April 2 - Finished the backlit Pasture Scene, and April Fools for yesterday!

I finished the lesson painting in acrylics, spending most of the work on the details and glazing over to create the illusion of atmosphere and dust. These horses are in a drylot, which means dust and no grass--just hay in the feeder. I enjoyed making the highlights on each of the horses a slightly different color, and then unifying the complementary colors with the glazes using gel medium and thinned colors. I hope you enjoy it!

In other news, I received my advance copy of the American Journal of Veterinary Medicine, with my painting "Lesson Cat" on the cover. You can see the painting in September 2006 of my dailypaintings.com site! It's sold, of course, and I even had some folks trying to buy it again! Oh dear. Maybe I need to paint more cats... I do so love them!

Yesterday's silly Photoshop'd image of that celebrity had a few of you going for a while... April Fools!

Complete blog here.

March 31 - Trail Ride and 90% Finished Horses

After a six hour ride up and over the mountain behind my studio, I came home with one tired mare, and a bit achy myself. Organized trail rides can be great fun, unless you end up behind a complete idiot, which I did for part of this ride. Makes for some very challenging moments, however my mare came through fine. Today's ride was a good one for a pre-ride for the one I'm leading next month. Knowing how tired my mare is, I can easily see her in this painted pasture, resting with her buddies, glad to be home. So the painting progresses with real-life experience to back it up.


That said, tonight's work on the 11 x 14 acrylic brought it almost to completion, with the light just about in place, and with tweaking that will not majorly change it to come on the morrow. Most of the added paint is in the form of glazed layers, with come opaque areas created to bind and unify the colors and composition. Playing wiht the layers and texture in the foreground will come next, as will the dust, which is only partly in place right now. Fun!

Complete lesson here.