Fire storm

The start of another painting.

My horse (who happens to be the model for this particular painting) lives in Luther, Oklahoma, along with several people I love. She was out of the path of the fire, but this Friday all I could do was watch the news as a fire burned through parts of the town. I am so so thankful to report that that nobody I know lost their home to the fire, but a lot of other people that live around there did. (I've been hearing varying numbers, but somewhere between 25 and 30-something homes were lost.) Please pray for these people/families. I can't imagine. 

Cody

I didn't realize how difficult it is to investigate and remove a possibly neglected animal until following Cody's story. I'm sure I don't know all the details just from reading stuff on Facebook, but the gist is that people started reporting that they saw this horse, then vets were apparently called in and deemed his condition to be due to old age and surgery (to remove golf balls he had ingested). Then other people that are higher up (like the DA) got involved and the horse did end up being seized. He was severely dehydrated and malnourished. One wonders how much longer he would have survived in his dehydrated state in these over-100 temperatures we've been having.
I don't know how long this has taken to get him removed and cared for but, Animal Cops (the tv shows) makes it look a little faster than this.

If you want to help Cody and others like him, I'm offering the print from my giveaway (scroll down a couple of entries to see a pic,) on my Etsy page for $15 (not including shipping) with $15 going to Horse Feathers Equine rescue for each print sold. You can also of course, donate any amount directly to Horse Feathers by going here.

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!

Pin this image for a chance to win. I will give away FREE signed prints to the first 7 people who Pin this image AND post the link in a comment. 


To receive your print, send me your address in an email to morianart@gmail.com. If your email name isn't the same as your name in your comment, make sure and let me know which comment is yours :)



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click "Add +"
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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.