One of my fellow boarders at Willow Tree Equestrian Center hitched her Morgan/Freisian gelding to a sleigh this morning and took off for a drive through the woods. The black horse with the black harness and big jingle bells made a lovely picture (too bad I didn’t have my camera with me so I could share it). That was a real Merry Christmas!
I turned my Billy out today for the first time since his injury over a week ago. He’s looking a lot better and feeling pretty good. All the horses in the field ran up to him and bunched around him–guess they wanted to make sure who he was. There was the typical sniffing, a few shrieks, some half-hearted kicks, then everybody went their own way. Billy made up with his former girlfriend Alada, and everything was just peachy. Now we have to wait for somebody who has a horse in the geldings area to volunteer to move their boy to the training lot so we can get Billy away from the mares. No volunteers yet, although there is one reluctant “maybe”. The logistics has to do with where the stalls are located in relation to the fields. Each group goes out all at once to its designated area, so if a horse is stalled in the wrong area of the barn he has to be taken out individually, which is a nuisance when you’re dealing with a lot of horses who go in and out twice a day.
Echo Park, in watercolor
I took a day and concentrated on creating this little watercolor (7″ x 10″) as a present for my aunt. She liked the original oil painting a lot, but at 36″ x 46″ it is way too large for her house (not to mention expensive). So I thought I would recreate it for her as a Christmas gift. She is one of my “senior” relatives who has resisted modern technology and has no computer, so I don’t think posting this will ruin the surprise. I was pleased that I was able to reproduce the feel of the oil painting in watercolor. I wasn’t sure it would work out, so I just kept at it until I reached a point beyond which I knew it would be OK. There’s something about sheer persistence that often just makes things happen. I used to give up way too soon, and missed the joy of working through an apparent disaster to end up with something rewarding.
Alli Farkas Artist Adventures 