Tag Archives: cattle

Latest Paintings

Untitled
5 x 7 original acrylic
Untitled
11 x 14 original acrylic

Hey everyone! Here are some pics of the latest pieces I’ve worked on. They’re both untitled as of yet, although I’m thinking of calling the bull “A Whole Lotta Bull!”.

The first piece, the pony, was pretty much just a quick, getting back in the mode piece. Just a little warmer to get back into the swing of things. I could actually do a lot more on it, but am choosing not to and will leave it at that.

As for the bull, isn’t he just the prettiest bull? I mean, if bulls can be pretty, that is. I do find him to be a beauty though. I photographed him at a rodeo this past summer and fell in love with his eyes. His eyes looked both scary and beautiful at the same time. I’m sure the guys who ride him probably find him to be a scary brute! Anyhow, I loved this bull and have been itching to paint him for months now. I’m glad I’ve finally gotten around to it. I might change the background somewhat though. I think I might like it more brown and earthy than the bright orange. I’ll see just how much time I have since I’m currently working on a mallard and will soon be starting a horse portrait. All in good time, eh!

Gotta go now, but I’ll post the next 2 pieces as soon as they’re done. Also, be sure to drop in at my MySpace page and add me as a friend! ( www.myspace.com/carole_rodrigue )

©Copyright 2008 by Carole Rodrigue. See original post here.
To learn more about this artist, visit Carole Rodrigue’s website.

Focused

Corgis…Corgis……….Cardigan Corgis!

This is a 7 1/2 x 11″ watercolor on watercolor board from a sketch of a Cardigan herding cattle……what captured me about this shot was the intense stare of the Cardigan on the eye of his subject. His human mom sent it to me. It is as if he is saying [ with his eye] “You better go where I want you to go!” and you know…I think the cow has got the message! Of course the shadows and movement of the moment captured me too. I am a sucker for a shot with great shadow and movement.
I am putting this watercolor up on my website…………
Also I want to mention that I am a member of the Canine Art Guild…and am one of the artists in an online art show called “Helping Paws” , where a portion of the sales go to the canine rescue group of our choice. I have a small casein of a Pembroke hanging in the show and all of the money fro the sale of this cute PWC painting goes to CorgiAid. Take a stroll over and check out the great show …and be sure to help out CorgiAid. CorgiAid is a nonprofit organization founded to provide> financial assistance to corgis and corgi mixes. They help rescue Corgis from dog shelters or other non-permanent homes, then foster them until a new forever home is found. Medical and other expenses for these dogs can become high. That is why I wanted to donate the sale of this Corgi painting 100 percent to CorgiAid. My painting is titled “Just Sitting There” [ 4 x 6"]
And now I need to get focused on the job at hand……….more on that later!

©Copyright 2008 by Kathi Peters. See original post here.
To learn more about this artist, visit Kathi Peters’s website.

Suzie Q, a watercolor painting of a cute cow!

Suzie Q is kind of cute with a bright look on her face and some grass hanging out her mouth. You can tell she was eating, as cows tend to do, when some movement in the pasture caught her attention. Maybe she’s looking at a coyote who wandered across the field, or it could be you’re bringing her a bucket of oats?

If you use your imagination, you can figure out what she sees!

It’s always been my wish, to create a lot of paintings of animals, and maybe not put a very big price on them. I don’t want you to have to be rich to buy one of my paintings. I’d rather have a hundred of these paintings out in homes where they’re enjoyed, than to have them sitting on my shelf, crying at me to sell them somewhere!

So don’t be afraid to ask about this painting. She isn’t going to cost you much. She’ll be in my Etsy shop for sale with a wonderful, decorative, gold frame around her. See…that wasn’t so hard! You’ve just purchased a nice, original painting for a friend, and one Christmas gift is out of your way!
Thank you!
Donna Ridgway

©Copyright 2008 by Donna Ridgway. See original post here.
To learn more about this artist, visit Donna Ridgway’s website.

Coming home to roost

A number of chickens are coming home to roost for me, as the saying goes. All the vague promises and less vague show commitments of various sorts, made months ago when it seemed there was all the time in the world, are now getting a bit demanding in their need for my time and attention. As a result of the ever closer impending deadlines, I’ve been spending some time rooting through my photo files to generate some new images for my upcoming shows and displays. Since I have a vast assortment of file folders, most with large numbers of sub-folders, and all containing a *lot* of shots, this is a considerable task. These are mostly on the old computer which is slow and tedious to work with, and also none have keywords to make my search process easier. I’ll take the time to rave about keywords (a concept that has been out there,  just not on my radar until I got the new computer and new Photoshop and actually read some instructions) on another occasion. Short version is keywords help hugely to pull up the subject matter one wants/needs, and I don’t have them here so am doing my usual wandering around amongst the collection and getting distracted way too easily.
The first serious commitment that I need a lot of work done for is the Western Art Gallery at the Canadian Finals Rodeo show in Edmonton, the first week in November. It has come to my attention that this isn’t that far off, and a five day show needs a fair amount of product. Since this will be my first time out to this show with photos ( I attended it with my stained glass work many years back), I have pretty well no idea how much I should have on hand to last the five days, but am optimistically thinking I’d better have quite a bit. So with this ranch/rodeo venue in mind, I started searching for my working cowboy shots. Somehow (don’t ask) I ended up in the chicken part of my birds folder. I have a bit of an obsession with doing chicken photography, as I believe I have mentioned before in this blog. As anyone who has looked at more than a couple of my posts will have noticed, I have a bit of an obsession with a lot of things, at least as far as taking pictures goes. I’m kind of a visual magpie (and of course magpies, crows and ravens are part of the obsession) when it comes to gathering images, and chicken images are no exception to the rule. So before I moved on to the shots I was actually after, I had to take a bit of time to play with a few of my many chicken shots.
From chickens, I moved on to the farrier folder (at least I had worked into the right species here), had a brief fling with some carousel horse shots, then eventually got stuck into the Clearwater ranch and PFRA cattle sorting shots that were my original goal. By this time I was shuffling back and forth between two different computers and systems, since these photos are distributed throughout both computers. No point in having any of this be simple. I should really take the time to figure out how to make my computers speak to each other, but I have a deep and abiding conviction/fear that they won’t (Hal here being what he is) and as long as I don’t try to make it happen I can still pretend that it’s possible.
The other metaphorical chickens coming home to roost are my local daughter and her family, who have been off in England, France and Belgium for the past couple of weeks. They were due to arrive just before six this evening, but missed their connecting flight in Toronto so won’t be arriving until later this evening. I’ve had their younger dog (Arrow) here for the duration, but Margaret’s Australian Shepherd, Brodie, doesn’t get along with my Mickey so Brodie went to “camp” at Happy Dog Acres for the two weeks. This was a big deal for all of us as Brodie is what could diplomatically be called a “special” dog, if by special you mean a very needy Velcro dog who melts down if he can’t keep Margaret in his line of sight at all times. If he’s outside and she’s at home to be stared at, he runs from window to window to peer in at her if she moves from one room to another, so some anxiety on how he would do in a boarding situation wasn’t unreasonable.
I didn’t phone to inquire how he was doing in case he had gone over the edge mentally, since there wasn’t going to be anything I could do about it, but I was the one delegated to head out there today to pick him up and deliver him to his home. I was happy and mildly astonished to hear that he had done well, behaved nicely, wasn’t weird, and all in all was a good boarder. I have no reason to think the young woman working there would lie to me, so I have to believe that this turned out way better than anyone expected. So now Brodie has been restored to his home environment (possibly a better or at least less neurotic dog for the experience), and in a couple of hours Arrow and I will head off to the airport to gather up the rest of the wandering clan.
First shot is one of the cattle sorting ones, featuring Dale Clearwater’s working apprentice, Amanda, on her attractive horse. It’s been a while since I got to play with Photoshop so I had to mess with most of these shots to a greater or lesser extent.
Shot number two is of my friend Pearl’s flock, or part of it, merged with a photo of oak leaves which show through a bit at the top.
Shot three is from my “dust” series of a year back, when we had a very dry summer. This one was at my friend Sharon’s place, showing her in silhouette turning the horses out to the pasture, ably assisted by one of her dogs.
Shot four is a grand rooster, which is an older shot that I took at the local zoo a few years back. Strangely, I have almost total recall for where all the chicken photos I have were taken and can generally remember what the lighting and weather conditions were, and who was with me. This is a bit odd given all the important stuff I need to remember that doesn’t make any impression on me at all.
Final shot is back at the cattle sorting, showing Dale Clearwater in the midst of the herd. I desaturated the cattle, left some colour in Dale, and enhanced the sky which was pretty blown out in the original shot.
Note for Saskatoon and area readers. I am a juror for the photo competition part of the “Reflections of Nature” wildlife art show at the exhibition grounds this coming weekend, and as such I get to display a few of my own photos, if I understand correctly. So if you are heading out to view the wildlife art, check to see if I have some work on display as well.

©Copyright 2008 by Judy Wood. See original post here.
To learn more about this artist, visit Judy Wood’s website.

Cattle call

It’s been some week for my camera and for me! Every second day (literally) I had a wonderful chance to gather images of various sorts. I figure I’d better not flit about for this post, will stick to just one of the events I attended, and the other subject matter and photo outings I did will have to wait their turn.

I’d been waiting and hoping for a while to get a promised phone call from my working cowhorse contacts south of the city, letting me know that a cattle sorting was going to be happening and that I would be welcome to attend with my camera. Wednesday of last week was the designated day, and only snow or driving rain (heck, maybe even not the snow) would have prevented me from being there. Rain, yes. My camera is too valuable to me to be abused that way! In any event, it was a spectacularly beautiful fall day, with temperatures just right, so no concerns on that front.

I drove down to my contact’s ranch (Dale and Teri Clearwater) to meet up with Teri and their little son Caleb. Dale had already been at the community pasture down the road for several hours at that point. Teri kindly offered to drive me to the pasture since the road was a bit challenging for city cars, and a few minutes later we were at the scene of the sorting, where all the cattle that had summered together in large herds now had to be identified by their brands, sorted out, and eventually sent off to their owner’s places for the winter months. Since the cows have been running on this range according to their own set of rules for quite a while, they don’t take kindly to men on horses disturbing their established way of doing things, so it’s a bit of a process to get this chore done.

The cattle had been herded into a large fenced area by the time I arrived, and the slow and tedious work of figuring out which cow and calf went together, and whose brand they wore, was well underway. All of this was being done by a cadre of about six or eight mounted cowboys/girls, with a few more arriving from other parts of the property as the day went on.

The noise of the cattle is really quite astonishing. It’s loud and continuous, ranging from plaintive mooing to aggressive bellowing, with everything imaginable in between. They tend to bunch up in a huge seething mass, which slowly but continuously moves and shifts. Some horses and riders work their way quietly and slowly into the midst of the herd to do brand spotting and to work out which cattle belong together, while others form a loose line a distance away from of the herd, to keep an eye on the big picture and to turn back any cattle that try to make a run for it. They seemed to rotate positions, taking turns going in or hanging back.

Once I settled down from the excitement of just being there, I was able to observe that cattle sorting seems to involve a lot of staying in one spot and watching and waiting, moving slowly and carefully within the herd, and the occasional adrenaline rush (for rider and horse) of the fast-paced pursuit of a cow or calf that is bound and determined to break through the lines and get the heck out of there. Both horses and riders need a huge amount of stamina (this is a *long* process when there are a lot of cows to be dealt with) and patience, as despite relentless efforts on everyone’s part, nothing much seemed very different after several hours of sorting and removing cattle from the main herd, although I knew there had to be a lot less cattle in the bunch than when they started out. The cattle just seem to expand to fill the available space so it was pretty hard to tell (from my vantage point, anyway) that anything was being accomplished at all.

My first shot of today shows a scene that was replayed a few times over by several of the cowboys, which is what I think of as “the connected cowboy” taking a cell phone call in the field. How they could actually communicate over the din of the herd is more than I can understand, and many of the calls were taken by riders who were sticking up above a sea of cattle like ships on the ocean, chatting away, just another day at the office.
In shot number two, Peter, the manager of the community pasture and head man of this sorting, is working at his end of a cow that needed to be roped and laid down for some badly needed assistance. She had poked her nose into a porcupine and had a fair number of quills ringing her tender nose. Unimpressed though she was with being roped and laid out on the ground, I’m sure she was greatly relieved to have the quills removed.

Shot number three shows Dale Clearwater and his horse who were responsible for the head end of the cow. The neat thing for me in all this (in addition to getting to photograph it!) was that Peter was one of the instructors at the summer working cowboy camp (see my post “When Worlds Collide”, June 23) held at Dale’s place. I was down to do photos one of the afternoons when Peter was teaching and doing demos of how to do this exact thing–rope a cow head and heels, get it laid out on the ground so it could be doctored, and how to do it in the quickest, safest and least stressful way possible for all concerned. I’d have to say this operation went exactly by the book from what I remember of Peter’s teaching and it was satisfying to see his lessons applied in a real-life situation.

Shot number four is a cute one of young Caleb Clearwater, who seems to be able to settle in with his construction equipment just about anywhere, and one of the cowboys (whose name I didn’t get) on their lunch break just before saddling up for the afternoon’s session.

The final shot for today’s post shows Peter working the kinks out of his fresh horse before the afternoon’s work began. This horse seems to need to have a little buck before settling down to work, and indeed I seem to recall getting a few shots like this of Peter and the same horse during working cowboy camp as well. The amusing thing with these shots was they started out bucking directly away from me which wasn’t the angle I wanted, so I yelled out “Can you turn around and buck parallel to me?”and by gosh they did!! Too funny.

So all in all, I had an absolutely wonderful time and have way too many shots to prove it. Also spotted a really nice herd of black Belgians in the field across the road from the community pasture that belong to the Clearwater’s neighbours, so you’ve got to know that I’ll be making at least one trip back there before too long, I hope.

You can check out another shot of one of the young woman riders in the sea of cattle here , post of September 26 .

©Copyright 2008 by Judy Wood. See original post here.
To learn more about this artist, visit Judy Wood’s website.

Lipizzan Work Ethic

Painting of a Lipizzan horse copyright Kathi Peters, all rights reserved.

In spite of weather that is calling me to come out and dead-head spent perennials in my flower gardens…and to pick zucchini that are growing bigger by the second….I have been working on a watercolor and an new mixed media work. The watercolor is done, 18″ x 8″ and is called ‘Lipizzan Work Ethic”. When I saw the intense eye on this Lipizzaner and the power in the neck…I knew I had to paint this. Consider it done. And again I want to thank my good friend Juliet for your inspirational photograph.

I also finished the watercolor of Herefords and sheep, a winter scene from our old farm in North Pownal. For years we raised our own meat and veggies during in our ‘ back to the earth” phase. Talk about being ‘green’? We were green before it became politically correct!


Painting of two herefords and a sheep eating hay by artist Kathi Peters. Copyright 2008, all rights reserved.
The mixed media piece I am doing, I did first in graphite to get my values right and to decide how I wanted to put the composition together…and I have now decided to do this one in acrylic and casein. I will be using the paints together, and this gives the work a different finish………another farm inspired work…getting ready for the Skyline Exhibit in September.

I am loving my new website and the fact that I can update it and change ” whatever” whenever I want. Check it out……… and the new artworks !!

©Copyright 2008 by Kathi Peters. See original post here.
To learn more about this artist, visit Kathi Peters’s website.

Cow photos

black and white cow
shorthorn steer
cow licking its nose

We went to get a load of wood yesterday, and I took photos of some feedlot cattle. Cows can make you laugh…and make you wonder things like how fat can a fat steer get? Why would three of them raise their tails at the same time? And how far can a cow stick her tongue up her nose?

While you’re pondering those questions, I’ll leave you…
Donna Ridgway
Email Meif you have questions, or want to inquire about purchasing a painting.

Remember, you can find horse art, Western art, Mule and Donkey art
wildlife art, cow art, and animal paintings, for sale on my website.

©Copyright 2008 by Donna Ridgway. See original post here.

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