces north so has excellent light. I put a dried up palette on the easel and had some brushes laid out on the taboret. The reference photo and a color study are propped up on the big taboret.

It was hot and muggy the day of the tour, so I turned off the lights in between visitors. The studio can get very hot with three banks of fluorescent lights on the ceiling.

My drawing table is folded up against this wall of the studio. I love that table! The white taboret next to it holds drawing supplies and utensils. The blue taboret holds painting supplies. The boxes above the TV are full of reference photos, and I hang paintings to dry on the pegboard or store them there until framed.

This is my desk. It's usually covered with piles of paper. For the tour, I cleared it off a little and put two open anatomy books on it. I sometimes use anatomy books as I paint or draw, and I wanted to show that. The two drawer units were bought used. They're very deep, and half of the top lifts up to get at the contents more easily. Of course, usually there's too much stuff on the desk to take advantage of that! I have drawing boards and table easels stashed in the space between the desk and the wall. That big white board is the original one that came with my drawing table. We put a smaller one on it since I didn't need all that space and it would have crowded the studio too much. It's also very heavy!

This may be one of the neatest parts of my studio! My husband built these shelves into this nook in the wall. The vertical shelves hold matboard, large canvases, illustration board and old unframed paintings. The horizontal ones have more canvases on them, glass, drawing pads and other odds and ends. I also store works in progress here - the dry ones like drawings and pastels - where they're protected. At the other end of this wall is another nook with built in shelves. I keep framed paintings and prints there and other art and non art stuff. Behind the door is a closet for more art storage. My french easel and photography lights are in here along with empty frames, painting supplies, mannikins, portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Over the years the studio has developed into a very functional area although it's not that large. The window looks out on our lake, and the room is pleasant to work in at any time of year; day or night. It's too crowded to have both the easel in its working spot and the drawing table set up, but I rarely need to do that anyway.

I had lots of compliments on my studio space from the artists who visited during the tour. Of course they complimented the artwork too! I'm ready for my next open studio event. Perhaps this fall during the color season?

"Whoa, D@#* It!"

2010-06-27T19:16:00.000-07:00

Speaking of wild rides, I had one last Thursday night that could have ended in disaster.

The trail ride didn’t start out well from the beginning. Scottie just wouldn’t stand still while I got both feet in the stirrups (my right ankle is partially frozen, and it’s difficult to catch that right stirrup). He just wasn’t listening to me, and I admit to shouting a few angry words to him like “Whoa, Dammit!” You know the feeling, right? It’s hard to be horse whisperers at times like that.

As usual, everyone else was waiting outside the barn for us, and I guess he was eager to join them.

The weather was perfect for a trail ride with temps in the low 70’s and a nice breeze blowing. All of the horses were feeling particularly frisky including Bard (remember the Peppermint Kid?), and we did a lot of trotting and cantering as we made the big loop back to the barn. We even practiced puddle walking with Scottie showing the other horses that puddles don’t swallow horses. This is a new fear he’s overcome this year, and I’m very proud of him.

We were riding up a sand road about a mile and a half from the barn, and all the horses were eager to get home. Ann and Carolyn had trotted on ahead while I waited for Bard and Anne to catch up. Scottie broke into a trot, then a canter and then a gallop to catch up. Then it happened. He stumbled and threw me off balance to the left. With every stride I went further sideways, but Scottie kept going. I grabbed for his neck but couldn’t reach it, and then the inevitable happened. I fell off. As I was coming down in front of him, I wondered if Scottie would step on me (he didn’t), and then I hit the ground, flat on my back, and my head hit pretty hard, and I slid in the grass for a little ways. Briefly I felt like I might pass out. The feeling passed, and then I lay there to do the post-fall assessment. Do I hurt anywhere? Is anything broken? Can I move? Can I stand up?

As I was staggering to my feet I heard Carolyn and Ann yelling at Scottie who had abandoned me and was heading for home. Then Carolyn and Anne both rushed up from different directions asking if I was okay. I was unhurt except for small cuts from my glasses that the helmet made as it pushed forward on my head. To my amazement, I had no soreness anywhere; not even a headache, although I was a bit unsteady on my feet.

The three of us walked toward home until Ann came back with Scottie in hand. He had stopped to graze. My feelings at that point were anger at myself for falling off and anger at Scottie for abandoning me. I asked him how he could possibly do that to me, but he didn’t have anything to say for himself; just acted oblivious to any wrongdoing on his part. He seemed to be wondering, “what’s all this fuss about?”.

I spotted a big downed tree on the edge of the woods and managed to clamber ungracefully up on it. From there I was able to remount, and we walked back home with no further incident. No way was I going to let Scottie get away with dumping his rider and going home! No way was I going to allow myself time to develop a fear of riding on the trails again.

When we got back, I had Scott canter both directions in the arena before dismounting. I needed to do that for myself. Once in the cross ties, he hung his head and seemed to have figured out that he’d done something wrong. I sponged him off, turned him out and went home, still feeling no pain anywhere and feeling very lucky.

I WAS very lucky! I was wearing my riding helmet. If I hadn’t been, there’s no doubt I would have been knocked unconscious at the very least. I think this incident scared my riding pals more than it did me. They were wonderful to me, making sure I was all right and reassuring me that “we’ve all been there”. I’m very grateful to them.

I hope this incident will cause them to consider wearing riding helmets themselves from now on because you never know what might happen, no matter how well trained and quiet your horse is. This happened because Scottie stumbled; not because he ran away with me or bucked me off or spooked at a deer.

Tomorrow he and I will have a long talk before the trail ride. I’ll apologize for getting short with him and ask him to please take better care of both of us. And I will do the same by not allowing him to tire himself out too much.

Meanwhile, back in the garden, I’ve been busy mulching all of the flower beds, and do they ever look nice! There is just a little more to do and the job will be done. Below I’m sharing some photos of the new and old beds and plants. They don’t look like much this year, but by next year they should be wonderful! By then those lopsided shrubs will be properly pruned and tamed, too.

Here is the new flower bed area; from the near shrub to the corner of the fence.

Where the yellow flags are is where the old driveway was. This area hasn't been mulched yet. Eventually, we'll put a tree ring around the maple; this summer, I hope.

One of my new plants, a yellow Shasta Daisy.

The view from the road of the new flower bed area.

Red Volunteer Daylily. First bloom this year.

Spirea, foxglove and garden wagon.

Those lovely Asiatic lilies again next to my Annabelle hydrangea. Everything is blooming early this year because of the early heat we've had and the abundant rain lately.

This lime green shrub looks very pretty against the old garage wall. Those are Blue Star junipers on either side.

What I've Been Up To

2010-06-22T15:01:00.000-07:00

At last some art to share! I did this sketch at our family getaway over the weekend while my husband was doing some welding. I’ve long wanted to paint this old maple and decided to see what I could do with some pastel pencils that I keep over there. I would really like to have gotten more done on it, but the flies were driving me “buggy”, and I couldn’t find any Off to deter them. Finally, they won, and I went inside to read an art magazine.

The days and weeks have been very busy this month, mostly with gardening and two trail rides per week. My husband helped to dig out new flower beds so that we now have flower beds extending the whole length of the fence along the road. He also helped immensely by digging out a section along the fence where there had once been a driveway. It was hard-packed gravel and not suitable for planting and had been a bare spot in the flower beds for several years.

Above is our new Purple Leaf SandCherry

Before planting the new perennials, I moved some of the old ones which had ended up in bad spots. It’s been a lot of trial and error as I learn the growing habits of my different plants. The catmint, for instance, spread out and up and completely took over the areas where it was planted and hid one of my cone flowers and a gayfeather. I moved my two catmints to areas where they will not cover up less boisterous plants and can live in harmony with the sweet peas and iris. Or, fight it out, as the case may be.

I just love these lovely magenta Asiatic Lilies!

I couldn't resist these lovely dianthus

The final step is to mulch all the beds, and that’s what I’ve been working on lately. So far this summer, gardening has been my creative outlet. Deciding where best to plant each new perennial is definitely an exercise in good design and color balance.

Last Friday was Farrier day at the barn, a much welcome visit as Scottie’s feet had become very long. Fortunately, they stayed fairly balanced front to back so weren’t putting an added strain on his torn flexor tendon. It was a hot day, and Shelley set up the sprinkler in the arena to cool the horses. She also set up two fans for the farrier. When Scottie was all done, I turned him out in the arena, and he walked back and forth at the edge of its range getting squirted each time it went around. I think he was looking for the spot where it would spray on him continually. This is the horse who doesn’t like baths and hates being sprayed in the face! He could easily have moved out of range but clearly chose not to do so.

To my great relief, Scottie has been doing wonderfully on our trail rides and hasn’t shown any signs of lameness after the rides. He seems to enjoy them as much as I do although he definitely speeds up when he knows we’re on our way back to the barn. On one recent ride, I let him pick his own direction when we came to another trail off of the one we were on. We’ve never been on that trail before, but he seemed interested and left the other horses to find out where it went. We went quite a ways before I stopped him and turned him back. He did it again when we came to another trail. One of these days I’ll let him go and see how long it takes him to realize that he’s all by himself without the herd to protect him. I might be in for a wild ride after that!

A new shady area plant; brunera

A Busy Summer Ahead

2010-06-01T09:53:00.000-07:00

Well, I don’t have any art to show you yet, but I do have a bit of exciting news to share.

Last week I was asked to be one of the artists in a studio tour to be held in July and sponsored by the Parkside Arts Council. I’ve wanted to do one of these things for a long time, but there’s never been one in our area. After getting the okay from my husband (because my studio is in our home) I agreed to do it. I’m very excited about this although it will mean a lot of work and preparation: paintings and drawings to finish, mat and frame and new works to begin and hopefully finish. My display walls and other display equipment will augment our meager wall space for hanging prints and originals, but I’m wondering how much sprucing up of the house I need to do. The walls need painting, and the carpet needs replacing, but those things may have to wait.

It’s summer after all, and that means busy times ahead. Horse Shows By The Bay will take up all of July, and there are plenty of gardening chores to be done yet. And, I don’t intend to miss many trail ride opportunities this summer and sketching sessions at the barn. Plein air painting sessions are also on the summer agenda even if that means not venturing any farther than our yard.

To begin the summer, we celebrated the Memorial Day weekend at home with good food and the company of our two grown “kids”. I was able to talk my husband into cleaning out the old garage but not able to talk him into getting rid of much of anything, but at least it’s now cleaner and better organized than it was.

This morning I spent a couple of hours tackling the weeds in the flower beds and got a great deal done. I was sad to learn of the demise of my lovely delphinium, but the shasta daisies and foxglove are doing well. I must get more foxglove. At least the deer don’t bother them. Now that it’s June 1st, it’s safe to put in the annuals and that means a trip to the nursery to buy the plants. I also have three salvia to get in the ground, and who knows what else I’ll bring home from the nursery? Everything is so tempting but hard on the budget!

I’ve been thrilled to see that there are dozens of lilac shoots coming up from the ground where we had to cut down the old lilac bushes after the drunk driver went through our fence last summer. I’m going to put some small fences around a few of them so that they don’t get accidentally mowed down. They are the old fashioned dark purple lilacs that are hard to find anymore. My friend and neighbor will come and dig up some of the other ones and give them good homes.

On my agenda for today is an inventory of artwork for the studio tour to see what needs to be finished and what needs to be framed or matted. This is just the shove I need to finally finish Easy Rider and maybe even do the pony and child painting that’s been waiting to be put to canvas for the past several years. Most important, I will tackle melting the beeswax and combining it with turpentine for the medium my mentor wants me to use on the still life. That could be tricky!

Later on will be a trail ride with the girls. Ta Ta for now! The busy summer has begun!

PS I forgot to mention that one of my poppies bloomed for the first time this year! Last year it had a bud but the deer got it. You can see the bloom above.

Ride, Ride, Ride!

2010-05-23T13:57:00.000-07:00

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.

Tea Anyone?

2010-05-18T12:38:00.000-07:00

“Morning Tea” setup for still life

No sooner did we get Scottie’s leg problem under control than he showed up with a swollen eye last week! Panic time and another call to the vet (after hours, of course). Fortunately, cold compresses and some bute took away much of the swellling, and he was then able to open his eye. Neither Shelley nor I could see any damage to the cornea, the eye wasn’t weeping, he wasn’t shaking his head or rubbing it, so we decided that either he was stung by something or he poked the eye lid with a twig. Now he is fine and another bullet has been dodged.

On the art front, I attended a gala gathering of artist members of Parkside Arts Council on Saturday night. We were invited to bring along some art, but the space was not conducive to good viewing. Hermit that I am, I didn’t know very many people at the gathering. But, I managed to chat with a few people for an hour before they all moved off and I became my usual wall flower self. Since the smoke from the fire was bothering me by then, I packed up and left. Hopefully, a few people saw my art and now know who I am and what I can do.

One thing I learned is to be careful where you take your art. The venue was an old ski lodge with an open pit type fire place. Since the lodge is really quite small, smoke filled the room, and I’m still airing out my portfolios and hoping the smokey smell will eventually fade from my artwork. Clothes I can wash, but not artwork!

I’ve been struggling to set up my still life for over a week now and have an arrangement that is promising. But now I’m second guessing myself and wondering if I bit off more than I can chew for this simple exercise. It might be time to consult with my mentor and see what he thinks.

Good! Another excuse to put off doing the painting! I’ve included a photo of the setup above.

Back at the barn, three of us gals went on a glorious trail ride last night. It was even better than the last one since we were able to do some trotting and cantering and ended up with a big gallop up the long hill to the barn. Scottie was winded but recovered fast, and there was very little heat in his injured tendon after the ride. We poulticed his legs anyway and turned him out.

Partway through the ride, I was thinking about how lush the vegetation was and that it was like riding through a primordial forest. I even wondered if we might meet a dinosaur (hey, I'm an artist; we have lively imaginations!). Not long after that we were going along a two track when the sound of a rattle trap vehicle approaching at high speed reached us. Quickly, we moved the horses off the road into the trees and waited for the beat up old pickup truck to pass us by. Fortunately, he slowed down, and only Elle, the novice trail horse, was at all concerned.

That was certainly a rude return to reality!

When I left the barn, there was a glorious sunset of orange, peach, gold and lavender which I enjoyed in bits between the trees all the way home, wondering how I could possibly capture such beauty in paint.

A Funny Thing Happened on My Way Through The Forum

2010-05-08T10:18:00.000-07:00

Before shedding out

After shedding out

I’ve been going through the forum of an artists group that I belong to, copying the most informative posts, and it’s been quite educational but very time-consuming. I read far more than I need to, remembering past discussions and the great comaraderie and friendships that we have developed over years of association.

One of the things we did regularly was share our artwork and ask for help. Time after time I noticed that artists didn’t always agree on what needed to be changed or added. What bothered one artist might not bother another at all. What some artists didn’t notice others did. I suppose that’s because we all have different training, different life experiences and are in different “places” in our lives on any given day. We are all unique, and even though there are pretty much well established basics of good fine art, our interpretations may be different and our visions unique to our life experiences and personalities.

And that explains why ten artists can paint the same image and come up with ten different and unique interpretations of that image. You can find excellent examples of this on the art pARTy blog. Every month a photo is shared and artists paint the same image however they want. Take a look through several months of pARTy images and you’ll see what I mean.

The other wonderful thing about this forum is that so many artists have been willing to share what they’ve learned even though we are all in a niche market and technically are competing with one another. That is not the case in many art groups. On the other hand, as evidenced by the pARTy paintings, no two of us paint exactly alike. And fortunately, what appeals to one collector may not to another collector, so we all manage to “rehome” our artwork children.

The gems of information I’m getting from the forum will be compiled into a reference work for the membership. You can only gain so much from reading how-to art books. Practical information and the experiences of working artists can be even more valuable, especially when sharing our experiences with materials and techniques; what works and what doesn’t. It saves a lot of trial and error.

Tux (retired TB dressage horse)

Speaking of what works, I made a huge discovery this week on the riding front which promises to make my riding experiences much more pleasant and fruitful. I discovered the full seat breech! In all my twenty some years of riding, I’ve never spent the extra money to buy a pair. The moment I plopped into the saddle on Tuesday I had a real Eureka! experience. I stayed put in the saddle and didn’t have to constantly adjust my seat to stay in balance. Instantly, I regretted not investing in these wonders 21 years ago when I went back to riding.

On Thursday night we went for a very pleasant trail ride. The leaves are now mostly out on the trees, so our ride looked more like my photos from the last blog post. Trillium carpeted the forest floor with white and pink flowers, and since we’ve had rain, everything was lush and green. It was chilly but we all bundled up, and the horses didn’t get all sweaty.

Yesterday was Spring Vet day at the barn. I was really happy to get a second opinion on Scottie’s lameness issues and a few other things. As we suspected, he tore a ligament in that front leg, but it’s pretty much healed now. He isn’t lame in that leg now but is off a little in the other foreleg, probably as a result of favoring the injured leg. The vet prescribed lots of riding, including our hilly trail rides, to prevent the injury site from healing stiff. Lots of riding and bending will also help the arthritis spot in his neck.

I was happy to hear the vet say that Scottie has excellent range of motion for a 25 year old horse, and his joints are in good shape. Scottie will be happy to learn that we are to do stretches before AND after riding now. That means more cookies for him!

The Peanut Gallery: Mikey, Ellie, Jack, JW and Cory

A Most Excellent Day

2010-04-20T14:56:00.000-07:00

Last Fall's Trail Ride
Yesterday morning I met with my new art mentor/instructor, and we got right into learning new things. He reviewed with me how the Renaissance Masters began their paintings, showed me examples of drawings in some old books he has and also showed me some of his own paintings. He paints not only large but HUGE! Floor to ceiling sized paintings. One is a copy of a Velasquez which he did during his student days in Florence, and he urged me to do copies of my own if I wanted to.

I left with a homework assignment of creating a still life in the underpainting stage and a hunk of beeswax which he gave me. I’m to study the still lifes of Cezanne and Constable’s landscapes. Firstly, I have to find some white birch to make into panels.

Later in the day, I headed for the barn and ended up going on a nice trail ride with riding buddies, Ann and Shelley since Shelley had seen Scottie running around in the turnout just fine. We were out for a little over an hour, going up hill and down dale, and Scottie did very well with no hint of a limp. Coming up the big hill on the way back we had to stop a couple of times to let the horses rest, and Scottie was visibly tired but still not limping when we got back to the barn.

Scottie seemed to enjoy the ride as much as I did. Whenever we came to a two track offshoot he would stop and look up it and head for it as if to say, “I wonder where this goes”. He likes to be last on the way out, and no matter how many times you get him to catch up with the others, he always manages to dawdle enough to end up behind again. But, as soon as we turn for home, his pace quickens and he heads for the lead. At that point he can even out pace the almost seventeen hand Mellissa (aka The Tank).

The other thing Scottie likes to do on trail rides is eat leaves. He’s very persistent and bullish about this. Well, last night there were no leaves on the branches yet, so he ate twigs instead. Silly horse!

We had to come back by way of the long up hill because one of the neighbors now has chickens which are frequently in the road, and our horses are not chicken proofed yet. Shelley once told a hilarious story of how the horses reacted when a flock of wild turkeys wandered into the paddock one day. Pandemonium ensued. Apparently the horses thought they might be wolves in turkey suits.

On the other hand, these chickens are an opportunity for a photo shoot! I hear chicken paintings are quite popular.

I am so relieved that I can ride again and that my horse isn’t in danger of being permanently lame! I’m also looking forward to lots of trail rides this year. After my health crisis of last Fall, I’m not feeling nervous about trail riding any more. Not even Bryan’s Squirrel Trail Adventure Rides!

Appointment With Destiny

2010-04-15T09:35:00.000-07:00

“Freehand Horse Sketch”

Sounds pretty dramatic, doesn’t it? It may not be earth shattering to the world at large, but it’s pretty dramatic in my little world. I now have the first appointment to meet with my new mentor, and I can’t wait to see where this will take me, artistically!

One of the things that’s been holding me back from art is the feeling that when I do get back into it seriously my art just won’t be the same as it was. I may not have created much in the past few years, but much has been going on in my brain which is bound to show up on the canvas or paper. The other thing is knowing that I don’t want to do what I WAS doing, but I don’t know what I DO want to do. And, I don’t know how to get there. Does that make any sense?

I DO know that realism will remain my focus, but I’d like to make design a much more conscious part of the process (otherwise known as composition). I KNOW that is one of my weaknesses. An awareness of design is probably the biggest thing I gained during those art school days in commercial art. It applies just as much to fine art painting as it does to good graphic design.

On the one hand is an admiration for the Classical Masters and their time-consuming methods of laying on multiple layers of paint to achieve a very luminous surface. On the other hand, I like creating something in a few hours and having something new to hang on the studio walls and to show to the world on a weekly basis, like those one hour paintings I did a month or so ago.

I love the clear, bright colors of the Impressionists but would like to learn to use more subtlety in selection of a palette. And I definitely don’t like dark, brooding sorts of paintings.

My new mentor was trained in the classical manner in Florence, but he also came of age during the time when abstract expressionism, pop art and op art were at the forefront of the art scene. My hope is that, with all of his varied experiences, he can help me explore and find my individual artistic voice while at the same time teaching me all those technical things about art that would take me years to learn on my own, if I ever did.

Probably most importantly I’m hoping to gain enough self confidence to be able to risk failure and enough discipline to get me into the studio on a regular, if not daily, basis.

Wish me luck!

Last Gasp of Winter

2010-04-08T14:09:00.000-07:00

“Forsythia”

Even though it’s snowing today, I thought I’d show you one of our forsythia bushes that is blooming right now. It’s about the only new image there is to share.

The saga of the lame horse continues. As I write, I’m awaiting a call from the vet for an appointment to have Scottie looked at again and some xrays taken. He’s no longer visibly limping at the walk, but the swelling behind the cannon bone is still there. Shelley is thinking he pulled a suspensory ligament, and I’m inclined to agree.

Scottie is thoroughly enjoying all this extra attention. He was so glad to see me on Tuesday that he gave me big wet kisses on the neck and cheek and tried to groom me as I worked on him. He’s very good about standing still while I hold the cold pack on his leg or use the ice cup and he enjoyed the cold pack on his neck after I finished massaging his lump. Going along with all of that has been some thorough grooming and hair removal, and at last we’re making progress. He doesn’t look quite so much like a pudgy Shetland pony anymore.

All this time together without the work of riding sessions has been good for our bonding. I’m ready and anxious to get back to riding, though, and start some trail rides early in the year this year. But first I have to clean the saddle and bridle which are waiting in the laundry/tack room.

On the art front, I’ve talked to my new mentor who has given me his fee for lessons which is very reasonable. That was a big relief. We’ll get together one more time to sort of plan things out, and then the lessons will begin. I can hardly wait!

In the meantime, I’ve also been going to doctor appointments and dealing with yet another computer problem. At this moment I can’t send emails and can’t post much on online forums and am trying to figure out what’s wrong. Sometimes the letters type in reverse order which is very disconcerting. So far everything off line is working. If I owe you an email, be patient with me while I work to resolve this issue.

On Monday I’ll be getting an MRI of my head ( my daughter says it’s about time I got my head examined! Cheeky one that. ) Well, actually it will be four MRI’s that the ear, nose and throat doctor prescribed. I hope they will reveal why I can’t shake these sinus infections, what’s causing the dizziness and head aches and ear aches and why I’m hearing my pulse in my ears 24/7. Not that I’m obsessing or anything, but I would like some answers and preferably some cures.

Oh, all right! You twisted my arm so here’s another photo of my handsome boy. Isn’t he cute?!

Party Painting and Purple Wraps

2010-03-24T16:13:00.000-07:00

“Bellator” 9x12 oil on canvas board - photo provided by fellow artist, Linda Shantz

Last weekend I participated in something called The Virtual Party. Artists are provided with a reference photo and required to paint their interpretation of it within a twenty four hour period. It’s amazing how different many of the images can be, all from the same image!

We were given five days to do this. Since I’d been sick and tending to my lame horse, I didn’t decide to give it a try until the last day. After a little over five hours of painting, I managed to produce my version of Bellator, a young warmblood, in his winter blanket. After doing the one hour paintings, this one seemed like a snap to do, and I’m fairly happy with the results, even though it’s not perfect. Maybe I’ll work on it some more some day, but for now it’s drying on the easel.

Meanwhile back at the ranch I was making frequent trips to the barn to check on my horse and to treat his leg. Some slight swelling had appeared in his knee since the vet’s visit and then some swelling of the ligaments behind the cannon bone. We began cold hosing the leg or icing it, and both front legs were wrapped for added support. With the help of bute, he’s gradually come around.

Last weekend my husband came with me to the barn to help. He’s not really a horse person and hadn’t taken much interest in my horse before now. In fact, he hadn’t seen Scottie in a very long time. But they managed to get along quite well anyway. We had Scott in the barn aisle in the cross ties, and a few of the other horses came in to the arena to see what was going on. John was standing at Scottie’s head, patting him and talking to him while I iced his leg. Every time John moved away to pat one of the other horses, Scottie started pawing. I told John that meant he wanted attention, and John would hurry back to him. The pawing stopped immediately. This scenario repeated itself several times and warmed my heart to think that two of the three most important men in my life were making a connection. John was even talking to Scottie the way he does to small children and our cat, and Scottie was eating it up!

On my last visit to the barn, Scott was much better with very little sign of a limp. He had purple wraps on, it was a sunny day and perfect for getting some photos. The first one below is Scottie who had just had a good roll before getting up from his nap. He’s still very shaggy because it’s too early up here to get rid of that winter coat. Snow and cold could return anytime for Winter’s last gasp.

The second photo is of Scott and his best friend, Mikey. I had turned Scott loose in the indoor arena, and he wasn’t quite ready to go back outside into the heat. After greeting Mikey, they engaged in a game of what looked like lip wrestling. Mikey is a Morgan with a lovely arched neck. These two never seem to tire of playing together but are separated for now to keep the lame horses quieter. I love the play of light on Scott in this photo and the way it shows off the arch in Mikey’s neck.

I think it will make a great painting.

Ups and Downs

2010-03-11T07:31:00.000-08:00

“Scruffy” my horse, Scottie, losing his winter coat

Last week was quite an exciting one for me. First off, I finished up the taxes and delivered all the papers to the accountant. That’s always a source of great relief!

Then the following day I met with a local artist whom I hope to work with for a while to help me with my artistic skills. I’ve been feeling rather lost for quite a while now with my art, knowing that I could be doing much better but not knowing where to start or what to do to move forward. It occured to me that working with a more advanced artist might be just the thing I needed; someone to point the way and help guide me along.

I brought several paintings to this first meeting, including the one hour ones, and he critiqued each one of them, pointing out how I could have improved them and what was done well. I was grateful to hear him say, “You obviously have a lot of talent” and “You don’t need ‘remedial’ lessons” and finally “I’m certain that I can help you to improve the quality of your work”. I left floating on Cloud Nine and look forward to meeting with him again. He studied in Florence as a young man and also spent several months at that time sketching horses at a nearby equestrian center. So, he “knows” horses probably better than the average artist who is not an equine artist.

This week didn’t start out so well. On Monday the vet came to adjust my horse, Scottie, and one of the other horses. I quickly discovered that my horse was very lame in the left front leg and was very reluctant to walk. Remembering how good he was with me when I hurt my knee two years ago, I let him take his time walking from the pasture to the barn and figuring out how to turn around in the barn aisle with the least amount of pain.

The vet couldn’t find anything obviously wrong, like a soul bruise or injured muscle, but he was very tight in the neck and shoulders. She concluded that most likely he was stiff from the icy footing outside and/or from the arthritis in his neck causing pain down his leg. We gave him some bute and put him back outside. On the good side, his back and pelvis were still in good alignment, so we’ve definitely made progress on that front at least.

Yesterday I went out to the barn to check on Scott and was very glad to see that he was in less pain but still limping. I led him around the indoor for a while to see if he would walk out of the limp. It got less but didn’t go away completely. Then I turned him loose to see what he would do. Instead of just standing still not wanting to move or standing by the door wanting to go out, he followed me around as I shot some photos. After some massage and stretches, I put him back out and headed home, my mind a little more at ease.

I haven’t made arrangements to meet with the artist again but will do that soon. I need to figure out what I want from these sessions and he needs to let me know how much he’s going to charge. I’ll keep you posted.

Win Some, Lose Some

2010-02-24T08:10:00.000-08:00

“Chocolate Zip” 10 x 12 oil on canvas paper

Yes, we artists sometimes fall flat on our artistic faces. Yesterday was definitely a loser in the studio.

I attempted another one hour painting and managed to thoroughly botch the job. I forgot what the exercise is about and tried to make a perfect painting. NOT! Then I compounded the error by spending another hour “fixing” it. Well, THAT didn’t work out either!

It’s really too bad because I had this really cute pony photo to work from. Unfortunately, it was taken on a very cloudy day, so it’s very flat with almost no highlights or shadows.

I did learn a few things, however. Like, my Princeton #8 bristle bright brush holds a good sharp edge while my Grumbacher #8 bristle flat does not. Cobalt blue and Hansa Yellow make a nice luscious green. Taping the canvas paper to a board made it much easier to paint right up to the edges without getting paint on the fingers or all over the easel.

I rescued the day by going to the barn and having a great ride on Scottie. As usual, he was very willing. We did especially well at leg yields which has been a trouble area for us, simple as it may be. Well, I used a tip I found in an article, and it worked like a charm. Scottie got lots of praise and decided that he likes doing leg yields and “volunteered” to do more.

The farm is on top of a hill out in the country, which means no city lights. When I left the barn, it was dark out; very dark; but the sky was filled with stars, and I stood for a few moments gazing up at them and feeling the wonder of the universe. It was one of those magic moments that you remember forever.

Below is my “fixed” version of “Chocolate Zip”. The pony’s name is Zip.

Guest Artist Thank You

2010-02-10T09:09:00.001-08:00

“Tall, Dark and Handsome” 11x13 pencil drawing - prints available

I’d like to make a special announcement today and send a big Thank You! to Kelli Swan. Kelli is a phenomenal pencil artist who invited me to be a guest artist on her blog this week. Kelli is an expert at drawing a variety of subjects but mostly draws dogs and horses in her unique style. She sells prints and notecards as well as originals and can do custom artwork for you. Be sure to look around her blog and enjoy her wonderful art.

Pencil Art and Drawings

The drawing above is one which is included in the guest blog.

Lady's Colt

2010-02-10T08:51:00.000-08:00

“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!

Yuri - Second One Hour Painting

2010-02-03T07:10:00.001-08:00

“Yuri” 8x10 inch oil on canvas board

Man On A Mission will soon be going to a new home, but for now he is drying on the studio wall and waiting to be varnished.

Doing these one hour paintings definitely qualifies for going outside one’s comfort zone. But even after just one successful painting (at least for me), it has fired me up to do more and learn more. It isn’t about creating a good painting so much as it’s about challenging yourself and learning things you might not otherwise in the process.

Today I tackled a second one hour painting, and this time I managed to finish it in one hour fifteen minutes, using those same #8 brushes which are about 3/4 inches wide. They are a real challenge for getting any kind of detail, let me tell you! And the purpose of doing these little paintings is to get away from thinking detail too much and concentrate on composition, values, and all the rest of the “big picture” elements in painting.

This dog is Yuri, a German Shepherd who belongs to the people who board my horse. He is big, rambunctious and friendly. He’s also very handsome. I caught him in a rare moment of quiet for the photograph from which I worked for the painting.

I’m fairly pleased with this painting as well. These one hour paintings could become addictive, and I’m already looking forward to doing the next one.

Back To Easy Rider

2010-01-29T14:32:00.001-08:00

“Easy Rider” 11 x 14 pencil equestrian drawing

Well, it seems that my little painting of the JRT has made a hit. His owner sent me more photos of him and her new JRT and has given me permission to use one of them for a painting. It seems that I may be going to the dogs these days.

But, in the meantime, I made more progress on Easy Rider. I had hoped to get enough of it done to use in an ad in Horses In Art magazine, but a lingering sinus infection has slowed me down for the past week. So, I sent in another image instead. If you aren’t aware of this magazine, it’s a real treat for the horse art lover. You can subscribe online, too.

This dressage horse equestrian drawing will need some tweaking yet, and the background needs to be finished, but it’s coming along nicely now. Considering how long it’s lingered in the studio, that’s a very encouraging thing!

After an unusually long January thaw, we’re now back to real winter, with strong winds and blowing snow and icy roads. I’m SO glad I got new tires on my Subaru three weeks ago because they saved me from an accident soon after. The car ahead of me lost control on black ice when he put on his brakes (not a wise thing to do), but I was able to slow down enough without a bit of sliding to avoid him as he ran into the snowbank. Whew! Good winter tires DO make a difference!

At any rate, the weather makes the studio a cosy place to be on a blustery day, and I’m busy planning my next work to land on the easel or drawing board. Today we ran errands in Traverse City, and I picked up a new AC adapter-charger thing for my laptop. Now that I’m back in the studio fairly regularly, I’ll need it for viewing reference photos beside the easel. I have so many great digital photos to work from now, and I’m anxious to create some great art from them. I plan to create a series of Horse Show Dogs paintings in addition to the horse art works.

That’s all for now, folks. Have a great weekend, everyone!

"Man On A Mission"

2010-01-27T08:35:00.000-08:00

“Man On A Mission” 8x10 oil painting on canvas board

I had an email from my mentor recently. “You need to do some one hour paintings! Use big brushes and heavy paint”.

I must admit that this assignment was thoroughly intimidating because I’m a very slow, careful painter, but I knew it would be an excellent exercise to “loosen me up”. For my first attempt, I chose a foal photo, but decided that it was too complex an image for my first one hour painting. So, I found this simple photo of Spinner, a Jack Russell Terrier who belongs to a friend and sometimes riding instructor.

Yesterday I forced myself into the studio, and this was the result. I used a #12 bristle flat to apply a tone to the canvas and then used #8 synthetic flats to draw and paint the dog and the background. I cheated a little by using a round bristle for some of the small details, but that was it. I managed to do the dog in one hour but then spent another hour applying the background and fussing over the dog. I probably could easily have stretched the time into another 2-3 hours to refine everything but resisted the urge and put down the brushes.

I’m supposed to do a couple of these per week and already have a German Shepherd picked out to do next. It’s quite a departure from my usual cautious and detailed style and requires real discipline to resist the urge to pick, pick, pick at the painting. Now I’m looking forward to doing the next one.

I don’t think I’m in any danger of becoming a “loose woman”, but you never know.

Riding Into The New Year

2010-01-07T14:12:00.000-08:00

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.

Easy Rider Rides Again!

2009-11-30T09:19:00.000-08:00

During all the Thanksgiving festivities, I managed a little bit of time on this drawing. It’s been quite a while since I worked on it, and I finally figured out how to correct the reference photo which shows a horse doing passage incorrectly. I was bummed when this was pointed out to me, but knew all along that it had to be changed.

Over time I looked for photos in magazines of horses at the same angle but never found exactly what I needed. Then I found the Breyer model dressage horse Keltec Salinero doing passage and knew I’d found my solution. I set him up next to my drawing table and angled him to match my reference photo and redrew the legs on a piece of tracing paper. After tracing the changes back onto the drawing, I began shading again.

It may not look like much progress since the last time I posted, but it is a huge step forward to finishing this drawing called “Easy Rider”.

Rainy Day Splendor

2009-11-13T07:32:00.001-08:00

Fall is always a very busy time, and this year has been no exception. However, I did work on this little oil painting study again, and it’s pretty much finished. I’m calling it “Rainy Day Splendor”. By the time I got back to it, more leaves had fallen and the colors had changed, so I had to go partly by memory. But, it was still overcast and rainy, so the light was pretty much the same. And now, all the leaves are down and there’s nothing to be seen except bare branches.

We’ve had beautiful sunny and unusually warm weather for the past week, so I’ve been busy washing windows and other such things and dealing with a health issue which really threw me for a loop for a couple of weeks. But, the situation has turned around, and I’m back to being much more productive and much more relaxed.

Last night I finished revising the line drawing for “Easy Rider” and traced the new set of legs on the drawing. I plan to get back to work on it in the next few days and will post my progress as I go.

That’s all for now.

New Oil Painting Autumn Brilliance

2009-10-24T13:41:00.000-07:00

Yes, it’s true. I worked on a painting this week; a “studio aire” painting to be exact.

It’s been raining and/or cloudy all week long, and fall colors are pretty much at their peak around here. Even on a cloudy, rainy day, the leaves are still brilliant enough to inspire one to paint them. I wanted to convey that in this little 8x10 inch oil on canvas board which depicts the scene outside my studio window. Hence, it was painted en studio aire.

Any season of the year, I never tire of this scene overlooking the lake and the far shore. It constantly changes, and on this day the rain varied from gently falling to coming down in sheets of gray. At times the lake was still with the brilliant trees reflected in the dark water, and then the wind would come up and kiss the water which partially hid the yellows, oranges and reds of the trees.

The image above represents about two and a half hours of work; a small accomplishment in itself for someone who is not used to painting alla prima or painting quickly. After mixing and laying on a first layer of gray, I next drew the composition and laid on an initial layer of local colors, intending that they would blend somewhat with the gray which would tone them down a little. After that, I painted the water and began detailing the trees and shore starting on the left, toning down the colors even more. I only got as far as the middle before time ran out, and haven’t had a chance to get back to finish it yet.

Admittedly, it looks pretty crude and amateurish right now. The shoreline goes uphill, and the rippled area doesn’t look natural. Maybe another painting session will improve it, but if not, that’s okay too. The important thing is that I painted. And, it’s been a while since I did that.

Celebrations

2009-09-20T15:01:00.000-07:00

Remembering Willie - oil on canvas board

Twenty years ago tomorrow, September 21, 1989, I bought my horse, Scottie. This date represents not only my return to horse ownership, but also to the world of horses in general and to horse art in particular.

I bought my first horse when I was 12 but had a bad riding accident a few months later which completely destroyed what little confidence I’d managed to build up. The following summer I sold Willie when it became clear that she was just too much horse for me, and I didn’t ride much after that. That decision haunted me for decades to come until the summer of 1989 when I decided that it was time to face my fear of riding and find out once and for all if I could overcome it.

I found a sympathetic riding instructor and began riding lessons on a wonderful sorrel horse named Scottie. The first day at that barn I had an overwhelming feeling of coming home to something that I had lost many years ago, and I vowed never to give it up again. Six weeks later I bought Scottie, and we began our journey together. He was only four years old at the time and was still very green, but he was very laid back and safe for anyone to ride. Even so, the first two years were difficult ones as Scottie tested me constantly to see how much he could get away with. I learned that if I persisted with him, he quickly gave up and did as I asked. That alone helped to build my confidence, even after a few inevitable spills. Eventually, he quit testing me and Scottie turned out to be the perfect horse for me.

Through my new horse ownership status, I met other horse people, and it wasn’t long before I began to do horse portraits and attend horse shows and events. My childhood dream of becoming an equine artist was realized, and I haven’t looked back since, no matter how bumpy the road.

I confess, however, that the past two years were a bit of a bumpy road, and I found it difficult to get myself to the barn. This summer my enthusiasm for riding has returned, and I’m once again going on trail rides and having a ball.

Yesterday was our first annual group birthday celebration at the barn. It began with a beautiful fall trail ride through the woods and fields and ended with a delicious potluck lunch back at the barn. I think it’s safe to say that all of us “mature” ladies enjoy each other’s company and look forward to our next outing together when the fall colors will be at their peak. There is no better trail riding than at this time of year when the woods are ablaze with color, the temperatures are comfortable and the bugs are few.

On this ride I took along a small digital camera and share a few of those shots with you below. This camera has definite limits, but you can get an idea of what our rides are like here, minus the uphill and downhill parts. It’s really hard to get shots going downhill when your horse is pitching back and forth or going uphill at a full gallop.

Here we are leaving the barn on a beautiful Fall day.

Here we stopped to let the horses pick apples right off the tree.

The driveway looks mighty long and steep at the end of a ride.

Our group photo. Scottie and I are on the far right.

The First Annual Michigan Schooner Festival

2009-09-14T09:35:00.001-07:00

I’ve always had an interest in sailing ships going back to when I was a little girl. One of my father’s colleagues once gave me an American Heritage magazine that had an article on clipper ships with lots of beautiful paintings in it. I treasured it for years and even copied one of the paintings, but it turned out pretty crudely.

So many of us humans are fascinated by the sea and great bodies of water. After all, what is more romantic and adventurous than setting sail into the unkown on a beautiful sailing ship? Since Michigan is surrounded on six sides by waters of the Great Lakes, sailing ships are very much a part of our heritage, whether they were helmed by explorers, armed navies or merchantmen. Even today there are replicas which sail from port to port to educate the public about sailing these beautiful ships in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and even into the early days of the twentieth century.

Many years ago I did a series of drawings for an older gentleman who loved Great Lakes ships. Not all of them were sailing ships, but doing that series rekindled my interest in the subject. I did a small watercolor and ink version of one of the ships for my own benefit; the well known Christmas Tree ship, the Rouse Simmons, which used to deliver Christmas trees to the citizens of Chicago from the northern Michigan woods. I sold prints of it for a while along with the story of the ship and how it was lost in a storm in 1912. But, my version paled in comparison with the two paintings that Charles Vickery has done of the Rouse Simmons so eventually I stopped showing it.

Frankly, I know next to nothing about the subject of sailing ships, which is one reason I’ve hesitated to do a ship painting since. I know that people who collect marine art are sticklers for accurate details in rigging and so forth; just as many horse art collectors are fussy about accurate portrayals of horses and their tack. I did, however, buy some books on rigging and Great Lakes ships and shipwrecks to educate myself but haven’t had much opportunity to observe these beautiful ships in person on the water.

So, when I read in the paper on Saturday that the first annual Michigan Schooner Festival was being held in Traverse City this weekend, I jumped at the opportunity. We headed for TC good and early Sunday morning, and took in the activities on the waterfront. Several ships were moored along the breakwall, and crew members were giving tours, some of them complete in period pirate costumes which thrilled the little kids. There was even a marine artist who had some very nice paintings of sailing ships.

After some time, one of the ships, the Appledore, a two masted schooner, headed out into Grand Traverse Bay. To my disappointment, she was pretty far out before she unfurled her sails and continued sailing away from us into the hazy dawn. Before long she was out of site.

Meanwhile, we watched two crew members climb the masts of another schooner, the Denis Sullivan of Milwaukee Wisconsin. I presume they were unfastening things so that the sails could be unfurled. It wasn’t long before the Denis Sullivan also set sail. Instead of heading straight up the bay as the Appledore had done, she went out a ways, turned and sailed past the breakwater as she unfurled her sails. Everyone got excellent photo opportunities and thrilled to the sight of this beautiful ship.

The Inland Seas was also scheduled to sail, but my very patient husband was getting bored and didn’t want to wait. Here she is moored to the breakwater.

Two other ships present were the nineteenth century replica schooner the Madeline and the sloop Welcome, a replica of an eighteenth century ship that sailed the Straits area.

There were many dogs which also visited the festival, and I was particularly taken by this beautiful pair of standard poodles and the wonderful backlight in this shot.

It was truly thrilling to look out onto Grand Traverse Bay to see tall ships sailing its waters; something that was a common sight a century and more ago. I will definitely be back for the second annual Michigan Schooner Festival next September. I am now inspired to paint these beautiful ships, even if it’s just for my own pleasure.

"GOOD Happens"

2009-09-12T19:15:00.000-07:00

On the way home from Traverse City yesterday, I saw this bumper sticker on a car ahead of me. It read, “GOOD Happens”. Now, we’re all familiar with the other version, and I thought, “What a refreshing turn around on this well known saying!” It got me to thinking about how our point of view can color our lives and that we can find good that “happens” if we just look for it.

In the past couple of days, some small good things have happened for me. On Thursday I finally made it out on another trail ride with my riding partners from the barn, and I had a fabulous time! The weather was perfect, there were no bugs, and no monsters jumped out at us. You could hear the tree frogs as we rode along, going in and out of the woods on trails so familiar. We walked, trotted and cantered for over an hour and arrived back at the barn just as dark was falling. It is such a cool feeling to ride up the driveway to the welcoming lights in the barn and then to look out at the twilight sky from atop the farm hill. That night it was a spectacular red.

This afternoon I ran up to Central Lake to take in an art fair (a rather sad little affair with very few vendors and only one painter), but I did have the opportunity to chat with one of the arts council members who invited me to display one of my paintings in a local bank. I also voiced my regret that there weren’t more opportunities for art shows for the artist members and a desire to have a meet and greet event for artists to get to know one another. She agreed and said she would bring both matters up at a future board meeting.

Both coming and going from the art fair, I took some side roads I’ve never been on and did a photo shoot. I was particularly looking for cows; dairy cows; and did find one herd although they turned out to be steers. Oh, well; with some artistic license, they can easily be morphed into cows.

Here are just a few of the photos I took today.

There was a long row of these sunflowers on both sides of the road at one spot where there is a very neat and prosperous looking farm.

Here are my Holstein "cows". I had the iso speed way too high so the photo is washed out, but I corrected that later.

At the very top of a hill on this road, I spotted this spectacular view. The nearest blue patch is Torch Lake, and beyond it is East Grand Traverse Bay and beyond it is Old Mission Peninsula (for those of you who are familiar with this area).

This horse lives on a farm on my way to Bellaire. I've long wanted to stop and shoot some photos of him. He looks to be an aged Thoroughbred, but I'm not sure.

Around the corner from this horse, on a new road, I found this wonderful stone house. I'm sure it's being lived in because it is so well kept.

These two horses live around the corner and up the road from me. They are two older Arabs.

When I stopped to take a photo of the bull below, I noticed how much color is in this maple tree. It won't be long before there's a lot more showing in all the trees.

This bull lives on my road. As I went by him, he reminded me of Ferdinand, the bull who preferred to smell the flowers in the field rather than fight in the bull ring. He looks so peaceful and content with a wave of his tail every now and then. Take it from me, this bull is HUGE though! One of these days I'll capture him when he's standing up.

Well, not literally of course!

Kentucky Dreamer Comes Home

2009-09-05T09:31:00.000-07:00

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.

"Easy Rider" Rides Again!

2009-09-02T17:54:00.001-07:00

Yes, I did manage to fit in some artwork yesterday, and here’s the proof!

Because I goofed off on the computer on Monday, I had to spend some time clearing away papers in the studio before I could begin, but still managed a respectable 45 minutes of drawing time before heading for the barn. It was a tough choice whether to work on the pony and dog painting which is still in the drawing stage or “Easy Rider” which needed some revision. I chose Easy Rider because it’s a pencil drawing, and once I get those legs fixed, I can quickly continue with the shading.

It’s had a bit of an unfortunate history. I took the photo at a dressage show several years ago and just really liked the relaxed look of both the horse and rider; hence the name. After experimenting with different background thumb nails, I settled on one and began the drawing. I showed it in the Equine Art Guild forum as a work in progress, and one of our members, who is an upper level dressage rider, immediately commented that the horse wasn’t going well and his legs weren’t in a balanced position. I admit that these comments really took the wind out of my sails, and my enthusiasm for the drawing plummeted. She was right, of course, but it took a while (like a year!) for me to regain interest in the drawing and to start work on it again. Then it had a mishap with the vacuum cleaner, and the paper was bent a little. I got busy and put it away again. Meanwhile, I kept looking for just the right reference photo that would help me put those legs in the proper position for a nice passage.

When I saw a picture of the Breyer model of Keltec Salinero, I knew I’d found my reference. It was perfect and I quickly ordered it, along with a few other Breyers for “models” you know. wink wink. And above you see him, all set up on a shelf by the studio window in just the angle I needed. The drawing board was set up by the window as well, a piece of tracing paper was put over the the drawing, and I proceeded to revise the legs.

Here’s the revised drawing with the original reference photo beside it so that you can see the difference in the legs. Once I get those legs revised and refined, I’ll just trace them onto the drawing and proceed to work on the shading. My next scheduled art day is Saturday. But, I wonder if I can hold off that long...

On another note, our local art supply store is closing for good, done in by catalogs and the new Michaels. It’s unfortunate that these local businesses just aren’t able to compete in today’s world, and I will miss this one even though they have downsized twice in the past and no longer carried much of what I use. Last week I made one last trip to the store, hoping to get a few of my favorite fake mongoose brushes, but it was already pretty well picked clean. I came home with two brushes and several large scraps of suede matboard which were a real steal at $3.50 each! They are all nice colors for horse paintings, too. That’s inspired me to think about doing some pastels again which can be quite stunning on suede matboard.

And, finally, here’s a bonus for you. Every year about this time, the deer visit our yard almost daily to check on the apple crop. This fawn wandered into our yard over the weekend one rainy day and was trying to figure out a way out. Across the street were two does, another fawn and a small fawn that was jumping and playing just like we see foals doing. Unfortunately, by the time I grabbed the camera, the deer were already moving on so I wasn’t able to get any photos of the playing fawn. He was pretty cute. I just wish they didn’t eat my plants when they get older.

Conquering the Hummingbird Syndrome

2009-08-31T07:15:00.001-07:00

I’ve given up being frustrated about not doing any artwork and have given in to the notion of just concentrating on catching up with five, ten or more years of a backlog of record keeping and unfinished projects. Along with reorganizing my art files, I’ve sorted through over ten years of time cards and thrown away a good portion of them. After spending days looking for lost art sales records and reconstructing sales records that were lost when my hard drive died three years ago, I’ve sorted through piles of insurance policies and yearly updates to keep only the most current.

And, the list goes on.

We’re also getting our finances in order for my husband’s impending retirement, and the main burden of that falls on my shoulders. In this economy and financial market, worry about whether or not we will have to live like paupers in retirement has been upper most on my mind for the past several years. Thankfully, we’ve found a new financial advisor who is steering us in the right direction now and helping us to make the difficult decisions. Things are beginning to look up.

I can’t help but comment on the emotional toll my mother’s lingering decline had on me over the past three to four years. Being so far away was frustrating and guilt inducing since I didn’t visit her as often as I THOUGHT I should and wasn’t able to be there on a daily or weekly basis to make sure she had adequate care. Fortunately, she was in a very good facility, but like all of them, they were understaffed. Now that she’s gone, I feel great sadness at her loss but also great relief that I can now get on with my life without holding my breath for the next crisis phone call.

This morning as I was doing my usual Monday morning ritual of filling in the planner schedule for the day and my task list for the week, I decided to try something different. There are so many things to be done around here that I tend to flit from one to another from day to day as each calls out to me. An acquaintance of mine calls this the Hummingbird Syndrome, a common malady for women.

So, this morning I made out a rough schedule for each day of the week and pencilled in to do some art on Tuesday and Saturday. My hope is that by scheduling certain tasks on certain days, I’ll avoid flitting from one thing to another like a hummingbird, never making much progress with anything. And, I’ll finally get back to some artwork!

Last week I hung this painting on the wall in my daughter’s room. I painted it for my mother a few years ago. It was done from a sixty year old black and white photograph of me when I was five and a flower girl in my uncle’s wedding. The medium is oil and the size is 18x14 inches. I’m quite proud of this painting since it was a departure from my usual equine subjects and because I managed to design the background from very little reference materials. It is not for sale.

Well, by tomorrow night or Wednesday I promise to show you what I’ve accomplished in the studio even if it’s just a drawing update. It’s very exciting to feel that I’ve finally made enough progress with everything else that I can set aside some time for art, however small.

Talk to you soon!

PS. I would love to have more followers to my blog. It really helps to know that people actually read this blog and enjoy seeing my art. You can sign up in the column to the right.

Off With Their Heads!

2009-08-21T18:22:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I looked at my Polo By The Bay photos again and found far too many that looked like this one above. They reminded me of the Queen from Alice In Wonderland who sentenced everyone to the same fate. “Off with their heads!” she declared imperiously. Only for me these decapitations weren’t deliberate. I have no idea why the camera was aimed more at the dirt than the riders, but there you have it.

This photo shows another of my problems when shooting; I tend to tilt my head so that the arenas look as if they’re built on hillsides. Oops! Never the less, it’s fun to go through the photos again and this time take note of my shortcomings as a photographer as well as to relive the joy of being there. I must remember next year the things I did wrong this year and try to correct them before they occur again.

This was only the second polo match that I’ve ever seen live. My very first exposure to polo happened when I was eleven years old. At that time, my father supplemented his meager University salary by working for newspapers in Detroit in the summer. But that year he took a job at The Milwaukee Journal which meant that we had to move to Milwaukee for three months, and I had to give up my friends and riding lessons for the summer. We lived in an apartment in a big city which was a culture shock in itself for me. I was not a happy camper and let everyone know it.

Probably to relieve my moody, unsocial behavior, my parents took me to see a polo match one Saturday. I was totally enthralled! I remember spending a lot of time around the ponies who were waiting for their turn in the next chukker and studying their unusual tack. The following summer, I made this polo drawing when I was twelve. My horses were a lot better than my people back then as you can see.

My summer in Milwaukee wasn’t all bad. We went to the zoo several times where there was a new baby giraffe and some zebras. And one of my father’s colleagues at the Journal had a daughter my age who was also horse crazy. Our two families got together frequently, and we even went horseback riding a couple of times. I wonder what ever became of my summer friend, Carolyn Sonneborn? We lost touch long ago.

Even though I’ve been busy doing everything but art this summer and making substantial progress in clearing away a lot of clutter and updating records, I picked out this photo to turn into my first polo painting. The rider was warming up his pony before the next chukker, and this photo shows a quiet moment before the non stop action began on the field again.

The question is, what medium shall I use? Oil or pastel? Stay tuned for updates.

Polo By The Bay

2009-08-03T17:35:00.001-07:00

It couldn’t have been a more perfect day, which almost made up for missing the dressage musical freestyles the day before. You see, Mother Nature had thrown me a curve ball by remaining overcast and rainy until shortly before the freestyles were going to begin. By that time, it was too late to clean up and drive the half hour to the show grounds.

But the day of the polo match was beautiful, and I headed to the horse park in the morning with plans to catch the last few dressage halter classes and then wait for the polo match. As luck would have it, the last class was ending as I headed down the wooded horse path to the lower rings. Three fiesty Friesians came up the path at me, so I respectfully stepped off the trail and grabbed a few shots as they approached and went by.

That meant that I now had over two hours time to kill before the polo match was scheduled to start. I looked around for the polo ponies and spotted the trailers arriving and unloading on the other side of the upper rings in an area that was accessible. So, off I went to take photos of the ponies lined up beside the trailers.

Then off I went to the Grand Prix ring where I found some shade beside a VIP tent and sat down to wait. While there, I surveyed the best spot from which to photograph the action, and when the crowd began to arrive and fill up the bleachers, I moved down to “my” spot for the rest of the wait. I had the good fortune to sit next to a very friendly young couple from the Detroit area, and we struck up a conversation. That helped to pass the time until events in the arena began.

First up was a dressage demonstration by local rider Betsy Van Dyke riding Cantana. She explained what dressage is and demonstrated the various movements and then did a bit of musical freestyle - which almost made up for yesterday. Above you see Cantana doing two tempe changes, and below he is doing an extended trot.

Once the dressage was over, the polo match began. While the ponies were warming up, the basics of polo were explained to us, and we learned that we would be watching arena polo which is played on a much smaller dirt field and consists of four chukkers (or periods of play) versus the seven chukkers that are played on a much larger grass field. After each chukker, the riders switch to fresh ponies because the action is non stop, and ponies get worn out fast.

In this contest, Team Elmers (a local asphalt and excavation company) was pitted against Turtle Creek Casino and Resort. The ponies and riders were provided by Meadowview Polo Club of Grand Rapids, but most of the riders were either members of the Michigan State University or University of Michigan polo teams. It may not have been high goal polo, but it was definitely fun to watch and challenging to photograph.

Below are some of the many shots I took during the match.

The action was over much too fast with Turtle Creek Casino winning by two goals, and we spectators reluctantly packed up our stuff and began the long trek through the ring area to our vehicles. The horse park seemed desolate compared to the hustle and bustle of earlier weeks. The viewing tents had been taken down, the potted flowers removed, the rings groomed and even the fencing around the rings was gone. Staff was in the process of taking down all the tents in the barn area as well. It was a little sad to realize that eleven months will go by before Horse Shows By The Bay returns. I wonder what improvements will be made in the intervening months? What new shows or horse events will be added to the yearly schedule at this horse park?

I can’t wait to find out!

Paths of Destruction

2009-07-26T11:21:00.000-07:00

Last weekend was quite an exciting one at our house! Shortly before 3:00am Sunday morning the phone rang. It was an Antrim County Sheriff’s deputy in our driveway asking us to come outside because there was a car in our yard and “a lot of destruction to the property”. Hastily throwing on clothes and turning on lights, we headed outside to see what was going on. To our shock, we found a strange car wedged between our dog pen and the side fence; a space just wide enough for a car! Just as puzzling was the fact that the driver was nowhere to be found! Further examination with flash lights revealed that the driver had gone through our fence in not one but three places!

In due time a wrecker arrived and hauled off the car, but we were naturally too wired up to go back to bed. When daylight arrived, we headed outside with our cameras to record the path of destruction and figure out just what happened. Here’s the scenario as near as we can figure out. A neighbor’s daughter (or some other driver of her car) came around the corner too fast, hit our neighbor’s mailbox on the right and then oversteered, crossed the road and went through our chain link fence.

From there she proceeded across our lawn, plowed into the large lilac bush and the fence along the side of the yard and ended up against two pine trees in the other neighbor’s yard.

She then, apparently, threw the car into reverse and turned it to the left, intending to head back onto the road. Instead, she went through our fence on the other side of the lilac and somehow managed to end up between the dog pen and the fence, hitting the corner post of the pen and getting hung up on my compost pile. (evil grin) She was stuck. Since there wasn’t room to open the doors, she climbed out the driver’s window and disappeared. We figure she called a friend to come get her and didn’t want to face her father or the police. It’s highly probable that she’d been drinking.

Apparently, she wasn’t hurt too badly, fortunately, and the deputy told me a few days ago that she has so far not returned calls from the Sheriff’s department. Without knowing for sure who was driving, the police can’t do much more. I will refrain from any comments on people taking responsibility for their actions although I have plenty in this case.

As soon as our homeowners insurance adjuster had documented the destruction first hand, I was able to clean up the lawn mess and assess the flower beds better. The casualty list includes a honeysuckle bush, a small lilac bush that I’d been nursing along, the large old-fashioned lilac bush, the sweet peas which were torn out of the ground, and my cone flowers whose tops were shredded. I trimmed back the cone flowers as I mourned the fact that they were about to bloom. It remains to be seen if they will recover. With brute force, I was able to wrangle the top rail of the fence back up onto the remaining posts along the road which looks much better and allows the lawn to be mowed while we wait for the fence to be fixed.

All in all, it could have been much worse, for the plants and the girl/driver. Did you notice that large maple tree next to the dog pen? If the car had hit that, the driver would have been in a world of hurt. I’m thankful that the accident wasn’t worse. As a parent, I wouldn’t want to be the one to get that 3:00 am phone call from the police letting me know that my child had been in an accident. I’m thankful that this girl and her parents were lucky - THIS time! I hope she learned a lesson that will stay with her for a very long time.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to call my children and let them know how much we love them.

HSBB Part 2; Thrills and Chills in the Grand Prix Ring!

2009-07-18T17:40:00.000-07:00

Meanwhile, down in the Grand Prix ring at Horse Shows By The Bay, I sat down on one of the new bleachers that have been added this year for spectators. Just in time to catch the leadline class of little tykes on their ponies, I soon realized that I was on the wrong side of the ring. Not only was the sun behind the ponies, but the little ones were all looking away toward the “judge” and show mascot. I still managed to get a few good shots which will be useful for backlit subjects in paintings. Below is one of the contestants. By the way, it was a tie for first place between all the entrants who got ribbons and a goody bag; just like at the Oscars!

After the leadline class, there was a demonstration by a local company which trains personal protection dogs and scent dogs for law enforcement and search and rescue. They brought a handsome black German Shepherd who showed the crowd how he could find drugs and defend his owner against an agressive stranger. It was pretty impressive!

The grand finale of the afternoon was the Spy Coast Farm Grand Prix of show jumping. After a few jumpers had gone, I switched to the sunny side of the ring and got some better photos. This is the event in which all the top riders at the show compete for big prize money.

I didn’t stay to watch all the riders since it was getting late and I was tired. On the way back to the car, I encountered these Jack Russell terriers and couldn’t resist getting some final shots for my horse show dog series.

If you want to see more of my photos, I put quite a few in an album on my Facebook page and made it so that anyone can view them. Just follow the link to my Facebook album.

Going to the show was an extra pleasure this year because of the cool weather we’ve been having. Not only was the day sunny, but it was pleasantly cool with a nice breeze blowing. I just hope this weather hangs around for another couple of weeks until I get back to take in the dressage and maybe the polo.

In the meantime, I’m going to pick out one of my photos and get started on a new painting or drawing. Hmmm, which one will it be? Such a tough decision since there are so many good ones!

I Just LOVE This Show!

2009-07-18T14:12:00.001-07:00

The highlight of my summers has become visiting Horse Shows By The Bay near Traverse City, Michigan every July and August. This year the show has expanded to four weeks of hunters, jumpers, ponies, dressage and a polo match on the final weekend. Top riders from around the country now come here to compete including Peter Pletcher, Tammy Provost, Patricia Griffith and Scott Lenkart, along with junior riders Caitlin Ziegler and Victoria Birdsall. HSBB is now considered one of the best shows in the midwest under the exceptional management of Dean and Alexandra Rheinheimer.

Last weekend I spent the afternoon at the show and enjoyed every minute of it! Every year more improvements are made to the grounds, and this year was no exception. A new pathway for visitors from the parking lot all the way to the Grand Prix ring at the far end has shortened walks and given better access to all four of the rings for those of us who like to wander around and catch whatever action is going on in the various rings.

For a change, I was not disappointed in my photos. I don’t know if my expectations have been lowered or if I’m shooting better; whichever it is, I see many good paintings amongst them.

This year I remembered to put the long lens on the camera which greatly increased my chances of getting good jump shots. That was a good thing when I got to the Grand Prix ring which is the largest of all and has limited access for spectators.

Last year I posted the photos on my website, but I found that very few people bothered to follow the link to them, so this year I’m posting them right in the blog. Here are just a few of the photos for your enjoyment.

The first photo shows a lovely iron gray hunter horse in a warmup ring. I couldn’t resist him.

This photo shows a groom holding a pony and is very typical of this level of showing. Unlike most of us who do our own grooming, saddling, bathing, etc., the show barns have grooms to do this work. When the horse is ready, the rider hops on and is off to the rings. When the class is done, the rider hops off and hands the reins to the groom. I even saw one groom picking out the feet of a hunter while the mounted rider was waiting for her class! These unsung heroes of the horse show circuit make it possible for riders to compete in several classes in a day without wearing themselves out caring for their horses. Some riders ride more than one horse which makes the grooms doubly indispensible.

I took this shot while the show photographer was shooting this winner and his rider. The proud mom and groom are standing by, but no amount of coaxing could get this pony to look at the camera and perk his ears. He was totally bored by the whole thing.

This next shot I caught in a warmup ring. The two older riders seemed to be mentoring this little girl on her cute white pony, and giving her encouragement. It’s a great idea for a painting and just goes to show that the best action is not always in the rings during a class. You can catch many good candid photos in the warmup rings if you’re alert for them.

Since not much was going on in the pony ring, I wandered off from there to the Grand Prix ring. More in the next post.

Good News Abounds!

2009-06-30T09:50:00.001-07:00

If anything, today’s weather is worse than yesterday’s. It’s cloudy, a stiff wind is blowing, a drizzly rain is falling, and the temperature is a chilly 56 degrees F as opposed to yesterday’s high of 66! Even so, I prefer this weather to last week’s heat and high humidity. It’s a good chance to catch up on indoor chores without the misery of constant sweating and clammy floors and furniture.

At the height of last week’s heat, I was visited by a newly found saddle fitter who evaluated my saddle and my horse and declared that he could take my saddle apart, narrow the tree and restuff it to fit my horse better. Since it’s a quality saddle in good condition and needs only these minor adjustments, I won’t have to go saddle shopping again! The long and short of it is that this culminated a long-time goal of mine to “do something” about a saddle that I knew was a little too wide for my horse but that is comfortable for me and that I love. Thanks to a Chronicle of The Horse online forum, I was able to find a saddle fitter in Michigan who was highly recommended by other dressage riders. If the fit turns out well, I’ll share his name.

The other thing I accomplished over the past week was to finish weeding the flower beds, plant the wax begonias and install edging blocks along the front of the old garage flower bed. That made a huge improvement in its looks and helps to hold the water in, since one end of the bed is higher than lawn level. All of my new perennials that survived the winter are doing spectacularly, and the foxgloves are now blooming in lovely hues of magenta and cream. I’m going to wait until next year to move plants around after evaluating their different growing characteristics and bloom times. This year I’ll install more edging blocks along the long fence bed and dig out more sections between shrubs which will make mowing the lawn easier for my husband.

In about ten days, Horse Shows By The Bay will begin its expanded three week series of shows in Acme, and I’m hoping to get over there to shoot at least a couple of times. There will be an all-afternoon series of polo matches that are must-sees as well.

In honor of HSBB, I’m thinking of starting a new painting or drawing using one of my images from past shows. There are so many good ones to choose from that it will be difficult to make a choice! Should it be hunters, jumpers, dressage, ponies or a general horse show scene? Or, perhaps I’ll start my planned series of horse show dogs.

There is more good news that Mural Mosaic’s The Horse Gift will be displayed at this year’s Calgary Stampede. That’s the mural I did a panel for last year, so if you’re up that way and going to take in the Stampede, be sure to search out the mural. You can’t miss it; it’s 22 feet high! So far, the mural has been shown at Spruce Meadows, Quarter Horse Congress and the National Finals Rodeo; all top horse venues with lots of visitors. Reports are that visitors are just blown away by it! You can buy your own poster of it, too, or buy a book and put together your own life sized horse poster of the mural. I have books, if anyone is interested.

At the top are my foxgloves blooming. And below is my panel for The Horse Gift.

One Chapter Closes, Another Opens

2009-06-20T17:33:00.000-07:00

Last week we took a trip to Alexandria, VA to attend a memorial service and burial for my mother at Arlington National Cemetery. Our daughter, Tina, accompanied us, along with a chair that my sister wanted but couldn't take home with her on the plane back in March. We fit everything in my Subaru wagon with a few inches to spare and saved a lot on gas versus driving the SUV such a long distance. Tina had a lot more room on the way home, needless to say.

It's been quite a few years since we took a vacation of any sort, much less travelled east to the DC area where my sister lives, so it was a real treat to get away even if only for a few days. DC/Alexandria is one of my favorite places in the world, and I would love to live there if it weren't for the heat, humidity, congestion and traffic! It's a far cry from northern Michigan in all respects, but is so loaded with the history of our great country that there is tons to see at every turn.

I was quite disappointed that I didn't take my camera because the flash cards were acting up, so I had to depend on my husband to take photos and thus didn't get a lot of shots I would have taken if I'd had my camera. So, there were no photos of the mountains in Pennsylvania or Maryland or all the interesting barns we saw along the way. And, not many photos of family once we reached my sister's house in Alexandria.

My sister has an ideal location just off the George Washington Parkway north of Alexandria proper. She's also a few miles south of Mt Vernon which we visit almost every time we go. There is a wonderful biking/hiking/running path that goes along the parkway which my biking/running daughter took advantage of a couple of times while lamenting that Ann Arbor, where she lives, doesn't have anything nearly as nice. There is just a small strip of woods that separates the parkway from the Potomac at this point also, which makes the area very beautiful. To top it off, Alexandria is a city that oozes with the charm of colonial style architecture and buildings dating to the early days of our Republic.

The weekend's events included a mini family get together as well as the ceremony at Arlington where my father had already been laid to rest. My oldest sister and her daughter joined us from S. Carolina and Georgia, and my niece and her husband came from England. My nephew and his wife also live in Alexandria, so we had some good times visiting at my sister's house and having great food and fun conversation.

The weather cooperated, and the ceremony at Arlington couldn't have been nicer! My sister did a wonderful job of planning it, and all who wanted to spoke a few words about my remarkable mother. Afterwards, we had a delicious luncheon at the Army/Navy officer's club (thanks to my retired Army brother-in-law's connections) and then went home and took a nap. We were all pretty exhausted by that time.

The next day the three of us took in the wonderful new museum at Mt. Vernon and learned much about the Father of our Country. If you have a chance, be sure to take it in the next time you visit Mt. Vernon. That night Tina was invited by her cousins to join them at a concert of The Gipsy Kings at Wolf Trap. She had a wonderful time.

On Sunday we said our goodbyes and headed for home with me feeling a sense of peace, both for myself and for my mother. With this chapter of my life closed at long last, perhaps now I'll have the time and emotional energy once again to devote to my art; my life's work.

Lilac Season

2009-06-03T09:14:00.000-07:00

The lilacs above are an old fashioned variety that were here when we bought the property over thirty years ago. They had probably been here for many decades before that since this property was once a farmstead along the banks of the lake, going back to the nineteenth century when the area was cleared and homesteaded. Hard as it is to believe today, northwest Michigan was still very much a wilderness until late in the 1800's. Some southern Michiganders still think it is!

Our lilacs are now in bloom, and their sweet fragrance fills the air when I do my daily tour of the flower beds. Unfortunately, we can’t see them from the house, but there are small lilacs planted along the road fence which will be visible from the house once they’re big enough to put on a real display. I was told they need lots of manure to bloom well, so I must remember to bring some home from the barn each time I go. Last year they got a dose of Moo Doo, but it didn’t spur any blooms this Spring, much to my disappointment.

Last weekend I drove all over in search of the annuals that I wanted for the flower beds; wax begonias with green leaves and pink and white flowers. By experimentation, these are the colors that work the best in the beds along the driveway and house and the round bed that hides the well pipe. These are partially shaded areas, and the begonias do better than any other plants I’ve tried, plus they bloom profusely well into autumn. I just love them!

I also bought a flat of pansies, another favorite, and will plant them in the road fence beds as border plants where ever there is a need. Several years ago these happy little plants bloomed so well that they could be seen from the house and even managed to over winter and bloom again. I lost the remaining ones when they dried up one summer before I could get them mulched. I don’t know what it is about that bed along the fence; whether it’s a thick layer of insulating snow that the plows deposit or what. My snap dragons come back every year, too, and are now about five years old.

On Sunday I weeded the driveway flower bed and planted some of the begonias; by far the earliest I’ve ever planted before! Usually, June is ending before I get around to this chore, and wouldn’t you know it; there was a freeze warning for Sunday night! We missed the freeze, and the plants looked healthy the next morning and happy to be out of their confining little boxes.

For the time being, I’m contenting myself with this form of creativity while winding up other urgent projects around the house and figuring out how I can fit in significant blocks of time for artwork. I suspect that means curtailing computer time to an hour a day instead of the several that is the current routine. Goodbye Facebook and other mindless wanderings around the internet.

Just as I had hoped, my last blog post about the licensing agent has exorcised this unpleasant experience once and for all and has allowed me to move on. As negative as it was, it had a very positive and beneficial effect. Such people are just not worth stewing over!

The Licensing Agent; A Cautionary Tale

2009-05-24T13:54:00.000-07:00

"Sweetie" 11"x14" pastel painting

I’m giving you fair warning now that this is going to be a long post. I’m writing it because this incident has been haunting me for almost two years, and I’d like to let it go and move on.

A couple of years ago, I was contacted by a licensing agent who was looking for an equine artist to represent in a new venture into licensing horse images for her corporate clients. She was very enthusiastic about my art and very flattering in her comments. She told me that my art had the WOW! factor and that she wanted to “brand” me with a big marketing campaign and thought that I could become another Chris Cummings in the licensing world. Pretty heady stuff, right?

The problem was that I already had a licensing agent/dealer, but, I hadn’t had much luck with her for several years. I told the new agent (I’ll call her Cindy) that I would consider her offer. We chatted on the phone, and she built herself up by saying that she had a background in marketing and worked with many big companies which licensed images for their products and that she had a very good reputation in the industry. Then I contacted two of her artists, a husband and wife team, who gave her an enthusiastic endorsement. Next, I checked the contract I had with the current licensing agent and found that I could cancel it by giving her 60 days’ notice.

After doing this due diligence, I felt safe in accepting the new offer from Cindy who was willing to wait the 60 days. I told her right up front that the only images I had available for licensing were on my website, and she didn’t express any concern about that. I notified my current agent, and Cindy sent me a contract to sign that would be effective at the end of the 60 days. She also requested that I send her images so that she could put together a marketing sheet to show to her clients. I asked her which of my current images she wanted for this purpose.

That’s when the trouble began. I never got a direct answer. Instead she emailed me a list of ideas for paintings based on requests that she’d gotten from her contacts. I asked her several times more which images to send. Her response was always to tell me that certain ones would be better in color or with a different background or with the horse facing the other way or this or that. I asked her what sorts of images to work on first. Her response was to just send me the same list of ideas that she’d gotten from her clients which was a long one.

Without any guidance from Cindy, I had no choice but to do my own research. I reviewed all of my sales records and came up with a list of best sellers and worst sellers in prints and note cards. I presented that to her and got no response. I looked through all of my horsey gift catalogs and horse catalogs to see what sorts of images are on the market to give me ideas for what works best. Based on those findings, I finally gathered ten of my best sellling images on a CD and mailed it to her. Her response was that they were “a good starting point”.

Two weeks later, the contract went into effect, and I emailed her to find out what was going on. I didn’t hear from her for two days. Then she emailed to say that I didn’t have an “extensive” enough portfolio of current work and that she was talking to another equine artist who had a “large” portfolio. She explained that she needed a “minimum of 20 strong images” in order to launch a marketing campaign which was something she had never mentioned before. She was still willing to represent me with my limited portfolio, though, if I was willing to continue.

Naturally, this came as a shock since she hadn’t given me a clue before that there was any problem from her point of view. So, I went through my images again and sent her 16 more possibilities by email that I’d originally eliminated for one reason or another and asked her to let me know if any of them were suitable. By this time, I was getting very uneasy about the whole situation and Cindy’s lack of communication and candor.

Over a week went by, and I heard nothing from Cindy. So, I sent her another email asking if she had gotten the images. I heard nothing for another two weeks and emailed her again, asking for advice as to what to paint first. There was still no response, so I phoned her. She told me that she couldn’t talk now because she had a business client coming for the weekend but would phone me on Monday. That was on Friday. On Sunday night I got an email from her saying that she had found another “incredible established artist” with “a large portfolio” to represent and would not be able to represent me after all. She went on to twist the knife deeper by saying that it would take many years before I would reach “profitability”for her in licensing due to my limited portfolio and lack of dedication to regular painting.

I wrote her back and agreed that I wasn’t the right artist for her and hadn’t been happy about the way things had been going. I also expressed puzzlement over why she had contacted me in the first place and why I hadn’t been told in the beginning that I would need X number of images and why she hadn’t given me more guidance in what to paint for her.

The funny thing is that no new artist appeared on her website, and a year later she contacted one of my best artist friends and other artists as well. So, what became of that “incredible” artist I wonder?

I’ve since come to the conclusion that Cindy knew nothing about the equine art licensing market and that she expected “her” artists to produce paintings quickly. I also suspect that her view is that the artists work for her rather than the other way around.

This whole incident was a huge blow to my ego; one that I’m still struggling to overcome. I’m hoping that this post will help to put the unpleasantness behind me once and for all. My biggest regret is that I let go my former licensing agent. She helped to establish my career early on, was always supportive and helpful and was familiar with the world of equine art. I’ve found her advice far more helpful than the little bits that I received from Cindy. I regret that by hastily cancelling that contract, I also lost a friend.

Perhaps that’s what’s bothering me the most.

My First Blog Award!

2009-05-09T09:57:00.001-07:00

This is truly exciting! I am very honored and humbled to accept my first blog award from fellow equine artist, Linda Shantz, whose blog I guested on last month. Thank you very much, Linda!

The past two weeks have been busy ones, filled with appointments, tweaking my new website design, raking leaves and other assorted duties. Happily, I finished up my latest short stint in Physical Therapy on Friday and am looking forward to more days at home when I don't have to run to town for any reason. That will allow me to get back into the studio again and do some early season gardening to get the beds ready for summer. I don't want to be out there in the heat working this year like I have the past two years.

While I'm writing this, I'm also backing up my computer. Once all those images are safely saved onto disks, I can erase my two camera disks and be ready to shoot more photos.

Finally, I'd like to thank my friends, Linda Shantz and Judy Johnson for visiting my newly revised website and giving me thoughts on how well it's working. As I mentioned before, Linda does a lot of Thoroughbred race horse paintings, and Judy is doing a series of shelter dogs paintings which she sells to benefit her local shelter. They are really cute paintings which she also sells as prints. Please visit her blog and pick out a shelter dog of your own to take home.

That's it for today. I would still love to hear from anyone else with your thoughts on my new website design. I think it's already paid off, as I got a call this week from someone who is interested in buying one of my paintings that I hadn't put up for sale yet. He'll call back next week. I hope, I hope, I hope!!

Thank you for visiting, and a Happy Mother's Day weekend to you all.

Alpha Mare Gets a Makeover

2009-05-04T09:33:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-28T09:44:00.000-07:00

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!

And, That's A Wrap!

2009-04-14T18:34:00.000-07:00

What a whirlwind of a day I had today!

Not to bore you with a long list of what I accomplished, let me simply say that I wrapped up and mailed off an assortment of business and personal tax forms, got money transferred to pay the taxes, created and mailed my entry for the AAEA Mackinac Island show, made arrangements for an ad in Horses In Art magazine and last but far from least, I finished the Belgian draft horse painting. Whew! I never expected to accomplish so many important and stressful tasks in one day.

As they say in the movie industry, "That's a wrap". Now, on to new art and long neglected projects.

I think I’ll just leave it at that for tonight. Thanks for visiting, and please come visit again. Bring a friend if you care to!

Don't Count Yer Chickens!!

2009-04-12T08:19:00.000-07:00

You know that old saying about not counting your chickens before they hatch? Well, I pretty much ignored that sage advice when I more or less committed myself to entering this painting in a juried show and to using it in an ad in Horses In Art magazine. As you know, the painting is far from finished, and both deadlines are coming up this week! Now my chickens have come home to roost!

Friday was more or less a bad studio day. After painting the lower part of the trailer, I painted the neck and shoulder of the left hand horse. When I finished painting that evening, I realized that:

1. The paint was not going on smoothly despite having oiled the canvas ahead of time.

2. The highlights and shadows were not in the right places, consequently the bones and muscles were not in the right places.

3. The highlights had gone dull and the whole horse image had gone flat, showing little volume.

Making 3-d images believable on a 2-d surface is all about creating volume in your subject. Well, this poor horse had none and would have to be repainted. That night I figured that there was no way I could possibly get the painting done enough to send off the entry by Tuesday at the latest. Actually, it was kind of a relief because that left the beautiful weekend free for doing some much-needed yard work.

But, by yesterday morning I was feeling very disappointed at the prospect of missing a second invitation to an AAEA member show and felt as if I was letting the Academy down and setting a bad precedent in their minds. So, after lunch I sat down in front of the painting to study it and determine what needed to be done and if it would be possible to work on it that day.

The first consideration was whether or not the paint was dry enough to paint over, and it was. It occured to me then that the reason I’d had trouble laying down paint the day before might have been because I was trying to use up leftover mixes of paint from the previous day which had probably begun to dry and had become somewhat sticky. Fresh paint would solve that problem.

Secondly, I studied the painting and my reference photos and saw some places where I’d gone wrong in laying in the muscle masses and the scapula.

Thirdly, when I flipped on the easel light, a light bulb went off in my head as well. The highlights on the horse were much brighter under the light than they were when the light was turned off. Since paintings are rarely hung with lights directly on them, I would need to compensate.

After getting out a fresh palette and mixing up fresh paint, I began to make corrections to the horse. The paint went on smoothly and didn’t lift the layer underneath, so I kept going until the neck and shoulder were done to my satisfaction. After dinner, I began painting the head and got as far as the nose band of the halter before quitting for the day.

While I was painting, I thought I was getting this ole work horse show ring shiny, but this morning he is looking dull again. Clearly, more adjustments need to be made, but those can be done when he is dry in another day or two. I’ll just add some bright highlights in a few places and he should come alive again.

The first image above shows the BC view (before corrections), the second is after corrections were made.

I don’t think I’ve said this before, so let me mind my manners and thank each one of you for visiting my blog. I hope that you’ve found it informative and entertaining and will come back again for another visit. Please feel free to leave comments, especially to let me know whether or not you enjoy this blog. I’m always open to constructive feedback.

Quite A Scare!

2009-04-08T08:09:00.001-07:00

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.

The Phantom Blog Award

2009-04-05T12:25:00.000-07:00

About six weeks ago there was a flurry of blog awards being passed out amongst a group of bloggers that I read regularly. Some lucky bloggers received two or three awards while I received none. I have to admit that I was pretty bummed about this and grumbled to myself about how such things were nothing more than popularity contests between friends and SO middle schoolish. I was definitely indulging in some sour grapes.

So, when I received a comment on my blog last weekend that I’d been given a blog award, I couldn’t help but feel a bit elated and redeemed. The award was given by someone I don’t know, but she failed to attach the actual award image. Having never received one before, I didn’t know what the protocol is and whether or not I had to name the seven things about myself first or what. I managed to track her down on the internet and politely sent her an email to enquire whether it was an oversight on her part that I hadn’t received the award image or if there was something I was supposed to do first.

It’s been a week now, and I never heard back from her. Now I have to assume that this was some kind of cruel hoax or perhaps she had notified the wrong artist and was too embarrassed to admit it. I’ve removed her comment from my blog to protect the innocent (or is that the guilty?) and am putting the whole incident behind me.

Something positive did come out of this whole blog award thing, though. It made me stop to think about why my blog is not more popular, and I realized that I’ve posted a lot of negative, woe-is-me thoughts over the past two years. Instead of posting new artwork, I’ve posted a lot of why-I-haven’t-done-any-artwork posts. I resolved immediately to make my posts more upbeat and try to inject some humor into them. That’s a tall order for someone whose sense of humor tends to be quite dry, but I’ll do my best from now on.

Today’s photo is a view from my studio window. It shows the ice in the lake receding as the wind-blown waves chip away at its edges and as the sun has melted its thickness. This can be an anxious time for us lake dwellers for a day or two when we worry whether or not the ice is going to demolish docks and boat houses as the wind drives it relentlessly eastward. So far we’ve been lucky, but I did watch helplessly one year as the ice wiped out our neighbors dock and boat house supports. It was a good lesson in the powers of Nature.

Normally, as soon as the ice goes out of the lake, the ducks and swans appear in our beach and the fishermen return in their boats. I’m already seeing large flocks of flight ducks making their way back toward Canada. Perhaps a crane will stop by one of these days, too. They are so shy that I haven’t managed to get a good photo of one yet, and they only visit for a day or two each season. But, I keep hoping that THIS season will bring better luck.

There is no sun today because we’re expecting yet another winter storm tonight and tomorrow. Will THIS be the last gasps of the winter of 2008-2009, or does Mother Nature have more surprises in store for us? Don’t put away those snow shovels just yet!

Sentimental Journey

2009-04-04T14:24:00.001-07:00

Since the hospitalization and death of my mother early last month, I’ve been on a real sentimental journey. Going through her photos, address books, and precious mementos has brought back many memories long buried to add to those which have surfaced naturally as I think back on my relationship with my mother and what in her own life molded her into the person that she was.

So, when this little clay sculpture turned up in my dresser drawer this week, it took me back again to one summer when I was fifteen. A friend and I took a summer art class for high school students at Eastern Michigan University, and this 4 inch high sculpture was the result. It’s a shame that the ears were lost long ago which makes him look a bit odd.

What’s remarkable about it is how good it is for my young age and how it shows that I already had a firm grasp of the anatomy of the equine head. It isn’t perfect but it’s good, and that’s why I kept it for over 50 years. I’ve even put in that facial vein that is so prominent on the face of just about every horse. I didn’t grow up around horses nor was I involved with them much at the time. But, I had already developed a keen eye for observing details and form that has contributed greatly to my development and success as an artist over the years.

If you want to be a realist artist, learning to see the details in your subject and then combining them into a cohesive form are essential.

I’m grateful to my parents for giving me the opportunity to take this summer class, for paying for riding lessons and horse day camps and for allowing me to have my first horse. If it weren’t for these gifts, my life might have taken a different path.

If you want to read about my journey as an artist from childhood on, visit my biography page, and from there you will find a link to more of my early art. I promise that you’ll find it entertaining.

Whatever Happened to Spring??

2009-03-29T16:00:00.001-07:00

Our snow was pretty much all gone until last night. That's when the Winter Storm Warning began for us, and now we have plenty of the white stuff again, along with high winds and drifting. It's a good thing my husband hadn't taken the snow blower off the tractor yet.

I've worked a little more on the Belgian painting the past two days and have made a little more progress. Most notably, the inside of the trailer has been painted, and this has given the painting more depth. Later I'll give some tone to that interior so that it isn't such a dark hole, but it's an improvement for now. I also painted the chrome strip on the roof, added more highlights and put in the reflections of the horses and the grass. I may need to add more grass color to make the reflections more believable later on, and after that, the whole trailer will be glazed over with a darker blue.

Now that the trailer is well under way, I can turn my attention to the horses again; the part I've been anxiously waiting for. In the next step, the left hand horse will be painted and made darker as was my plan from the beginning. The painting should really come alive with this step.

Since it's tax season, I've also been working on taxes, and they will be my focus until today's paint is dry. I can't wait to get the taxes done and to the accountant so that I can spend more time on art again. That should be enough incentive to keep going and not procrastinate any longer, like I've been doing along with just about every other American.

Moving Along with The Green Team

2009-03-22T16:35:00.000-07:00

Here is today's progress, and as you can see, finishing the trailer made a big difference in the looks of the painting.

The first thing I did today was correct the rail on the right side. I may make more corrections when I paint the interior of the trailer and the next layer on the outside, but for now it will stay as it is. Sometimes it's better to correct in increments to be sure they're needed as the rest of the painting progresses.

One of the frustrations I've been having as I paint these days is due to arthritis in my hands. I can't flip brushes around in my fingers as I used to, and I'm dropping them more. That is taking some getting used to and requires greater care in brush handling. I just hate it when a brush drops into blobs of paint on the palette!

And, that's all I have to say for today. Except that the trailer color really isn't quite as neon looking as it may appear on your monitor.

Going Blue With The Green Team

2009-03-21T16:47:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was the official start of Spring, so what did we get during the night?! You guessed it; snow! The weather warmed up during the day, and by night fall the new snow is almost gone. There's still plenty of the old snow, but it's receding little by little. Alas, the crocus are still buried under piled up snow along the driveway. When they pop their heads up, we know that Spring is really here!

Today I worked on the Belgian painting again and got a little further on the trailer. Not much, but a little. It was fussy, time-consuming work to paint all those lines and try to blend them and keep them straight, and I'm glad that part is done with. It will need another layer of paint, but the next layer should be easier.

It's amazing what you DON'T see when you're working up close on a painting, as I was today. It wasn't obvious until I shot the photo that the rails on the trailer are off on the right side. I'll have to fix them on the next go round.

When I paint the rest of the trailer; which I hope to do tomorrow; it will make a big difference in how the painting looks.