horses

I did not go on the Starbucks ride today, it was too hot. There's no reason to be out a horse when it's over 100 degrees..yuck! I am ready for fall!

AC came over yesterday morning and rode Shylah. She's a newbie to horses but has expressed interest in a trail ride but I want her to get well acquainted with Shylah in a controlled situation before doing something like that. Not that Shylah's uncontrollable, far from it. She is, however, well aware of when she has an inexperienced rider and takes full advantage of the situation by stopping, slowing down, grazing, etc. AC did well, and said she felt very safe with Shylah but was annoyed by her laziness. Yes, I often feel the same way, but for being an irritating arena horse I kinda like that careful pokiness out on the trail. I rode Dusty, and they did well in close proximity, and he was actually very relaxed and willing to walk at Shylah's speed, so that's promising that the two of them could trail ride together. Dusty's not wild or anything, he's just got a huge stride and a lot of ambition.

Looks like "Bears and Boulders 2008" (the week of riding at JC's) is going to be delayed a month or so. I guess that's just as well, September is really a crazy month.

Here are some pics I took late this evening:

Gwen, age 21-ish or somewhere thereabouts.

Shylah, age 5

Dusty, age 11 (?)

Gwen's face has gotten a lot more gray in recent years!

Dusty:

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September 7 works in progress
Category: Art and Photography

I'm about to start totally stressing out with art show prep. You are forewarned. ;-)

Okay, I think I'm getting somewhere on this now! I'm looking back and forth from the pic on the screen to the drawing across the room and it's so much nicer looking in person. Doesn't help that it's darn near impossible to photograph without it getting a reflection from the light (as it has here in the center of the image).

I had an image in mind for my next scrim project (two draft horses in harness) but it's a very dark and VERY detailed image, and I need another western/wildlife piece done by the end of the month, so I went through my rodeo pics I've shot and decided to do a bronc rider image instead right now. I'll have to put the nude scrim on hold for a while, this is a really important and urgent deadline. So I got this sketched out today and taped .. for transfer.

[EDIT] on second thought I'm removing this image, you'll just have to wait and watch the image develop. ;-)

not yet titled
2x2 inches
scrimshaw on Corian

This is that knife I was talking about the other day. A really well made "art knife" would not have all those screw holes, but I have a design sorta sketched out (no I won't show you) that works around those. It's in color. I have some concerns about the darkness of the mammoth ivory. Still debating....


What is this, take photos of my hand day? What can I say, it's quicker than setting up backdrops. I got some ivory in the mail the other day from an engraver friend. Awesome! Thank you Rod C.!!!

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gotta love horses

I picked up my art from State Fair this afternoon (the fair ended on Monday). I was unhappy to see that the Jessie drawing (graphite on velour) had shed a layer of graphite dust onto edge of the mat opening. Great, and here I'd hoped to get away with no fixative. Oh well. Popped it out of the frame when I got home and sprayed a LOT of fixative on there. Velour normally feels like velvet. Now it's like velvet wearing too much hairspray. I hung it up in the kitchen and I think I'll thump on the frame a little bit every day to see if everything stays put.

This is a potential problem because "Thankful" (the ginormous drawing that's going to Draft Horse Classic) is also graphite on velour and not "fixed." So I have to verify that fixative looks okay and is going to stick everything in place, otherwise I'd have to get a completely different type of frame, and seeing as how I brought home a frame for it today that has a three digit number price on it, I'm not keen on ordering another style. It's the biggest dang frame I've ever used! I hate big pieces of glass! Yikes! 26 x 34 inches. Eep!

Shylah and Dusty got some work with desensitization stuff tonight. I'm going on the Starbucks ride again this Sunday with Shylah (corner of Bond and EG Florin around 6-6:30pm Sunday) [EDIT: scratch that, I'm not going, it's WAY too hot!] so we had some fun with trash cans and plastic bags and pop cans. She was super, but that's all stuff I've done with her before (not *specifically* trash cans and pop cans, but barrels and buckets and bags and bottles and you name it). She loves tarps too, when she walks over one she likes to reach down and grab it with her teeth. I can completely cover her in a tarp and she just stands there like a big blue lump. Dusty was only slightly less accepting of things. Shylah will take any opportunity to stand still and take a nap. Dusty takes any opportunity to run around, so me tossing a plastic bag full of pop cans into the air and catching it (that's very loud!) was an excuse to run even after he wasn't scared anymore. He didn't like his head covered by the tarp.

Oh and I took an old horse shoe and a hammer and pounded on Shylah's feet for a while. She didn't so much as bat an eyelid, so I'm not sure what was up with her the other day. Just a bad day I guess, or maybe the burning-hoof smoke freaked her out.

I had this random thought today and wondered how many horses I've ridden in my lifetime. I don't consider myself a particularly great rider, but I think in the last few years I've improved a lot just from training my own horse and riding more of other people's horses. This'll either seem like a big number or a little number depending on your background. I'm probably forgetting some.

There were horses I sat on, with adult supervision, as a very young kid. I don't think these count, but there was Babe, my aunt's palomino, and a horse where my brothers too lessons that the instructor used to pack me around on sometimes.

Childhood:
-Smokey, the neighbor's pony
-the ponies at my pre-school (it was on a farm, the class would go on pony rides). Specifically I remember King (bay) and Stormy (b/w paint)
-Kyd, my cousin's gray Arab (I think I only rode double on Kyd)

The horses we boarded for a therapeutic center (and I took lessons on them), still childhood:
-Rebel Anne, world's laziest chestnut QH mare
-Token, black gelding afraid of pigs, I liked him!
-big pale gelding (palomino? gray?) I can almost remember his name but not quite, I want to say Oscar or Wilbur or something like that, I just remember he was HUGE and pale colored, I think he was palomino
-my instructor's old gray horse, he could only walk and trot

And then I started taking "real" riding lessons in 5th grade:
-Blue, a sweet POA mare
-Rascal, black cob type gelding, I really had a soft spot for him
-Dee Dee, bay OTTB (off track thoroughbred), very nice mare
-Lady, bay OTTB, I much preferred Dee Dee but Lady was a more advanced horse
-Sabuken (I always called him Spooky), HUGE bay OTTB gelding
-Prissy, my friend M's black pony mare who only wanted to run

And then began the search for my first horse, I seem to remember looking at 8-10 horses before I bought her, so either I didn't ride them all or I just don't remember them:
-Money, a pretty paint mare who wasn't sound
-a chestnut ranch gelding from the horse dealer, he bucked
-another chestnut ranch gelding from the horse dealer, he bucked too
-a chestnut/flax Arab mare, gorgeous but a little high strung

-Thunder, I bought her in 1992, bay QH mare
-Meeko, my friend M's Arab gelding
-Blue Top, JJ's black TWH gelding

Thunder died in 1999. About six months later the search began again.
-Appy gelding, sooo sweet but vet exam showed him going blind
-another Appy gelding, too small
-chestnut QH mare, nice horse but someone bought her before I got her vet checked
-bay QH/TB gelding, too high strung
-young chestnut/flax TWH X Arab gelding, sweet boy just not what I wanted

-Gwen, black Morgan/Shire mare I bought in 2000
-Ardie, bay Arab gelding who belonged to WM
-Shylah, black Canadian Horse I bought in 2003 (started under saddle in 2006)
-Dusty, JJ's Champagne TWH gelding
-Lina, gray Andalusian mare
-Kaylee, JC's Gypsy Horse mare
-Sugar, chestnut Rocky Mountain Horse mare
-and then there's "that mule" (ha ha!) Sara ;-)

6:20 AM - 2 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

just a lot to say

Okay, I'm still not sure this is going where I want it to go but I'm about ready to call the sky done. At least for now. I'll start on the foreground tomorrow. I'm still iffy about this though...


9x20 inches
colored pencil

So while I'm struggling with that landscape, I am (stupidly?) considering working back into some of my older drawings and adding backgrounds to try to make them more interesting. This has challenges, like they've been sprayed with fixative, and signed, and I'm just not sure it'll look good, but I'm thinking about pulling a few out of the frames and seeing what I can do. Why not, I guess, other than it's mildly terrifying to add stuff to something I always considered finished.

I bought some mammoth ivory on ebay today. I feel I need to clarify this. By "mammoth" I don't mean large. I mean, literally, mammoth, as in the wooly kind. As you might guess, it's rather old stuff. No restrictions on import or export either. And a "slab" is pretty small. The ones I got are about 1x2.5 inches and less than an 1/8 of an inch thick.

You know, the downside to scrim is there's no way to reproduce it. I mean, on one hand that ups the value of the original, but with a lot of other art you can make more than one. Sculptures can be cast in bronze, drawings and paintings can be printed and you get something that looks just like the original. I *have* seen cast scrimshaw, it's usually done in resin or plastic I think. Metal engravings are pretty commonly cast, but it's (I think) easier to remove the ink from metal than from ivory, and of course the piece would have to be un-inked to have a mold made, but if I don't ink as I go then the values don't turn out right. A quandary indeed. And besides that I'd hate to spend a zillion hours making some fantastic art piece only to have it damaged in the the casting process. Metal has the advantage of durability. I can't print scrim, whereas metal engravings can be printed (directly from the engraved plate onto paper). Then again a paper print is not the same as holding the engraved piece in your hand. I suppose I could make photos or something, but it's just not the same as the object itself.

So pretty much everyone just needs to have their very own scrimshaw art, I think that's the obvious answer. ;-)

The horses got shod and trimmed this morning, and I am mortified to report that Shylah was bad. Well, not like maliciously bad but she kinda freaked out about the hot shoeing (that has to be strange having smoke come off one's feet...no this does not hurt them) and she was clearly thinking "OMG what?!" about all the hammering. I'm really surprised about this, she's always been totally ho-hum about foot handling. So I will be hammering on her feet daily until her next appointment later this month. She's never been shod before. She's 5 years old. She has good feet and normally does not need it but she's going to a location that's very rocky and it's made her sore in the past.

I was not able to do much riding on Blue Top, the TWH. He's having some lameness problems (foot? knee? arthritis maybe?) and I only rode at a walk long enough get a sense of what was going on. I hope it is something that can be treated, he's a good old boy and a very steady horse, it would be a shame for him to have to retire. So I'll be splitting my time between Dusty and Shylah for a while. Looks like the English saddle will fit either horse. Tee hee!

Draft Horse Classic is Sept 18-21 at the Nevada County Fairgrounds in Grass Valley, I'll say more when I get the announcements (if I get them).

To do before then (thinking out loud, bear with me):

lots of framing
finish landscape
start graphite horse drawing
new note cards: Jessie, Thankful, maybe more but those are definitely on the list
new business cards! scrim image perhaps
add background to The Saddle Horse, The First of Spring, Hamish???????????
make NICE labels/price tags for each piece, including artist statement on each (trying to "showcase" work a little more)
need black card stock, velcro dots, photo corners
do framed scrims need brass plaques with title? hmm
all the usual last minute packing
determine what art to take, not as much this year, it looked too cluttered
deliver entries
start next scrimshaw, yes, need by end of month eek!

Oh, I know! Go to bed! Zzzz.

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the boys are back

JJ's horses Dusty and Blue Top are here. Both are Tennessee Walkers. They'll be getting shod Wednesday morning. Blue Top will go home Thursday or Friday, Dusty's going to be sticking around for at least a month. I'll be working with him all month (as time allows) so that he will be ready for trail riding up at JC's in late Sept, and hopefully some trail rides with other friends as well, if other friends are comfortable riding Shylah.

I'm sure I'll be taking pics at some point.

The kitchen color came out more pale than I'd hoped. I wanted a much darker color anyway but compromised on this one. Oh well. It's better than the ugly wallpaper. It took two coats plus a primer, so it's good to be done!

I hope I get my DHC announcements soon, I need to mail those out.

I did not ride tonight, there's a big fire in the area and the smoke is horrible this evening.

I think I'll buy some mammoth ivory slabs. I'll still debating what to do about the knife.

3:32 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

catching up

Whew, lots going on!

It's not even three weeks now til Draft Horse Classic, I will not be accomplishing all I'd hoped to do by then. Yikes.

I spent Friday at State Fair. I got there around 7am for check-in, and got my one chicken all squared away. I debated napping in the car til opening time but it was already too hot so I wandered around and saw some of the livestock and horses before the fair opened. One of the horses that played Seabiscuit was there, he was a cutie! And the horse that played Shadowfax in LOTR was there too but I have to say he's not nearly as pretty in person. Then again I didn't get a very good view, there were ropes around the stall so I pretty much just saw his head and neck and the top of his backline.

I spent the day with a few poultry friends and wandered the fairgrounds. I may edit in some pics here later. I hardly took any but WL took some pics of me with my drawing on his camera and I think they are better than the ones on my camera (I took the coolpix, yeah the flash still doesn't work, I haven't done a darn thing about it). I had a great time catching up with friends. I had wanted to stay all day and see a lot of the shows but it was over 100 degrees so we all wimped out around 3:30 or so. I did get to see one horse race before I left (a quarter horse race, and had I gone with my initial impression my favorite would have been the winner, but I over-analyzed and picked the 3rd place horse instead. Darn, trust the initial impression! Oh well, I didn't bet anything anyway). And I got the trifecta of fair food: cinnamon roll, corn dog, frosty.

I did not go back in to see judging on Saturday. I heard I got best of class but beyond that I don't know who won what. I just wasn't up for spending more time there.

I hate painting. I don't mean art painting, I mean wall painting. We're painting the kitchen this weekend. Ugh! I think taping is the worst part.

Shylah was all cross canter tonight. Aaaarrrg! This is driving me up the wall. She's been very consistent (at times) under saddle as well as bareback, so I just can't figure out if there's any correlation to anything. Maybe I'll try bareback again tomorrow.

I still want to get the landscape drawing done by DHC. IF I am almost done by the end of the week I'll go ahead and order a frame. Probably the new graphite drawing is something I'll work on while I'm there. The Serama illustrations have been pushed back til after DHC (long story there). Lots of scrim ideas I could work on.

Speaking of scrim... about eight months ago or so, after deciding that if I wanted to be taken seriously I needed to scrim a knife, I bought one on ebay (yeah, jumping the gun a bit!). It was several hundred dollars, which I don't part with too easily, but I realized shortly after buying it that I shouldn't have done that. It's not made by someone who collectors are seeking (in fact it doesn't even have a maker's stamp) so basically it has no resale value. The value of my scrim would FAR exceed that of the knife, and it would be impossible to sell for what my work is worth. It's not a bad looking knife, but it's also not really all that elegant either. I'm in a pickle as to what to do with it:

1) I could resell it as-is (having nothing done to it). I probably would not get what I paid for it. But knowing that if I scrim it I could never sell it anyway, maybe I ought to just unload it.

2) I could go ahead and scrim it. A GREAT idea came to me today. I could either keep it as a sample of what I can do (then again it may not be a good "canvas" for my work as far as showing it to high-end collectors) or I could give it to someone. It would give me the chance to work on mammoth ivory, which I have not yet tried. And then at least I could say I scrimmed a knife. I'd just have to go into it knowing I get NOTHING but personal satisfaction out of it. But do I want to use my great idea on this knife? Would this knife even work for it, hmmm, mammoth ivory is very dark, it might be hard to see the image. My great idea involves a tiny amount of metal engraving, something I have not done. I'd need to learn how to do that to pull this off.

It's going to be a busy week, again.

4:21 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

pics from the Starbucks ride

Here's a bunch of pics from last Sunday. Thank you Alora and Suzie for taking pictures. :-)



"Hmm, do they have anything without coffee in it?"

Why yes, my horse is rather cute isn't she!

The red ribbon is used on a horse that kicks. Shylah unfortunately has a rather large personal space when it comes to other horses (thank you Gwen, ugh). She does NOT kick people. The red ribbon is a symbol that all riders know means to mind their distance. That's something everyone ought to do every horse anyway. I try to be REALLY careful with Shylah on a group ride and usually put her last (she's always the slowest anyway). On many rides there is a non-ribboned horse that kicks someone.


Shylah and Trog. They have met before.



The big red horse is Sampson, he lived here several years ago. He's a tank!


Uh oh, we're holding up the line! I got some chocolate minty iced thing, it was quite yummy.

6:49 AM - 2 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

the bear cubs
Category: Art and Photography

"The Lookouts" (black bear cubs)
scrimshaw on paper micarta
1.5 x 4.75 inches

*whew done finally!*

I love it. :-)

I have been doing scrimshaw for one year now. Happy anniversary to me! May there be many more to come.

Thank you BK for the title (and the original idea). :-)

5:16 AM - 2 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

bear with me

I know you just can't bear to wait. The bear scrim is done. I finished tonight, it's pretty much all I've been doing the last couple days. But I'm still waffling on the title, so I'm not going to post it til I figure that out. :-) Hopefully that will be tomorrow.

I have no other WIP pics, sorry.

I should have pics from the Starbucks ride tomorrow or Friday.

Jessie the dog is doing okay. Not great, not awful, just okay. Leaning toward good. Better.

11:45 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

August 24 work in progress, etc.

Tonight I went on a very strange trail ride. :-) There is a "horse trail" (a multi-use trail, walkers, cyclists, dogs...horses I think are a rarity on this trail) that goes through part of Elk Grove. My friend WM (whee, she has new initials!) and some of her family and friends have this tradition of riding to Starbucks on Sundays. I was invited to go along, and so I did. It's maybe a 3 mile round trip. Shylah was pretty good, kinda grumpy today with a few spooky moments. It's way different than riding on the road where I live! It's pretty silly riding a horse through a drive-thru. :-) Several of my friends showed up with cameras, so I will have pics to post by the end of the week.

I definitely need to desensitize Shylah to "throwing things away" as she nearly unseated me when I tossed my empty cup into a trash can as we rode past. So I'll be taking trash cans and buckets out to the round pen and an armload of clanky things like empty pop cans to throw away. I have a few non-horse-owning friends who would actually like to go riding with me. There are two issues here. One is that I have only one rideable horse. I have access to an extra horse (Dusty!) but would not in a hundred million years put a newbie on Dusty, which means Shylah would need to be the sensible horse. She generally is, but I know some things that need work. The other problem is lack of a truck and trailer so I pretty much need to get a little group of totally sane dependable trail horses together so I can mooch rides anyway. :-)

So, in the world of art this weekend... did not work on the bear scrim, I wanted a few days off from that. Weekends tend to be kinda scattered and I want uninterrupted hours for that. I did sand down a Corian tile for an upcoming horse scrim. I still need to sketch the image though. It's a really extremely complicated image (two horses in harness).

I started Nude 4, which I think will be titled Beach Babe or something cheesy like that. Right now it looks like absolutely nothing, yeah!

I am disgruntled with the landscape drawing again. I'm tired of working on the sky, though sometimes I'm totally thrilled with it. It's just taking a lot more layers than I anticipated and kind of dragging on and on. The pink/orange parts are almost done, the reds and purples and blues still need a lot of work. I'm eager to get to the foreground! I need to get this at least pretty close to done early this week so I can order a frame.

Uncompleted sketch for upcoming 12x18" graphite drawing. I'd like to have this done by DHC but I'm not sure I can pull that off.

Ummm, I think that's about it. Oh! I took some hummingbird photos. These are both female Black Chinned Hummingbirds. Could be the same bird, who knows.

11:21 PM - 1 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment