Fur In The Paint

Portrait of Buddy work in progress
Painting Size 11 x 12

Buddy
I have a full day of customers booked in the gallery today so I don’t expect to make any progress on the portrait. But since tomorrow is Sunday I am hoping that I can finish him completely and move on to the next piece. The color is pretty much right on in the above photo and just a little off on the other.

Blogging Stats: Amused and Confused
So I was helping Budda do research for his next “Ask The Budda” post (he has trouble with the keyboard since god neglected to give him opposable thumbs) and here are a few of the more weird searches that brought people to my (or perhaps more correctly “our” ) blog.

And so for my own amusement if nothing else, I thought I’d include a few of the more bizarre things people searched for.

There was the usual assortment of
paint in cats fur and
how to paint a cats fur. (Please for the love of all that is good, don’t)

Also loads of misspelled searches and searches that made no sense to me at all like:
art deep paints pps
pencil chach pic 2 in 1 their

But here are the top 5 contenders that most confused or amused me:

5. horses are covered with fur. This really seems like a statement not a search request.

4. Beady Eyed Canadians Okay I’ve only done one post about Canadians and that was about geese, so apparently there isn’t much out there for information on the beady eyed Canadians if Google sent them to me.

3. Flamingo Fur I’ve got nothing to say.

2. Budda sitting on a toilet. Yes, they spelled it wrong as so many millions of others have (Okay people one last time, Buddha the spiritual leader has an “h” in it.) but the real question is why? Why would anyone want to see that.

1. Girls removing nickers and farting images Yeah I know. But I have to laugh when I imagine his disappointment to wind up on a blog talking about pony nickers and kitten farts.

I’ve been working hard on getting my Christmas cards out (you know, like before the actual event) that I haven’t been able to blog as normal. So I thought I’d put up the start-to-finish of Big Al. Also I plan to have a Christmas story (since I did a Halloween story) that will post on Christmas Eve. And finally . . . with any luck I’ll get at the very least, a line drawing done of the new horse painting posted sometime this week.

Spanish Gold work in progress
17 x 22
Watercolor Pencil on suede

Now that I have my background wash in, it looks so totally different I couldn’t help myself but to put up one more work in progress shot.

The suede makes putting in watercolor pencil washes so much easier than using wc paper. I’m not sure why but it’s almost effortless. What would have taken me most of an afternoon took about 20 minutes. Of course it then requires like an hour of dry time. But at least with that I can work on other areas or simply do something else for awhile.

As it’s Sunday I came in a bit late and plan on getting this painting up to the tweaking stage. The big job for this afternoon is to sketch out this year’s Christmas card and get it ready to go. I can see it clearly in my head. Now whether or not I get it out onto paper is a whole other matter.

To quote Angela Finney “Happy painting!”

The background, shoulder area and forelock and mane are all just washed in. The finishing work is yet to be done in these areas. The final cropping will be decided at the end of the painting.

Spanish Gold work in progress
17 x 22
Watercolor Pencil on suede

Probably, notice I said probably
As in, I foresee the background and all his bodacious floaty mane going in quickly and easily (just planting the seed there for my muse) and only taking one more afternoon’s work. We shall see.

Forgotten Post
So I was looking through my folder of unfinished blog posts and I realized I forgot to post the Start-To-Finish on my Liberty painting. I would have just deleted it but I thought I kinda went from picture 3 to finished photo without showing the in between steps on the blog. Plus it’s kinda interesting (to me if no one else) to see all the wip shots together..

Spanish Gold work in progress
17 x 22
Watercolor Pencil on suede

Yippee for Sundays!
I’ve been desperate to get some work done on Big Al all this week. The closest I’ve come is setting my Diet Coke on my table next to the drafting table. Everyday I say “Okay I’ll work until. . . and then I’ll work on my painting.” And everyday we’ve just had too many people come into the gallery to make it happen. I really need to finish him though because I need to do my Christmas cards (as in create the artwork for) and then I have a project for my brother which I said I would try to make happen before Christmas. (Sheesh!)

So Yippee for Sundays because I can work all day and hopefully get Big Al’s shoulder area in and maybe get the saddle and such washed in. That would only leave the background and all that floaty mane filling up the entire right side of the painting. (I just need to keep repeating to myself, I think I can . . . I think I can)

FITNESS TIP: shoveling a ton of horse poo is an excellent cardio.

Part of the problem
is I took the day off on Thursday . . . and it was glorious. Not that I did anything glorious. Not even close. I envision glorious as laying on the couch with my feet up while someone is rubbing them, and feeding me bon-bons while listening to soothing music. But no, I stayed home and did some yard chores, cleaned the barn (which I am ashamed to say was woefully past due) and watched a few hours of bad TV. It was totally awesome!.

When Mike called to check in, I told him I should take a day off every week! All I heard was . . . . silence. So okay maybe once every two weeks will be enough. I shouldn’t tease him. He was so good to go in and let me have some quiet time. It’s especially generous because he hates working the gallery alone. I’m the talker (yeah, I know. Who knew right?) so I tend to handle the customers.

On the other hand Mike noticed my vastly improved mood so maybe I can get one day off out of . . . oh, let’s shoot for every 10. That sounds fair, right?

Spanish Gold- Andalusian Stallion (wip)
Water color Pencil on Suede
Approx 18×23

I didn’t get as much time to work on him as I would have liked today but at least I got some time in. Though it was barely enough new work to warrant a post.

I had seriously pondered taking him with me and demonstrating at the event this weekend. In the end I decided against it. Partly because the chance for damaging the work (as in mishandling, spilling, getting rained on . . . or worse still, snowed on) is greatly increased. And partly because their booth spaces are tiny (a mere 8×10) so I really don’t want to take up the space.

The color got a little green in this photo. The previous work in progress shot is closer to true.

Spanish Gold- Andalusian Stallion (wip)
Water color Pencil on Suede
Approx 18×23

Okay, so I know I’m not the number one horse artist. Not even close.

But I did a Google search for horse artist and I (meaning Wild Faces Gallery website) was the first listing (of 30,800,000) under the ads and image results. (Whoohoo) Same thing for horse art

I had been ranking pretty high (as in first or on the front page) with bing, ask and yahoo. But this is a new for Google. Equine art I’m nowhere to be found. (or at least not on the opening page.) Still I’m pretty pleased.

Of course this can all go poof. In fact it may change by the time I post this. I better enjoy the glory while it lasts. I think I’ll celebrate with a diet coke and a snack. And then perhaps back to work on my painting.

A love affair with pink noses.
So I deviated from the real Alborozo by giving my horse a pink nose. I really have a thing for pink noses. I put them on every horse I can.

The nose area is not done. I guess I could break it down this way.
Ears: Stage 1 Barely started
Nose: Stage 2 At least one layer in
Eyes: Stage 3 Nearly completed

Spanish Gold (working title)
approximately 18×22
Watercolor pencil on suede C1741

The easiest white horse ever.
I often struggle with getting a decent looking white horse. Of course I am always working on a white board or paper. So today with this soft grey suede, the white is almost effortless.( Sweet.)

I am having so much fun working on this guy. Long time readers know that I am a sectional painter. So these little pockets of horse divided nicely by the fancy tack are also keeping me quite happy. At the moment the tack is making him look a little askew. Part of that is when I drape in his forelock and mane it will be covering some of it. And part is because all the tack has yet to be colored in. (and perhaps part is because I was following my reference photo to closely. Ummm . . . . or not closely enough.)

The challenges of working on suede have once again stimulated my brain. (today I played around with working while the suede was still wet) I tend to get bored and it is the new challenges and the figuring them out part, that keeps me creating.

Honesty
My dear friend Barb McGee stopped by the gallery yesterday and was looking at the drawing (I hadn’t yet begun to work on the actual painting yet) and she’s all “Well at least you didn’t crop off the ears.”

I smile and say “Actually, I think I might.”

With exasperation in her voice she’s all “Why?” Followed by a little shaking of the head and rolling of the eyes to indicate the insanity of such a thing.

And I’m like “Because it’s my thing.”

Truth is, whether or not the ears get cropped is all about my balance of negative space. So if I must loose the tips of the ears to achieve the desired results, so be it. And yes, that is my thing.

Transitional Title
I am pretty sure Spanish Gold will be the final title for my Big Al painting. But I have not completely settled on it. I started with “The Spaniard” and then thought perhaps “Silver & Gold” and then I just sort of combined the two.

Note: Barb is one of my favorite people in this world. She’s honest, though occasionally harsh sounding. She can say things to me, that if said by someone else, would totally piss me off. But coming from Barb, I usually just laugh and roll with it.

It’s very nearly done here. It just needs some tweaking. Unfortunately I have run out of daylight today.

It has become my habit to work on my art only during daylight hours so I don’t have to work under my desk lamps. This keeps me from being disappointed when the art looks different on the wall than on the well-lit desk. At any rate I’ll get it done tomorrow.

I’m not sure how I feel about it. I think I would have been happier had I done a more realistic background. Mike pointed out to me that I did an oil pastel background instead of a watercolor pencil background. It hadn’t occurred to me that I tend to treat my backgrounds different with either media. But I looked around and sure enough, I do. So maybe that’s it. Anyway I’m anxious to begin the next horse project so I really want to finish this off.

Oh yeah. it is also as of yet untitled. I’m thinking maybe At Liberty or just Liberty