New Work - Portrait Swap

At this point I have completed ten portraits, but, only a few have made it to thier destinations yet!  Some of these are going global with some going to Spain, England, Austrailia, Belgium, and South Africa...so thier may be a long wait on some of these!  Here are the confirmed arrivals;

"Girls At Play" oil 2.5x3.5

"Leo - Son of King" oil 2.5x3.5

Such a gorgeous gypsy horse!

"Belle"  2.5x3.5 oil

I love a happy face!

"Sandy" 4x6 oil

Such an elegant beauty, I just had to paint her!

Most of these portraits will be ACEO/ATC sized, but, I will have a few 4x6 as well.   Be sure to check out the other artists work here;

Gallery of Swap Art

Pet Portrait Swap!

I joined in on the Wet Canvas Pet Portrait Swap for the practice in painting pet portraits, and, just because it sounded like fun! The swap is limited to 30 artists participants and each member sets up a gallery of thier own pet photographs for the other members to work from.  Each member commits to painting at least one portrait for each of the participants and sending it to them.  In return, each member should receive at least one painting from each member...paint 30/receive 30.   It is a lot, but so far has been well worth it in experience gained, comraderie, and good art, seen  and received!  I will list my contributions here as 'New Work' as they are received by their recipients...don't want to spoil thier surprise by listing them too soon, so, I must wait until I hear back that their art has arrived.  You can view the completed art here:

Final Artwork

This project will continue for several  months, so, check back often to see the new work that has been added! 

100 Birds Challenge - New Project

OK, I am just not involved in enough projects, so, I added another! Ha! This is a challenge to draw, sketch, or, paint one hundred birds to improve my knowlege of birds and improve my arting skills! Here's a link to the original challenge thread on WetCanvas;

http://wetcanvas.com/forums/showthread.php?t=563498

I know I will not be as prolific with the birdies so have given myself a long cushy deadline of one year. I do hope to do more than just sketches from photos which is how I am starting out. I will incorporate birds into my regular output of equine art and also plan to paint some bird specific paintings along the way. My main hold-ups for producing finished art for this (and the other projects) is my lack of original reference material. If I work from photographic reference material, I much prefer to use my own, although for these projects, I have been using the images provided from the WetCanvas reference image library. I just don't get out and about much these days to get my own reference materials, so, I am relying, for now, on photos I took years ago at the zoo and parks. They will run out fast, though, so, I am going to have to actually step outside the house sometime to work from life or take new photos! These are just some quickies sketches to start with.

Black Swan

Snow Owl

No Chicken Scratch! The Sketchbook

I've always kept a number sketchbooks that I use to jot down ideas for new paintings or, just to dabble around in until I come up with something concrete that I want to do a finished painting of. I use these sketchbooks to do the planning and layout work, explore new compositions, try to work out anatomical problems and every kind of scribble and notation from art supply lists to mathmatical jottings. Mostly, they are just so much chicken-scratch that even I have trouble trying to decipher what I'm looking at! Ha! You know it's bad if even I can't tell what I just drew! Basically, my sketchbooks are not anything I would ever want anyone else to see, but, here are a few of the better pages from my 'work' sketchbook!

Planning ideas for mustang series

First idea sketches for Paint Horse Magazine cover competition


Guidehorse paintings study




Planning sketches for "Malpais Gold" painting

I've always admired other artists that keep wonderful sketchbooks with every page filled with exquisite drawings and beautifully rendered studies. Personnally, I never put that much effort into a sketchbook before, because I always considered them to be working tools. I've always felt that the real efforts should be saved for the final painting or drawing, and so, I just did quick thumbnails sketches for layouts or values and very rarely attempted even a halfway finished sketch. When the Horse Breed a Week Project was started on WetCanvas in January, I decided to start a new sketchbook with the goal of No-Chicken-Scratch! Every page would stand alone as a finished sketch or study and it would be filled with everything from the various projects, to life drawings, to purely imaginary fantasy art...all complete - no incomprehensibility. Well, we'll see how that goes! These are two pages from the new sketchbook drawn from life of my cats, Claw-dette (top) and Foxy FaeFey.

I had a Christmas gift certificate from my sister and brother-in-law to Barns & Nobles, so, I used that to get this wonderful hand-made, Italian leather bound sketchbook/journal with over 300 pages of perfect drawing paper.

I have just loved drawing in this book...once I got over the trepidation of 'messing up' this wonderful book! So far, I have only used black Eboney graphite pencils, but, this paper should also take pen & ink, and color pencils very well, and, if I get off my Eboney kick, I may try some other media in this. These two are my newest from the Horse Breed project, Appaloosa and Australian Stock Horse.

"Appy Roping Horse"

"Australian Stock Horse"