First donation of 2008 nearly done

I thought I'd share a sneak peek of my first donation for the year 2008 - in fact, aside from a almost-unpublicized medallion donation last spring, I think it's my first donation in many years!

Erin Corbett's Hearts N Horses live show in Portland, OR on February 16, 2008 is the recipient of this first donation. It's a smaller show, so it's for the raffle, and I kept it pretty low-key: it's a G1 Stablemate Seabiscuit, painted to a simple golden palomino with minimal markings. I did do a lot of fine detailing, painting on wrinkles, eyebrows, veining, and individual hairs, because I felt this enhanced the simple sculpture. His face sports an uneven star and tiny, hairy little snip, and he is softly and subtly dappled. At this point, only his eyes, hooves, and chestnuts have yet to be painted.

I chose to support Erin's show for two reasons. First, it is a specialty show, featuring mini halter and performance only, and I believe that specialty shows are really the wave of the future in this hobby. Occasional larger shows with all divisions are great, but too often showholders try to hard to have everything at the expense of a really well-planned show, and often can't get enough good judges for all the divisions. That brings me to the second reason, which IS the judges - Erin got some of the best of the Pacific Northwest, including Tracy Eilers, Melanie Miller, Robin Lee, and her own performance expertise. She clearly took care to choose really experienced judges, and I applaud her for that!

The horse will be available at raffle for show attendees. Unfortunately, Erin will not be able to sell raffle tickets except at the show, but if you know someone in Region 1 who will be attending and you're interested in the horse, I encourage you to ask them to buy raffle tickets by proxy (as Erin suggested). I don't want anyone interested in this piece to miss out! He will likely be my first completed horse of 2008, and I can't wait to post finished pictures.

Fun new mini Nahar in the works

Commissions have been swimming along at quite a nice pace lately, so in between their layers of paint and primer drying I've been working on a horse for me, who will eventually be for sale. I am really excited to share this mini Nahar, as his paintjob is based on (but not exactly copied from - I tried something a little different on the belly) a horse I met a couple years ago at the Equine Affaire and have been wanting to paint ever since! Click here to see Magnum Spatz.

I am experimenting on this one, too - doing his markings in oils instead of acrylics. It's a big slower going, but it actually feels like it may take fewer layers than acrylics, and blending the pink muzzle will be a snap! The pictures are a little grainy, and yes, his tail definitely needs some more work! He also will have a lot of Bend'Or spots (you can sort of see them in the pictures of the real horse).

Experimentation

I've been wanting to experiment with techniques for dapple greys for a while now. To me, dapple grey is a covetous sort of color; those artists who do it brilliantly are few and far between, and to truly be in awe of an artist, she (or he) must paint a good dapple grey. Naturally, then, they've always intimidated me - no matter how easy Danelle says they are to paint! ;)

I've been chatting about my work with Tracy Eilers lately (ah, slow hours at work!) and she was giving me some pointers about her newer dapple grey techniques. I decided to play around with what she told me, and have a SM G3 Warmblood in progress. She's all acrylics, and I'm aiming to make her a dark grey just starting to dapple out. It's a tedious process and somewhat frustrating, but it's been fun - very different from my usual oil paint methods! For now she's mostly a practice for an upcoming commission I hope to do in the same color, but if she herself turns out nicely, I'll probably pop her on eBay and see how she's received.

Welcome!

Hello, and thank you for visiting my blog on my newly updated website!

My intent with this blog is mainly to share what's going on in my studio, in the vein of progress pictures and reports. I find this will be much easier than doing hefty HTML updates to a progress page on my website each time I want to share something. But I'm also interested in just posting general thoughts about the hobby and the nature of what we do, and sharing my techniques as well. In addition, I will post when my website is updated. I don't intend for this to be a replacement for my mailing list, but rather to complement it.

I have a new digital camera on its way to me; my trusty old one purchased in 2004 started fading over the summer and is now completely unusable (it turns on, but I think the lens is dead, as the pictures taken are just black). No matter, as I wanted to upgrade to higher-tech anyway. When the camera comes later this week, expect photos of several horses in progress on this blog.

In the meantime, I wish all my readers a happy Thanksgiving :)