Chicory’s Horse Portrait
So here it is after a few more hours on Sunday afternoon. I know it doesn’t really look like a lot of progress has been made, but bear in mind this is just about life sized.
I am looking forward to starting the right side. It will be the shadow side so I can play with some richer colors and also add contrast.
The grapevines of wrath
My morning was spent pulling well established (like over 10 year old ) grape vines out of incredibly old (like 70 year old) barbed wire fence. It will be a miracle if I don’t get Tetnus. These things are like trees, except the are all twisty and gnarly and grown into the fence. The fence and the vines have officially become one.
I tried to convince my husband that the smart thing to do would be to drop in new posts a few feet from the old fence line. He didn’t agree. So we spent the morning, hack saw in hand, cutting and pulling and occasionally swearing.
All the while Chicory was watching, head held high, stone statue still. Except every few minutes he would spin around, squeal and buck. Then take off in a gallop around his paddock. Only to charge the fence and do a rolling stop any reining champion would be proud of. Upon which he would resume his statue pose while giving me the eye. All of this equine drama was his way of saying “let me the heck out there with you guys!”
I took a break and came in to the gallery today to work on my Soul portrait. But rest assured I have a full evening of viney entertainment ahead of me.
By the way, we use an electrified rope for Chicory’s pasture fence that is run well inside of the barbed wire. But if we didn’t remove the grapes, they would short out the fence.
If you take out the grapevines, you won’t be able to make wine or jelly!
Loving the Chicory progress…and wishing I could afford a life-sized photo of my two!
Looking intensely colorful and very realistic. When I read your posts about working on suede the first time, I go the impression that you might not wet that paper much, are you wetting the inktense much here? I love the colors and look of this, thus far. I bought some Neocolor II to help me with large backgrounds — I may want to try these inktense also — I am not used to working with the water media. The color pencil society of America accepts the Newocolor II’s as colored pencil, but not the inktense. I would not have expected them to feel like Prismacolors dry.
Farm maintenance/work can be time consuming, the feeling of physical accomplishment feels good sometimes though. Best of luck with your fence project.
I am trying to do a CP painting a week to get my art fair inventory ready by July 1 so that I can use the month of July for framing/orgainizing. Seems overwelming at times since I am such a newbie.
Hey Carol, seeing as these are wild grapes, I’m not sure what kind of wine or jelly they mioght make. Plus I’m not really the sort to do that. If I were I would have been utelizing our Mulberry trees more. I always knew when they were ripe because the geese would start pooping purple.
When I started the Chicory painting I thought “Too bad he didn’t have Catch’s coloring, then it would be gorgeous.” But alas chicory is red so there you go.
Angela I am still not wetting the paper much. I have been using the Inktense pencils for my base coat only. Which I wet using a damp q-tip. If I use a brush the suede soaks up the water like a sponge and it takes forever to dry. I only grabbed a couple of the ink pencils. I choose colors that were missing from my wc pencil sets . Now I wished I had grabbed more. I am pretty sure I’ll buy the complete set next time I get ready to order art supplies though.
Anywho after the base color I no longer apply water.
Good for you, a painting a week is a serious goal. My first event is in June and I am blissfully pretending it is not so soon.
I think you were right and you should’ve been able to keep the vines and set up a new fence. Ten year old grapevines probably bore a lot of fruit and that would’ve been awesome.