October sunshine

One of my projects last week (in between medications and wrapping a hoof and such) was to take some pictures of my pieces framed. Last week was still pretty nice out and sunny, so I wanted to make the most of it. Lucky I did, too, because over the weekend the weather changed and it's rainy and windy and miserable out today.

Anyway, here's what I came up with. It's kind of fun setting up little vignettes out of things that are sitting around the house. The main problem is keeping the kitties from wanting to strut their stuff for the camera and invade all the photos :) I guess that's my fault for setting up in the middle of a warm cozy sunbeam.

Pretending to be a photographer

While Boo's foot is healing, she's wearing a wrap/duct tape boot. It works pretty well but it isn't perfect, so even though I'm making a fresh one for her every day I go out and check on it frequently to make sure it isn't sliding off. So I'm getting lots of chances to take cute pictures with my phone.

I'm not a great photographer but I really like how these turn out. I think I'm definitely getting my $2 worth out of this app :)

Update

Nothing to show you from the studio - my mare has been having some trouble with a mystery lameness. I can tell you all about nursing an unhappy foot but I somehow doubt that anyone wants to hear the unpleasant details :) Let's just say that it's time consuming and kind of exhausting because we're still not sure what's actually going on.

In other news, as you can see from the photo I've been messing around with the Hipstamatic app on my phone. I want to use it a lot because I'm usually too cheap to buy a silly camera effect app that I don't need.

snip

11x14" graphite and gouache on Fabriano hot press.

I used a pair of scissors that were my grandma's as the reference for this drawing. They're very old and not at all sharp - I should probably try to get them sharpened as I don't have any other scissors this small. I think they work ok as a model, even if they can't do any actual cutting :)

While I was working on this last night I had an idea to try to incorporate some brushier, more expressive watercolor areas into this kind of thing. It was too late to try it yesterday but I'm trying to work out how I want to do it and I think I'll give it a shot on the next piece. Maybe a small one, just to see if it works.

I'm always intimidated by the thought of ruining a big piece of nice paper, so working small lets me worry less. It's taken me a long time to get to the point where I feel like I can dive straight in and start drawing on a nice sheet of paper.

Button

Still experimenting with paper size - this one is 8x10". It feels like it's easier to work with a smaller sheet when it's a less complicated subject.

I was mixing colors to see what I liked and this green is indigo and olive green in W&N gouache. I didn't think this is what I would get but I liked it :) Clearly I need to just sit down with all my gouache colors and mix up a sample sheet. I haven't gotten that many colors so far (even with all these gouache projects) so it wouldn't even take that long...but it feels like work. Maybe some other time :P

cute

A cute kitty picture on the internet! What a surprise!

I felt like I should share this one because I've been trying for weeks to get a picture of my kitty with her paws up in the air. She only does this last thing at night and I either didn't have a camera handy or if I did, she never rolled over. That's kitties for you :P

I've got houseguests this weekend...back in the studio next week. Have a great weekend, everyone!