Alpaca Portraits

I moved this summer and so I forgot completely about this blog! I now live in hunt country and LOVE IT! I do miss the mountains and my pet deer but with all to do and see here it is worth it. Once settled into my new studio I've picked up the pace quite a bit. There are so many paintings to post. I did a portrait of a friend and this painting brought me around a corner I was hovering over. Confidence is stronger. But on to what I am posting. The alpaca paintings. They made a big impact as well lately. I've been working with the same palette for the last month and really finding how much depth there is in it.

Alpacas have so much expression in their faces as well as in real life. Cute and sweet then spitting nasty stinky green stuff if you look at them wrong. Hilarious! I've set out to paint them since they allow my color and brush stroke with such ease. They make great loose paintings for warm up or fun. This one is 24" x 36".

Rooster, IV

My favorite rooster yet!! I started with cobalt turquoise, thinking of Van Gogh palette and added thalo turquoise for a bit more glow an depth. This photograph is a bit deep in the red so it's hard to see his determined eye. I'm not sure where he's headed, but he headed someplace!
I had a great time with this one and will keep the palette in mind for others as well.

Iris

Welcome spring and summer!!! It's now mid May and been quite some time since I wrote here. My personal life is headed into a more healthy direction than I have ever known. It's all about me in this small cabin on a mountain top painting day and night. We all know what diesel prices are doing to our activities... gracious! So, I find it's a perfect time for quiet healing and focus on my painting more than ever. I'm painting flowers and roosters and anything else I find inspiring. Most paintings are small compared to the scale I have been working at last few years. Mind you , there is a 24" x 48" on my big easel. :) I painted this adorable 10" x 20" on my 40th birthday. I find it special to my heart.

Please feel free to write a comment,.. love it hate it, I don't mind.

gail

Blue Hors Matine and Andreas Helgstrand

This is another of my favorite paintings. The mare is quite famous, having earned a silver medal in the World Championships as a 6 year old and made even more famous on u tube. She dances in her freestyle knowingly in beat with the music and her tail,... her tail swishes and swishes with her animated steps. This is not exactly the behavior suitable to upper lever dressage horse but everyone that sees her KNOWS she's enjoying her job and is very aware that she's dancing. (swishing is usually a sign of irritation) Andreas is such a lovely rider as well. Did I mention he was gorgeous!? :)


This is from Euro Dressage: (august 26, 2006)

http://www.eurodressage.com/reports/shows/2006/06weg/08-24-grandprix2-photo.html

The ride of the day, however, came from Danish Andreas Helgstrand on his 9-year old Danish warmblood mare Matine. The mare by Blue Hors Silver Moon (by Kostolany) out of a Matador dam is well known in Denmark as the former young horse champion but she only made her international break through at Grand Prix level this year at the CDI Wiesbaden and Lingen. If you are impressed by Elvis' passage, than wait and see Matine's. This mare bounces half a meter off the ground both in passage and piaffe without losing rhythm, power and suspension. The crowds were gasping during the final piaffe-passage on the center line and the combination was the only pair to receive a standing ovation from the crowds! They scored a fantastic 76.333%

However, the ride was not flawless. You can see the mare is still green at the level and there were some uneven steps in the passage and Helgstrand constantly had to work on the bit to keep the mare completely through. Her mouth opened regularly and you saw that all that power in the movement was not resolved in the contact with the bit. Furthermore, Matine has a helicopter tail that keeps swooshing all the time (mainly in the pi-pa), but mares are more easily prone to do so (Wansuela Suerte does it too) and you still get an impression that she is relaxed in the movement.

Hunt Landscape, V

This hunt scene landscape painting is the second time for the composition. It measures 24" x 48" and warms a room with pink light. I sold the yellow Hunt Landscape last summer and had to immediately repaint it since it was hanging in my office. I didn't plan on changing the colors to a pink light from the indian yellow... it just happened. I like the grass and these hounds better; love the hip on the horse. His face became one of my own horses, Farlapp. I will never tire of painting hunt landscapes and always out taking photos for new material.
This painting makes me crave to paint hound portraits. I don't have any really good close up of hounds though I went to the MFHA Centennial Finals last summer and took hundreds of photos. They simply are not the easiest to photograph since they are always on the move. I was at the end of a drive awaiting with my camera as Rockbridge Hunt approached and here come the hounds. As they flew in there was almost a whooshing noise. I couldn't figure on which one to focus on they were just everywhere! I'll never forget that noise. It was so surprising in the quiet of early morning.
The Centennial art show had a few large hound portraits that were just stunning. Sporting art is a class all of it's own. I'm not sure my style will ever confine itself enough for such galleries but I understand the love of the subject and hope that my style will only bring another light to these amazing creatures.

Hunt Landscape, II

This painting was on national tour for a year with the MFHA Centennial Celebration and Crossgate Gallery. It's 36" square with a gorgeous dark frame and got home just a couple days ago. Crossgate did a super job handling it on such a busy tour. I'm not sure where it will go next. I might keep it at home and enjoy it for a while. It was painted in 2006.

A good friend (hunter/jumper trainer) and I both agree that we WANT this horse. You can see the way he looks across on a long rein that he would canter down the line to a jump much the same way. He has perfect self carriage and is bold and honest. He never spooks away from you; he might spook in place which only enhances his form over a fence and quality of canter. This did not come from the model but out of my head.. he actually is the aura of one of my first stallions, Locksley Spotlight. Spotlight had this 'pose', topline balance and went on a long rein, had the perfect canter/jump, etc.. He would spook out form under me every so often but that was usually due to feeling too fresh. I'm not riding right now but this horse makes me wish I was. So whether or not I think this painting was mature in technique it's effect is.

Lucy's Red Roofed Hay Barn

This is the first of three barns painted for a developer in Blacksburg, VA before they were torn down at 'Cow Hill'. I picked this one out to write about because it was the first I'd been out painting on site in a long time. I painted it under an umbrella on a fairly hot day in the bed of my truck. The entire painting was on site.

We had a good snow here a few days ago and I was out freezing my fingers off trying to take pictures late afternoon. I do most of my painting by photo rather than life; this is opposite of school where all painting was from life. That works for horses and dog portraits since I would not be able to focus on a single composition painting in life. Landscape on the other hand changes more slowly (light of day) and drawing a landscape from life verses a photo is completely different. There are no boundaries other than what your eye sees. That allows more flow and feel than painting from a photo. That's what makes this painting special to me. It's spontaneous and free flowing. I would love to go out and paint the valley today but I'm afraid my paint would be frozen in minutes. So maybe I'll wait for spring.

If it's not obvious I love Matisse's paintings in early 1900's along with Van Gogh in the south France landscape.