Tag Archives: dressage

Rapture.. The Latest Painting by Deborah O’Sullivan

This gorgeous weather has found me outside the studio working on my plein air skills. It has become quite an addiction! I adore getting out there with the watercolors and seeking out great painting spots.

I always have two or three pieces going in the studio and I thoroughly enjoy working late into night with my music and Border Collie to keep me company. I have always been a bit of a night owl and find it easier to just get in the zone at night.

I started on this latest painting a while back and just hit a wall as to where I was going with it. So I let it sit in a spot where I could constantly just look at it to see what I could come up with. A few nights ago I just popped it onto the easel and literally with no plan just started throwing paint at it. Literally! I LOVE the drips on the bottom right and the way the rider just fades away. The horse is my focal point and I just wanted her to pop and not compete with the rider.

This is much larger than I usually work. Almost a full sheet of Arches Hot Press 140lb paper. Available for sale unframed. The price witll go up when I have it framed. MUCH more affordable to ship unframed! $850 includes shiiping and insurance. If you would like to give Rapture a home or would like more photos drop me an email! email I will be happy to give you the details.

Rapture


All the best,

Deborah

©Copyright 2010 by Deborah O’Sullivan. See original post here.
To learn more about this artist, visit her website.

Powered Together slowly coming together…

Another week has been and gone leaving spinning heads and square circles in its wake.

Pencils were, however, exercised and good progress has been made to “Powered Together“.
The mid-July deadline is definitely within reach!

Here below, proof of the progress….

Powered Together: Step4
Powered Together: Step5

The dark stallion now has a rider, both horses have the correct number of limbs.
A few pieces of the puzzle are however still missing.
Having a ball drawing this powerful action piece. Loads of fiddly parts that are really helping keeping my mind off the tumult that our “not so long now” move is creating backstage.

Thank goodness summer is in full swing and the sun on top form!

Wishing you all a wonderful warm summer week-end wherever you are.

©Copyright 2010 by Sheona Hamilton-Grant. See original post here.
To learn more about this artist, visit her website.

100 Degrees and Reworking Paintings

Here in the NorthEast we are experiencing the mother of all heat waves.To borrow a line fro the movie Biloxie Blues..this is like Africa hot! One hundred degrees is just…well… unnecessary. What do people do down south who have to endure this kind of weather on a more regular basis?

I am definitely a cool weather person. Love my sweaters.

So what are all of you doing to keep cool? I took my son to a movie, went to a support group meeting and am planning to pull an all nighter in the studio. Okay..maybe a half nighter. I have an acrylic painting of a horse in half pass that I have been staring at for the past few weeks trying to decide what to do with it. I love the horse but the backgrounds just irks me. So I am planning on reworking this one. I like the arena but the rest has to go. I will post the results as soon as I finish it! Oh , that is if I can figure out how to post photos from my iphone! :)

Now for my question of the day. Does anyone know if you can post photos to Blogger from your iphone? I can’t seem to find any info online on how to do this. Anyone?

Now I know I said I would be posting details from the Alvaro Castagnet workshop but I have lots of images that I would like to include. makes for a more interesting blog post. Don’t you agree?

Stay cool! :)
Deborah

©Copyright 2010 by Deborah O’Sullivan. See original post here.
To learn more about this artist, visit her website.

Move, moving, (nearly) moved …

The 200 year old house in the south of Belgium is about to be replaced by a 40 year old house in the hills of the former German capital.
We are moving our tri-lingual family and lazy cats to a new country, a new life.

Move, as you can well imagine, is the “in” word, used in all sorts of manners, tried out with different intonations and set in just as many contexts.
As a result, “in” now not only shapes our days, our actions but has also overflowed into my work.

Below the third step in a very spectacular “Pas de Deux”...
Powerful poetry in motion.

“Powered Together”
Work in Progress step 3
Pencil on Paper

Completion is scheduled for mid-july, in the heat of pre move fury, in a haze of action and a cloud of tumult ….
To be continued ….




©Copyright 2010 by Sheona Hamilton-Grant. See original post here.
To learn more about this artist, visit her website.

Partly sunny, partly not

Another week, more rain, but also some sun and a bit of drying, which gives heart, despite the forecast for yet more rain possibly starting tomorrow. I’ve been in heavy-duty mode on a number of fronts in the yard. Last fall was mild, then really cold with no snow cover, followed by a longish toughish winter (what else is new around here?) and a lot of the trees and usually reliable perennial plants didn’t “shut down” properly, with the end result that many failed to survive, despite having lived through many seemingly worse winters in the past.
I decided that anything that didn’t show evidence of leaves or indeed any sort of life was likely an ex-plant, given that we are into June now, so I went off to the garden centre and bought a bunch of replacement shrubs and small bushes. Of course as soon as I started digging out the “dead” bushes (mostly Barberries that have a lot of really nasty spikes), I realized that down at the soil-line there were a few feeble hints of life. It reminded me of the black death/plague scenes in Monty Python and the Holy Grail –”I’m not dead yet!” So, what to do? I decided that I really much preferred the Ninebarks that I had purchased as replacements (pretty foliage, nice size *and* no blood-drawing thorns) so I went ahead and dug up all the not quite dead Barberries and relocated them to the back lane where they will have a chance to rise again should they so choose. I just didn’t have the heart to pitch them straight into the garbage, so time will tell whether they make a comeback or not. The odd thing (well, one of the many odd things) about the winter kill is that some plant material that I thought was virtually indestructible has died, and others that we consider to be at risk even in a good year have come back perfectly well. There’s no accounting for these things, I guess.
My first photo was taken on the way home from the barn on one of the many rainy days, although the variation on the theme that day was that the rain was very fine, rather than bucketing down as has been the norm. You can see that things are *very* green, which is nice, and the young Warmbloods down the hill are enjoying the fresh grass. One of the big hawks that hunts the Ebon area was sitting on the ground with the horses–you can see him just to the left of the middle of the picture, near the dark bay horse. This seemed a tad odd to me, but perhaps he had caught a gopher on the ground and decided just to stay there for a while. The horses were quite happy to ignore him, and vice versa.

By Friday it had actually stopped raining, so wandering outdoors with the camera at the barn was something I could indulge in. I still can’t ride due to lack of horseshoes on my gelding, and his turnout is still too muddy for us to contemplate putting them back on with any assurance that they would stay on, so I had time to check out the activity “up top” at the show barns, as there was a small dressage show on the weekend. I noticed this young hare having a nice time amongst the dandelions as I went past a grassy area. I like to think this is the one that a previous barn-man rescued and bottle-fed as a tiny baby, but these guys all look pretty much the same, so who’s to know?

My quest to the show barn area was well rewarded when I caught a glimpse of this horse and rider pair doing their warm-up. It was very exciting just to see a clean horse and no mud, but the bonus here was having this rider (Shannon Camphaug Sluser) at the show at all. She rode at Ebon when she was at university here, but now does the higher-end circuit in areas much farther afield, so we don’t often have the pleasure of seeing her at local shows. This is her new young Hannoverian who needs to log some “show miles”, so they were in attendance at this show, and will apparently also be back in July. He is a gorgeous horse and a very nice mover, and I’m sure they will go places as a team.

There are ducks pretty well everywhere this year with all the rain we’ve had. There was even a mallard hen nesting in a stall at the show barns at Ebon, although sadly I think once her peace and quiet was shattered by the incoming show horses on the week-end that she has abandoned her nest. “Her” stall was left strictly alone and had a “do not disturb” sign, but just the fact of a lot of activity suddenly arising was likely enough to send her away. A shame, but nothing really that could be done about it. This isn’t the Ebon mallard hen, but is one that was enjoying the ambience in a pond at the university campus on the weekend.

I’ve been continuing to play with encaustics, and this weekend my assistant (aka grandson Mark) and I decided to try a “shellac burn” technique with one of my trial encaustics. This essentially involves coating the artwork with shellac and setting it on fire. Mark is always interested in anything that involves flames, so we had quite a happy time working on this project. Shot five shows one of the encaustics in mid-burn. We tried both a “wet” and a “dry” burn, and while both processes show promise, I need to do a lot more trial and error with this, as with encaustic in general.

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

Another Gray From The Series

“Shade Of Gray” #4″
casein on paper
9 x 12″

Morning found me shipping works out to a new show in Kentucky…and then down to the studio I went. The weather was sunny, warm and inviting, but I kept focused and finished the above casein from the series of gray horses I am doing now….and also I worked on getting closer to finishing a commission portrait of some young men. I was able to open the back door in the studio, to feel the warm and fresh air streaming in..and the two pups stayed with me as I worked. This new studio space is turning out to be an awesome place for me to work in! I can just step out the door and am in my back gardens, looking down to the barn, the horses and the fields beyond! Granted I am still working with piles of art supplies and boxes that have not been sorted or put away….but the space still works! YAY!

Outside the trees are quickly budding and my forsythia is in blossom….the ‘daffies’ are dancing in yellow and pink and purple crocus have popped up here and there throughout my gardens. The glory of spring…the promise of green…..it is a wonder I get anything done in the studio and not be out fiddling in the gardens!

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

Another Shade Of Gray On A Gray Day

The rain is pelting the windows as I sit now writing from the loft. But a better part of the day was spent painting in the new studio space we have created in our walkout basement. This will be’ my space’, craved out of the limited space in this tiny cottage in the woods of mid coast Maine. I am starting to feel that it is my space as it comes together…as I figure where I want what and what goes where. It amazes me, as I put things away in this much larger space, how much I actually had in my tiny very tiny loft studio. And a lot of what I had crammed into the old studio will be weeded over and be discarded.I vow I will not collect!! I will not horde!! I will simplify!!

The above painting is a 9 x 12″ casein on paper.I will post it on my website when it is done….and did you now I have a few papercut drawings still available?

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

Luxy


This is another one of my recent commissions, a 16 x 20 oil on panel. Luxy is a Danish Warmblood gelding, he and his brother Luminous both sons of the famous stallion Lucky Light. Both brothers were named for their shining light – the sun for Luxy, and the moon for Luminous – hence the symbolic sun in Luxy’s portrait. If you look carefully at the original, you will see a four-leaf clover in the foliage of the treeline, to pay tribute to the stallion Lucky Light.

The brothers are both lovely dressage horses, with natural jumping ability. While Luminous is sweet and eager to please, Luxy is playful, mischievous and impish. I think Luxy would like to meet the two young boys at my place – the three of them would have a lot of fun!

Luxy’s portrait is framed and will soon be on its way.

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

New Painting In The Ring

“In The Ring”
mixed media
12 x 12″

In spite of the distractions of the hint of spring in the air and the gardens needing raking, horses needing shedding and dogs needing walking…..AND the fact that my studio space is STILL neither here nor there….I have finished a 12 x 12 casein and acrylic painting of a gray dressage horse titled” In The Ring”.

I also have received the exciting news that my oil painting “Four-Up At Acadia” is to be exhibited in an invitational art show , “The Horse In Fine Art ‘A Salute to the World Equestrian Games’ ” which will hang in The Lexington History Museum in Lexington,Kentucky during the summer equestrian games.The exhibit is organized by The American Academy Of Equine Art in partnership with Keeneland Foundation and will be on display from April 16 through November 1,2010. I will probably not get down to the Lexington History Museum show until September when I will having a show opening and reception at Gallery B..also in Lexington and on the same street!!

I also have been doing my 20 minute ink sketches religiously….and having fun doing them…Check them out!! They are right here on my blog!! Look up ^ up below the header!!! ;-)

Now time to haul some more ‘stuff’ down to the new studio space………

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

New Dressage Casein – “Shades Of Gray #3″

“Shades Of Gray#3″
casein on paper 
9 x 12″

Even though the day started a bit gray, the sun came out and Spring called to me as I worked in my studio, saying “Come and play…the winter was cold and deep, but now it is time to come out and enjoy the warmth of spring and promises of things to come.” I listened but kept painting, finishing this one casein of a gray/white dressage horse for my “Shades of Gray” series. This is number 3….there are more to come…all playing with the discovery of colors in a gray horse brought out by the light and shadows. This painting as already been put up onto my website……… Now I am headed out for a bit to rake leaves from winter weary gardens while, the pups play.

©Copyright 2009 by Kathi Peters. See original post here.
To learn more about this artist, visit her website.

Calle’s second drawing portrait finished

Untitled
Pencil on Paper. 34×46 cm
SOLD
Sheona Hamilton-Grant. All rights reserved

Managed to finish this piece last week before the confetti and funny masks took over!
Calle’s portrait is now at the framers.
Can’t wait to see him behind glass all “poshed” up.

The tails’ swing and movement added the finishing touch I was looking for. The thickness of the hair pushing the movement forward towards the viewer. The size of the piece also adds to the over all feel of power.
Overall a nice result which I hope will make my patron smile.

p.s: please excuse the missing right boot tip…technical problems swallowed it…whole!

©Copyright 2009 by Sheona Hamilton-Grant. See original post here.
To learn more about this artist, visit her website.

Dressage drawing: new progress made


I’ve tacked him up.
Both the bridles and saddle have been added (still need refining).
The tail is still to be added. This is where I hope to emphasize his power and create extra movement.
I like the paper, not in love with it but we are good buddies.
The tooth allows for much faster results as not as many layers are needed to create darks. I’m not convinced I will achieve the detail I do with Mellotex. Only time will tell.
Back up to draw a swishing tail!

©Copyright 2009 by Sheona Hamilton-Grant. See original post here.
To learn more about this artist, visit her website.

Dressage drawing in progress


Here is Calle frozen in time.
The reference was taken last summer during his daily work out.

For this portrait I am using a Strathmore Bristol smooth and a lot of 6B pencil.
I don’t have a lot of experience with this paper. It is much toothier than I am used to.
So far so good…. let’s hope we continue working in harmony;)

©Copyright 2009 by Sheona Hamilton-Grant. See original post here.
To learn more about this artist, visit her website.

Dressage Horse WIP 2

I worked a bit more on this last night. It is starting to throw a bit of a shape now. Originally I was thinking of making this a grey horse  but things change! :)   I wanted it to pop more so I changed to a more vibrant palette. At this point I am working wet on wet. I wet the areas I want to add color to, drop in the pigments and turn the paper on end letting the colors mix on paper. I keep an eye on maintaining the correct musculature when wetting the paper. Wherever the paper is wet the pigment goes. The dry paper acts like a brake and stops the pigment from going any further by beading up.. This is super fun and I never know what I am going to end up with at this point but the paintings always seem to work out! Here is an example of where I am going with this from my website. Connection

Have a great day!

Deborah

©Copyright 2009 by Deborah O’Sullivan. See original post here.
To learn more about this artist, visit her website.

Back To Easy Rider


“Easy Rider” 11 x 14 pencil equestrian drawing

Well, it seems that my little painting of the JRT has made a hit. His owner sent me more photos of him and her new JRT and has given me permission to use one of them for a painting. It seems that I may be going to the dogs these days.

But, in the meantime, I made more progress on Easy Rider. I had hoped to get enough of it done to use in an ad in Horses In Art magazine, but a lingering sinus infection has slowed me down for the past week. So, I sent in another image instead. If you aren’t aware of this magazine, it’s a real treat for the horse art lover. You can subscribe online, too.

This dressage horse equestrian drawing will need some tweaking yet, and the background needs to be finished, but it’s coming along nicely now. Considering how long it’s lingered in the studio, that’s a very encouraging thing!

After an unusually long January thaw, we’re now back to real winter, with strong winds and blowing snow and icy roads. I’m SO glad I got new tires on my Subaru three weeks ago because they saved me from an accident soon after. The car ahead of me lost control on black ice when he put on his brakes (not a wise thing to do), but I was able to slow down enough without a bit of sliding to avoid him as he ran into the snowbank. Whew! Good winter tires DO make a difference!

At any rate, the weather makes the studio a cozy place to be on a blustery day, and I’m busy planning my next work to land on the easel or drawing board. Today we ran errands in Traverse City, and I picked up a new AC adapter-charger thing for my laptop. Now that I’m back in the studio fairly regularly, I’ll need it for viewing reference photos beside the easel. I have so many great digital photos to work from now, and I’m anxious to create some great art from them. I plan to create a series of Horse Show Dogs paintings in addition to the horse art works.

That’s all for now, folks. Have a great weekend, everyone!

©Copyright 2009 by Karen Baker Thumm. See original post here.
To learn more about this artist, visit her website.

Ridden Dressage In Casein

“Shades Of Gray #2″ casein on paper- 9 x 12″

This morning while the bitter cold January winds howl outside my studio, I painted, and still in my pj’s, have just finished the above casein on paper. This is one more done for my series titled “Shades Of Gray”…..a series where I will explore the color, light and shadows in gray or white horses. In the past few years I have done a similar foray into the colors I see in the black horse…now the gray will be the subject of this ‘experiment”! I am putting it up on my website.

The new online art show with “Women Artists of the West” titled ” It”s An Artist’s Life” is now on line and I have two still life works ‘hanging’ in it. I am very proud to be part of this great group of female artists who are from all over the U.S.of A. …not just the West as their name states. Please take a stop into this virtual show and enjoy. Sorry I can’t offer you a glass of wine!

Guess I better get dressed and bundle up to walk the dogs. Out into the cold!

©Copyright 2009 by Kathi Peters. See original post here.
To learn more about this artist, visit her website.

Riding Into The New Year


Happy New Year, everyone! Did you all have a satisfying holiday season, and are you ready to plunge into this new year with renewed optimism and determination?

As for my part, I’m doing something different from my usual New Year routine. Instead of spending days on the end of year analysis and setting goals for the incoming year, I’m starting off by spending some time in the studio. Maybe this way I can keep the momentum going and not get side tracked by extraneous “stuff”.

Since “Easy Rider” was still on the drawing board, it is the first piece to get attention, and I’m getting very eager to finish it. There will be many adjustments to make as I work out the lighting issues, but it’s looking good so far. But, there’s something about that left foreleg that isn’t quite right. Could the head be a tad too large? Was there some distortion in the reference photograph that I didn’t notice until seeing the drawing in the small version? Hmmm.

This equestrian dressage drawing is approximately 11 x 14 inches in pencil on paper.

For my next project, I’ve already picked out a photo of a kitten; our own beloved Annie whom we lost last Christmas. I’ll be doing that in pastel before plunging back into the oils.

©Copyright 2009 by Karen Baker Thumm. See original post here.
To learn more about this artist, visit her website.

Happy New Year! Newf watercolor and Dressage Painting

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday! Now it is back to our regularly scheduled programmimg! :) I took a holiday break and now I am back to work in the studio.
I have some interesting blog posts coming up.. so stay tuned!
I’ve  got a wonderful new easel…The Cheap Joe’s Signature Field Easel which I will review here with photos. I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this easel
I will review a book that a wonderful author/friend wrote. The book is titled Memoirs of a Bathtub Psychic be Betanne Elion. I know it is not about art (although she is an artist, too) but this book is a wonderful read.
I will be posting more about the painting process itself. Lots of WIPS and commentary on techniique and answers to some of my most frequently asked questions.

I am looking forward to creating some wonderful new art this year.  Here is the start of this work in progress. This is very large 30 x 22 (full sheet) watercolor. This is the initial stages of glazes …lots more work to be done on this. After doing so many large pieces last year I have been wanting go larger!

I also have a couple of pieces that I had started that got put aside as commissions and pressing commitments came in. One of them is Newfoundland pup that has been haunting me. I started the painting.. early last year (I think) and as I was organizing the studio it’s cute little eyes (which I had almost finished painting) were peering at me over a stack of canvases. This one I will finish this week. I got a huge chunk completed last night.

The eyes are almost completed here. This painting will require a lot of glazing. This is my typical portrait style watercolor . I thoroughly enjoy doing these and I haven’t done many of late because of my many acrylic painting commitments. I need to take my time at this point to lay done the initial washes of color. This will help to creath depth as the painting progresses and the values deepen. So does anyone recognize WHO this little Newf pup is?

Enjoying the process!

Deborah

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Deborah O’Sullivan
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©Copyright 2009 by Deborah O’Sullivan. See original post here.
To learn more about this artist, visit her website.

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