Working behind the scenes

If one were to judge by my complete absence from the blog scene during the month of January, one might assume that I had been in hibernation. As much as I may have wanted that to be true, it wasn’t. Things were happening, but there was nothing to see until now.

Here are two new stall plaques that are finished except for the varnishing part. Billy’s plaque will go with me as a demo piece for my horse show/expo booth. I’m sure he’ll take a peek at it from horsey heaven and think it looks really cool. Charm’s plaque will go on her stall door as soon as it is good and dry. These plaques are hand-lettered (probably the most tedious part) and hand painted. I initially thought that painting script lettering would be more difficult than block lettering but I discovered to my pleasant surprise that the script just sort of conveniently rolled off the brush. Which means I won’t have to charge extra for it like I thought I would have to do.

Billy’a plaque is on basswood with the rough bark still attached along the top and bottom edges. I think it is a nice rustic look.

 

Charm’s plaque is identical to the one I did for Sydney a while back, on a pine panel with nice scrolled edges. Charm’s stall is right across the aisle from Sydney’s, so these two plaques will make a nice pair.

And now that these are almost done, I can start laying down some paint on this drawing which I was also working on during January.

This will be my first painting of a dressage horse and the complications of the bridle, while fussy, aren’t nearly as frustrating as the harness on some of the draft horses. So I am thankful for small favors. This painting will be of Cantana, a Grand Prix horse ridden by Betsy Van Dyke at the Region 2 dressage finals in 2013. You can see Cantana in one of my past posts where Betsy was riding him in a parade on Mackinac Island — he’s the chestnut on the right. It will be fun to paint a large portrait again!