Riding Horses like Motorcycles

 Last Saturday I got to ride Stormy on a dirt motocross track. The guy that owns it has a professional motocross team that trains on that track, and it just happens to be a very ride-able distance from my trainer's house. (Stormy is at the trainer's right now...did I mention that?) Since nobody was going to get off their horses and take pictures, here are some rough sketches of what we did:

There were small moguls. good for trotting or cantering over. I learned to switch between leaning forward and leaning back very fast. it was like going over tiny jumps in a row...only not.

There were also big steep hills that were fun to run up. Here's the first one we went over:

And here is what happened when we got to the top:

There were also flat areas and banks on the curvy areas. Lots of running happened

t h e  e n d.

Giveaway!

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More Siri

Oh Siri, you really don't know anything, do you?

 

 

Outdoors

Lately I have been painting horses, and trying to work on some new pillow pets. It's summer, though, and I'd rather be outside than indoors painting. I bought a light-weight portable easel a few weeks ago, and am going to make myself a collapsible pallet table, and I want to start painting outdoors. I thought about going to the pavilion by the dog park and painting...but I've been too nervous to try yet. I'm not really nervous about the possibility of people watching me paint--no, I'm scared of the wind blowing my canvas onto me, or my easel falling a part, or a dog jumping on me while i'm painting, and all the other awkward moment possibilities. 

In other news, this last 4th of July I found myself taking a cat to the vet. She's getting better and will be going back to the farm soon. She's a very sweet cat, even if she does look a little lop-sided now. (I would say you should have seen her before--but you shouldn't. I wish I could un-see what her eye had looked like before it was removed. *shudders*)

Her little tabby-forehead "M" is crooked now.

And here's some doodles/sketches from a meeting at work:

Exploring Styles (part 2)

I’ve had some fun lately exploring a new style. I would love to do about 398472 more of these. The charcoal/black outlines are actually imitation stained-glass leading. The first try, I did the leading first then painted; but that made filling in those little spaces a little bit of a pain. So the second try, I did the painting first, then started outlining in leading. The second one looks a lot…cleaner. Not sure which one I prefer though. 

Exploring Styles (part 1)

I have to admit, I’ve never really felt like I had a specific personal style—art-wise. There is not one certain way I like to paint--or draw--over any other way. This can make being a professional artist a little difficult. I assume. I’ve heard that if you are making a portfolio to try and get a job as an illustrator you want to have a clearly defined style within that portfolio—and if you want to illustrate in more than one style you should make a separate portfolio. This make since, because a client wanting to hire an illustrator for a specific job will look at your portfolio, and have several examples there to get a feel whether or not your style will suit their job. If your portfolio reflects that you do really crisp, but kinda…industrial, collage-y, rather abstract illustration that’s perfect for their magazine article about air pollution, they’d probably be a little disappointed if the illustration you turn in was bubbly and happy with a sloppy painterly style and pastel color palette.

Lucky for me I’m not trying to get a job as an illustrator. At the moment.

I think it is a lot of fun to explore a new way of painting. To pick up the paint brush and try to NOT use the same colors I always tend to, and NOT draw my subject out in the same manner I usually do, and just in general stop and notice those decisions I usually don’t even think about--and decide something different.

With my job as an artist at an embroidery company, I get to reinvent my style all the time. I don’t have to try and draw the same way any more than about 10-50 times, and then I get to move on. If it was a style I enjoyed anyway—I might get to do it again, but not usually.

Banana Boats

I saw this banana boats idea on Pinterest a while ago, and finally decided to try it for the 4th of July. They used chocolate chips, peanut butter chips and coconut. I'm not a huge coconut fan, so I tried my own variation. I used tiny semi sweet chocolate chips, a couple Reese's peanut butter chips, marshmallows, and graham cracker crumbles. I call them Nanner S'mores. Or S'mananna Boats? S'mallow Nannerboats? 

Anyway, here's what it looked like all stuffed with s'morey goodness:

The banana peel turned kinda black on the grill. Next to it is just a graham cracker with choc. chips and mallows on it. It turned out terrible. Can't win 'em all.

But the S'mallow Nannerboat was delicious! The Mallows were toasted on the outside and gooey on the inside, and the graham crackers were crispy and the chocolate was melted. So good! I'm going to be making a lot more of these!