I swear I am not detail oriented…

I accepted a tiny commission a couple of weeks ago. I looked at the source photo and unabashedly said to myself, “no problem”. I always do that after a casual look and then berate myself for not noticing all the obvious detail. It’s especially nonsensical when one thinks about all the horses and all the harness I have painted and how much time it took to untangle all that harness and hope I got it right.

So…to make things even more interesting, this was to be a tiny watercolor on Aquabord ™. It’s been a while since I posted about this type of watercolor, so briefly I’ll just say this one was to be only 5″ x 7″ in size, and the board itself is similar to Masonite but with a gesso coating that gives the surface a texture like that of watercolor paper. It’s a great surface to paint on, especially for an artist like me who depends on the ability of the materials used to be erasable. If I mess up something on Aquabord™ I can almost always get the surface back down to the original white color unless I was using a pigment that has a lot of stain to it. Even then, I can get close to removing all of the color.

Here’s the drawing. I breathed a huge sigh of relief when it was done.

Here’s a bit of the start of the painting, just so you know it was really and truly painted. No cheating.

Here’s the teeny tiny brush I had to use for a good deal of it, especially the harness.

And here’s the finished painting. What I love about Aquabord™ is that when the paint is dry you can coat it with UV protection and spray varnish so that unlike watercolor on paper it’s practically harm-proof.

Now for something totally different–I entered two Sky Pads paintings in the 6th Annual Landscape Exhibit at Fernwood Botanical Garden which is located about 30 minutes from my house. I got lucky and both were accepted into the exhibit. The opening reception and awards presentation is tomorrow (well, I know it’s already tomorrow in most of the rest of the world so let’s just say November 13). I have no idea what the other entries look like except for the fact that they have to depict some sort of landscape, not limited to realistic landscape. If I win anything, I’ll let you all know! Here are my two entries: