New Pet Portraits

Four recent pet portrait commissions to post:


Poo
Watercolor on Yupo, 8" x 8"



Rooney
Watercolor on Yupo, 8" x 8"


Zola & Lucy Bell
Watercolor on Yupo, 5" x 7"
Check out the mosaic art by their mom - Dorothy Edwards. I traded this portrait for an animal themed mirror and a mosaic bottle.


Miss Gabby
Watercolor on Yupo, 8" x 8"
A bit of explanation on this one - Gabby's owner (Barbara Burns, also an artist) is in Texas and she provided the reference photos, since TX is not exactly close enough for me to hop on over and do a photo shoot. A couple of the photos were of Gabby in a tent where she liked to hang out. In discussions with Barbara, we decided the portrait should show Gabby in the tent. So I combined two photos for reference for the portrait. It's not obvious in the final portrait, but those that know Gabby know what it is and the colors of the tent made a nice composition with the bright colors.

These are the reference photos I used:

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Pastoral Patchwork

"Pastoral Patchwork" is a drawing I've been working on for years - no kidding! It's something I started at least 5 years ago when my friend Sandy shared photos of her trip to the Isle of Man. Since it wasn't a commissioned drawing, it was something I'd pick up and put down in between other projects. My intent was to enter it in the Art at the Classic equine art show at the Draft Horse Classic one day. Well that day finally came and I finished the drawing in time to submit it for this year's show! It was accepted and will be on display from September 18 - 21 at the Nevada County Fairgrounds in Grass Valley, CA. Art at the Classic is an excellent juried art show featuring equine art from around the country. I've gotten a few drawings accepted over the years and have even won a ribbon or two. And of course, the Draft Horse Classic is a can't-miss event if you love horses. The gentle giants are powerful, impressive and beautiful.

Now back to the drawing process. Sandy had visited the Home of Rest for Old Horses and took some photos. One in particular caught my eye. She was using an Advantix camera that took panoramic photos and I really liked the composition of this one:



I knew it would make a great scratchboard drawing, so, I got a digital copy from her and converted it to greyscale


. . . and as I usually do, I tweaked the contrast a bit to give me darker darks and lighter lights


Here's the finished drawing - in India ink on EssDee scraperboard (scratchboard)


I thought you might like to see just a bit of the detail



For more information on the Home for Rest for Old Horses check out these links:
You Tube Video

A blog post by Phil Parker

This is pretty cool too - Sandy's souvenir, a harness fob from the Home for Rest:

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The Horse Gift - Le Cadeau du Cheval - Equine Mural Project

Now that my panel is posted on-line, I can tell you about a great project I've been involved in. I had seen one of the projects by Mural Mosaic some time ago and thought it was a very inventive idea. I always thought it would be fun to participate in something like that. When I found out about a new Mural Mosaic project, Le Cadeau du Cheval (The Horse Gift), I applied to participate and was accepted along with 172 other artists. The Cadeau mural is composed of 238 individual 16" x 16" panels. The overall mural is huge, coming in at 18' x 22'. The full mural has yet to be seen by the public, but it's a painting of a horse. It will be unveiled at Spruce Meadows in Alberta, Canada on September 3rd.

The panels were shipped from Mural Mosaic's home base in Alberta, Canada to artists around the world and we painted our own stand-alone equine art on them and sent them back (in pre-paid packages no less - this was a very well-organized project!). When we received our panels they were already painted with a portion of the overall image (see the first image below), so we had to stick to that overall tone and pattern for our individual paintings.


This is how the panel looked when I received it.

I had decided to paint "Clever Hans" after reviewing the list of famous horses posted on the Mural Mosaic site. You can read more about Clever Hans on my page of the Cadeau site (there's a link at the bottom, cllick on the image of my finished panel).


I couldn't find any terribly helpful reference material of Clever Hans, so I decided just to use my Quarter Horse mare, Bess as my model. I found a good reference photo of her head and worked with that. Then I added numbers and mathematical symbols to the design and printed that out at 16" x 16", the size of the panel, so I could transfer it directly.


At this stage, I'd transferred my image to the panel and outlined the numbers/symbols with a pen.



I used acrylic, not my typical medium, but it was the perfect paint for this type of project. Most of the artists used acrylic, but I believe a few used oil and at least one did pyrography (wood burning). Artists were asked to completely cover the existing paint on the panels.


Here I've painted the numbers and started work on Hans


And this is the final painting, panel #153 of Le Cadeau du Cheval.
Click on Clever Hans to visit my page of the Cadeau site.

Having never done anything like this before, I'm very pleased with the result. But there are some absolutely stunning paintings in this mosaic. Two of my favorites are Panel 137 and Panel 130. You can easily spend a lot of time looking at the mosaic and the individual panels - it's fascinating! And check out Horse Gift's YouTube channel for videos about this mural.

Books of the mural are also available, click here to find out more.

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Hairy Dogs

Did you know that dog fur can be made into yarn? I did, but the neat thing is that I recently found a seller on Etsy that was able to use some of Magpie's furry undercoat to create a ring. Magpie is our border collie. I was browsing Etsy ("the place for all things handmade") and came across the "fuzzy friend ring" offered in Baloo's shop. Carolyn is the proprietor of the shop, Baloo is one of her dogs. I contacted Carolyn to see if she could make a ring with some of Magpie's fur and she agreed. I brushed Magpie over a few weeks' time to get enough fur and sent it off to Carolyn. Within a couple of weeks, I had my cool ring! I had also "harvested" enough Magpie fur for Carolyn to make a cuff bracelet.





I'm really happy with Magpie's "product" and Carolyn's work - if you're looking for a unique keepsake of (from?) your canine friend(s), this is it! Click here to find out more. If this item (my ring & cuff) is no longer listed, try this link.

And while we're on the subject of dog hair, my most recent drawing was an ACEO (small format drawing) of an Irish Wolfhound. They're quite the hairy dogs and this was a fun one to draw! The ACEO has already sold and is on its way to Canada; I didn't get around to posting it here before the eBay auction closed.

If you'd like your own version of this shaggy dog drawing, it's available as a magnet in my CafePress shop. I have a selection of my artwork on magnets in the shop. Click here to see them.

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