Billy and his ladies, round 3

Third pass, a little more background and a little more color for our equine friends

Well, I guess I said pretty much everything about our progress right in the photo caption. I’ll assume you didn’t want to read anything complicated this time around and just leave it at that. I’m happy with progress so far. I’m looking forward to taking this one with me to exhibit in my booth at the upcoming Spartan Stampede Rodeo in mid-February. Stay tuned…

HyperTormentMuddlingLanguage

I took a few days off from painting to dive back into my website project. I hadn’t worked on it for a while because I gave myself a year to do it and I started last July. Plenty of time, right? One would think so, especially since the only page left to complete is the order form.

And there’s the rub. The order form, like the slideshow galleries, is a plug-in, so it’s not part of the main Joomla program. While looking for such plug-ins, a sure attraction is the claim that it’s so easy for beginners. That would be me. However, they neglected to mention that the so-called beginner really needs to be fluent in CSS if they want to actually embed this thing on one of their web pages. Otherwise, it shows up as part of a front page menu and is restricted to the width of whatever that menu is. Totally useless.

So, the slogging has begun to figure out just enough CSS to get this thing where I want it. Doesn’t help much when the instructions simply tell you to write in the desired parameters, without explaining what they could possibly be!

Billy’s harem, chapter 2

About 2 or so more passes, and some detail is developing

I think I now know why the drawing took so long. When I stepped back and looked at the latest incarnation of this painting, I was astounded at how exactly like my horse the image was. I was so intent on making it look just like him that I kept endlessly revising the drawing until it was so. Even though I didn’t really “see” it until a few layers of paint later.

That’s always the surprise with my painting. I truly mean it when I say that I never really know how a painting is going to turn out until it’s finished. It’s just such a rewarding surprise to see it take shape this early in the process.

A new look at “developing”

I never quite thought of it this way before, but today it occurred to me that these first stages of painting are kind of like it used to be way back in the old days when we would wait around for Polaroid snapshots to develop! The colors are just starting to come in, but there is no real definition or detail.

So here’s the first pass for Billy and his mares. The drawing took forever…again. This is starting to be a pattern, but I guess I shouldn’t care as long as it turns out OK. It’s snowing all day today, so I should be able to hang out and get maybe a couple more passes on the canvas.

"Polaroid" of Billy and his harem

A few words about Billy

Q: Is this the same horse? A: Yep.

I had another really nice ride on Billy tonight. He did a beautiful collected then lengthened trot combination for me and seamlessly navigated between the two modes, keeping himself “through” the whole time. We just floated around the ring a few times and I was looking around trying to find out where the clouds were because it truly did seem that we were floating.

This lovely circumstance made me think it was probably time to take a few comparison photos just to see how much he had changed physically. As you can see for yourself, the photo of him last March (above, on the left) shows a weak-muscled horse listing to the right. Everything about him is crooked and off-balance. The photo on the right is from today, and shows (despite his shaggy coat trying to conceal it) all kinds of lovely muscle, which is enveloping some very straight, square-stanced legs.

The poor fetlocks look to be a little larger than they used to be, but that’s part of his disability and there’s nothing that can be done about it. Since he doesn’t seem to care, we’ll just live with it.

Last June on the left, today on the right. Except for today's mud, not so different.

Fetlocks from the side don’t look as bad. I’ve been expecting them to drop, considering all the work Billy has been doing in spite of his deteriorating suspensory ligaments, but so far there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of change…left one has dropped a little, or maybe it just looks that way because it’s farther forward. I didn’t remember which hind leg was forward in the photo from June, so of course I got them reversed today. His crappy hoofs were halfway grown out in June, and now are completely new horn. He has great feet now, so I say “Fie!” to the farrier who told me years ago that not only could he never go barefoot, he would always need pads under his shoes. He’s been barefoot for well over a year, and loving it!

Next up, Billy and his harem

Gunny and Rosie--finished!

Billy and his mares

Our two friends Gunny and Rosie are finally complete. I don’t know what their actual accommodations are (especially in winter!) but they both look quite happy here in an autumn-setting pasture. Will see if I can get the painting delivered to Reins of Life sometime this coming week. Then we’ll hope their upcoming benefit is a huge success, because they certainly deserve it! Therapy horses provide an incredible service and the best part is that they do it so willingly (otherwise they wouldn’t be therapy horses!).

Next up is a landscape including my beloved but often unrepentant Billy. I took this photo just after he arrived at Willow Tree in November 2010. One of the reasons the photo amuses me so much is that he is actually quite low in the herd pecking order, and only got to gloat over his little harem because he was in a small “training” pasture, learning how to integrate into a new herd. The four other horses in the pasture were shunning him, so nobody paid him any mind when he moseyed over to the fence to strike up a friendship with the mares. I also really like the play of light in the thick stand of trees, and will have an interesting time seeing how I can get that idea across on canvas.

Happy New Year to all–hope you all have some interesting plans for the future as well!

So close it’s almost a Christmas present…

Letting this "ferment" for a couple of days, then we'll see if it still looks like it's a winner

All the sides are finally painted, my little Christmas present to myself! A couple more coats are on Gunny, which of course still need to dry. In the meantime, I’ll do what I always do when I think a painting is finished…prop it up someplace where I can come upon it unexpectedly and see if anything pops out at me that needs fixing.

I’m still debating another coat on Rosie and also the color of the leaves hanging over Gunny’s neck. Maybe a little more contrast…?

So what’s wrong with this picture?

The hardest part, or is it only the most tedious part?

What’s wrong with this picture? Nothing really, aside from the fact that it isn’t finished yet. One part that’s not finished demonstrates one of those niggling little things that make an artist wish for assistants to carry out work that probably nobody is really going to pay much attention to anyway.

I’m referring, of course, to the sides of the painting. Normally a frame would cover this and the whole deal would be a big “so-what?”. Most times, I just paint the sides white so the painting can be hung as-is or framed, whatever the client wants. But this one is special, in the same category as some of the other portraits I’ve done which rely heavily on the landscape factor. It just looks a lot better for the unframed painting if the image continues around the sides of the canvas, which in this case are about 1-3/8″ deep. It’ll look great when done, but it would be such a relief if all those pesky leaves had been finished on the front of the canvas instead of wrapping around the sides.

As for the rest of the painting, Gunny needs another pass, maybe two, or maybe not. Rosie is pretty much finished. Meanwhile, I’m waiting for today’s work on Gunny to dry. Again…

How long for a leaf to turn?

more leaves, and two coats on the horses

So how long DOES it take for a leaf to turn? In this case, about as long as it takes for the real ones to do it, I’m thinking. We’re working our way across the canvas, and in the meantime the horses are just beginning to get some color. Two coats, to be exact. They have quite a few more to go, and these leaves might get a little darker depending on how Gunny (the chestnut) turns out. Can’t have the red leaves disappearing in her reddish-brown coat you know!

I stand corrected

A few more passes

I collected some interesting information on our subjects which deserves sharing (and also correcting!). The large horse is Gunny–she was the 2010 Indiana Therapy Horse of the Year. The one I have been calling a pony is actually a miniature horse, named Rosie, and she was the Exceptional Therapy Horse Challenge Winner in 2010 at the Hoosier Horse Fair in Indianapolis. So we have two real winners here from the Reins of Life therapeutic riding program. Both of them are still working away, happily making life better for the wide variety of clients which Reins of Life serves.

Now all I have to do is paint them. You may have noticed I have painted just about everything else but the horses. Actually, since the last post the grass has had three more coats, but it still needs more because it is way too green. Not to worry. I started the leaves (aren’t those GREAT-looking leaves?) because I had to wait for the grass to dry. Not as bad as waiting for hay to dry I guess, but a wait nonetheless. I knew I had more time for this painting than I usually do for a portrait, so I’m using a painting medium that takes longer to dry than the one I normally use. I like the way this particular medium handles the paint, but the disadvantage is that it takes longer to dry. The horses have to wait because the scumbling technique I will be using on the grass can sometimes spill over into areas it’s not wanted (such as the horses’ bodies) and it’s better to have that happen before I paint them rather than after. And you thought artists just sit down and let the painting flow out of their hands, didn’t you? I wish!