Equine Artists

More signs of spring this week: the bicycle racers that train on the highway to the barn have reappeared; saw my first dead skunk of the season on the side of the same road (although no gophers yet); horse turnout pens are a disgusting sea of mud; I had my winter tires switched out today for my summer ones. I’m sure there are more but that’s what comes to mind for now. We won’t be seeing anything in the line of plant growth, blossoms, or flowers for a month or so yet—or insects either, I hope. We usually only manage a few outdoor riding days around here that are “post mud” but “pre biting insect” and they are always days to be cherished. Maybe this year with spring being early we’ll have a few more of them to appreciate.
I managed to work myself into quite a (self-inflicted) tizzy for most of Saturday. My husband was tending a “Seeds of Diversity” display at a local food/gardening event, and I offered to make up a sign for the booth, which I was quite happily doing Saturday morning. I haven’t used my big printer for a while, but it is a steady performer and never gives me any concerns, which is more than I can say for my little 4 in 1 (both Epsons). I did the sign but, unusually, wasn’t really happy with the colours the big printer was producing.
In on-going and largely misguided attempts to tweak the system, I occasionally mess with the colour settings on the printer, and I thought that’s what I must have done the last time I printed a photo, so I fiddled a bit, then tried again. No luck. Looked just as bad as the first one.
OK, Jim was content with the sign the way it was, but I get very offended and take it personally when I can’t get visuals the way I think they should be. I decided that now was the time to delve into this and sort out my printer settings once and for all. I spent most of the rest of the day working on various combinations and permutations of settings, still getting very similar and uniformly bad outcomes. Determined not to quit until I had this resolved, I made more and more sweeping changes to the settings (Googling for tutorials and self-help information as I went and occasionally panicking over whether I would ever be able to get back to where I should be) but no matter how extreme the settings, my end results always looked strangely similar.
I at least had the sense to take a break and go ride my horse mid-afternoon, then returned to colour-setting hell for more hours than I care to recall. By my quite late bed-time that night, all I had to show for the day’s efforts was a really large pile of virtually identical-looking pinkish-purple prints of the test image I was working on. That and a whole pile of frustration and an attitude verging on despair. I recall at some point in the process thinking that it might be easier just to buy a new printer and try again, but even in the state I was in I could recognize that as a not entirely rational thought. Tempting, but not rational.
I slept surprisingly well, and when I awoke the next morning, the first thing that came to my mind was the odd fact that no matter how I changed the settings (and some of them should have made quite a difference to the print) the results always looked the same. Almost as if not all the colours were printing. Kind of like the first thing the “help” list suggested when I looked up the printer’s trouble-shooting FAQ at the beginning of this process, but dismissed out of hand as not being the problem. Now feeling hopeful enough to actually get up out of bed, I hied myself off to the studio to check out this hypothesis. The trouble-shooting diagnostics showed virtually no yellow ink being released. Running the cleaning utility then trying the diagnostic print again generated pretty well perfect results. Bingo. I guess the moral of the story here is when in doubt, check the basics first, and for gosh sakes pay attention to what the “help” pages suggest for the problem at hand!
Shot number one today features the disgusting sea of mud mentioned above, in this case being thoroughly enjoyed by Denzel, turned out last week for “a roll and a run”, since his regular pen is a lot smaller than this one and he appreciates the chance to get turned loose in the larger paddock every now and then. He got the “roll” part perfectly, but reconsidered the “run” once he noticed the nice hay on offer, which he opted for instead.


Shot two has as its base a photo I took at this time of year a couple of years ago. It’s a strongly back-lit shot with a lot of technical problems, but there’s something about it that I feel has potential, so every so often I drag it out and play with it in Photoshop to see what I can come up with. This is the current version, where I have layered it with a shot of cedar boughs and reworked some of the colouring. I’m quite pleased with this one. Eventually I’ll have a whole collection of variations on the theme just from this shot alone.

Shot three shows the nice new patio table I picked up at Costco on the weekend which we will use in our “sidewalk cafe” area at the front of the house. Our house is south facing and this area is a real heat trap. Perfect in early spring and late fall for sitting outside for coffee or lunch, too darn hot for summer use, when we retreat to the backyard deck which is almost always shady. This is a slate-topped table with copper accents, and good and heavy. I was going to christen it today when I had my afternoon coffee break, but it was a bit cool and breezy by then so I stayed indoors. Maybe tomorrow.

Shot four shows what I was doing while Jim and grandson Mark were assembling the patio table. Mark and I had a heck of a time unpacking the table due to the very strong cardboard and generally Fort Knox-like packaging. In the end we pretty well had to rend it apart by whatever means would work. At that point my artist’s eye kicked in and I became totally preoccupied by the visual interest of the patterns and shadows of the cardboard, so I spent a very absorbed interval photographing much of the torn cardboard while they (mostly Mark) wrestled with table assembly. I like to collect interesting patterns and textures for use in my photomontages, and look forward to seeing how I can incorporate these shots into new artwork.

Shot five features Mark “playing with fire” after he finished with the table assembly. Actually he is working with a flint fire-starter from Lee Valley which I hadn’t seen in use before and which is surprisingly effective. He’s working on a cement area and I don’t think there is any need for concern over this being a real fire hazard, although if you were lost in the woods with one of these on hand, and had dry mosses or leaves, you could get a nice fire underway for yourself if necessary. Simple, effective, and nothing to break down. If only everything in life was like that!

©Copyright 2010 by Judy Wood. See original post here.
To learn more about this artist, visit her website.