Virtual Brush Box

Martine pretty much covered the story [Part 1], [Part 2], [Part 3]. Of course, I have a few things to add.

Kudos
First of all, a huge thank you to Craig Zernik of Four Corners Gallery. We spend an hour, at least, coming up with the Mad Horse in a Box framing concept. Mat or no mat? Brown frame? Oooh, how about Tardis blue? Is this a good blue? How about this one? And so on. Then, he did a lovely job building the frame. Plus taking the close-ups I forgot to take, keeping me posted, and generally providing all around outstanding service.

I really did take it directly to the gallery.

Realism
For those of you who haven’t seen Rodney IRL, she caught the look in his eye. This is clearly himself.

As for the scarf. Hung picture on wall. As I walked away, I swear I saw the thing move out of the corner of my eye. So, all that painstaking knitting with pastel pencils was worth it.

Nits
A few tiny, tiny corrections for the record.

Rodney is 20. Bought him in 2010 at the age of 11. Therefore, 11+9=20. Sigh. I try not to think about this. I’m in such denial about his age that I had to work the numbers out with pen and paper. As for Milton, bought in 2014 at the age of 6. Therefore, 6+5=11. Double sigh.

Rodney is a TB but not an OTTB. No racetrack flashbacks for him.

Previous Horse had passed on when I started looking for his replacement. That added to the feeling of Clear the decks, Let’s do this thing, Let’s find that special horse.

As for the spirit behind the search, she was right on,

The one about whose greatness she would write for years. The one whose ribbons and trophies she would display proudly in her house; the one about whom she would reminisce in her old age. [Part 1]

I sniffled when I read that.

Photo
Martine was also right about the photo.

It’s not a flattering angle … The head collar does nothing for his pretty face. [Part 1]

However, I never really looked at the technical aspects. I was too enchanted with the contents. Horsie! Scarf! Ears Up! Too late to change now, it has become an icon of the blog.

[Life On A LEGO Tile]

Installed and Inspected

Rodney immortalized in pastels by Martine Greenlee.

Thank you, my friend.

Originally posted on Tails From Provence. Reblogged with permission. Links [Reveal], [Part 1], [Part 2] Welcome Martine.
~~~

Painting Dr Whooves Part 3
or
How an internet friendship can be a real thing.

Part 1 here, Part 2 here.

Pastel paintings are notoriously fragile. The thought of that ****ing scarf being damaged terrified me. If I had to do it all again, would I succeed? Eeeek! I started looking at shipping possibilities somewhat nervously.

Plan A was that Rodney would fly back to the US in April with my friend John (hi John!) who would then mail him to Katherine. It seemed safe enough. Rodney would be in a hard-shell suitcase, well protected by special cardboard packaging. But he would still have a couple of days of being thrown around by the USPS inside his cardboard box. It still seemed safer (and cheaper) than

Plan B – post him from France to Alabama. Over a week of being thrown around by various shipping services… Seemed too risky. And probably very expensive.

Plan A was looking good until John told me that he was delaying his return by a month. Oh no… Katherine had been very patient, but another month of waiting was a lot to ask. I started looking at how much it would cost to post Rodney direct from Provence to Alabama and was pleasantly surprised to learn that it would cost only €16 to post the picture plus cardboard packaging. Plan B started to look good once again, but then both Katherine and I began to have doubts about how well he would cope with transport. Imagine all of that carefully applied pastel pigment being shaken off and transferred to the surrounding packaging – it did not bear thinking about.

Plan C was born – frame the picture, put the whole lot into sturdy cardboard packaging and send it off. I had just acquired a cheap second-hand frame, which should protect the picture; the packaging should protect the frame. If anything got damaged, it would most likely be the frame. It would be more expensive than plan B as the weight would go up significantly. I worked out an estimate on-line and was once again pleasantly surprised – the postage was still less than €25 and that it would take only 5 working days to arrive.

I messaged Katherine on Facebook with the happy news. Long, detailed, cheery messages were being winged back and forth across the ether, when I thought, Hey, why don’t we do a video call? I’m an avid user of Skype, Whatsapp and Facebook for making phonecalls, they are great for keeping in touch with my scattered family; voice and video quality are really good these days so I thought, why not give it a try? I’d never heard Katherine’s voice; she’s never heard mine.

After some hesitation (something about a hairbrush…) and one failed attempt (a Linux machine that didn’t want to give FB permission to access the microphone or camera) we connected via the wonder of modern day mobile phones. And we had a great, wide-ranging chat. “Of shoes and ships and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings” sort of thing.

Forty minutes later, we said our goodbyes.

And I think I can now say, Yes. We are friends. An internet friendship CAN be a real thing. And a blogger meet-up, virtual or real, can help accomplish this kind of thing.

The final question was, would Rodney survive his journey?

Ten days passed with no news from Alabama. I was beginning to worry and on Wednesday last week I decided to follow the tracking number and see where the package was. But life is kinda busy around here and I didn’t have time to do it that day. That night, I was out with friends in a local cafe (for the music, not for the wine!) when my phone pinged!

An email!

“C’est arrivée.”

Hooray!

And did he survive?

Well, the box took some damage :

But Rodney is looking good.

(I love this – Katherine didn’t even open the box at home – she took the whole lot straight to the framer’s for fear of damaging the pastel. It’s nice to know that someone respects my work!)

I can’t wait to see how Rodney looks all framed up and hanging on a wall.

Originally posted on Tails From Provence. Reblogged with permission. Links [Reveal], [Part 1]. Welcome Martine.
~~~

Painting Dr Whooves Part 2
or
How an internet friendship can be a real thing

Part one Here

Long-time blogging acquaintance Katherine commissioned me to paint Rodney in early February. Unfortunately for her, she made the mistake of saying “No hurry.” Haha. Fatal. Thanks to that remark, it took me a while to start, but start I finally did, and I gleefully winged off a photo to prove that Something had indeed been done.

Her immediate response (besides “Yay!”) was “What’s the cotton bud for?” Smudging, I replied. Pastels require a lot of smudging. I use a rag (the sky), fingers (biggish areas of colour), cotton buds (smaller areas of colour), paintbrushes (where I want to get a hairy effect or a shiny highlight effect), and pointy sticks like the one below the cotton bud (for fine detail).

This exchange quickly morphed into a “You should do a series of posts which explains your process and what you use.”

Ehhh no, what if I totally screw up it and my series turns into “How I create firelighters using pastels” ???

But I tried, I really did. I videoed my studio, my dogs sleeping beside me and me doing some smudging. The only problem was, the smudging footage turned out to be some really detailed coverage of my worktable. It’s hard to hold a camera and smudge pastels at the same time. So I decided that filming was not a good idea, and I returned to my usual habit of taking ‘progress’ photos.

And then progress ground to a halt. There was a trip to Chamonix to see Youngest Daughter. And work at the stables. And lots of work at Villa Amande. And a Paddy’s Day party to organise. But finally I got back to Rodney. And I rapidly got to the point where all the Horse Bits were more or less coloured in and all that was left was (cue dramatic music)…

The Scarf.

The chromatically correct replica of Dr Who’s scarf. The one created by another blogger (a knitting blogger) a couple of years ago. Read about its origins here

This scarf is quasi-famous. I had to get it right.

I like to knit knitted things. Let me tell you right now, I don’t like to paint knitted things. Knitting this scarf would probably have been easier than painting it.

At one point, I was quite certain that I would completely ruin all my work and would have to tell Katherine I was starting again and leaving out the ****ing scarf. But I persevered. Sketched in the folds and the way it draped. Got the colours as close as I could. Worked on the shadows under Rodney’s neck. And then painstakingly shaded in each knitted row. Technical aside – for all of those fine lines, I used pastel pencils, not pastel sticks.

And the end result.

Note how the sky changed from the very first pass – I felt he needed a little more definition behind him. And I also liked the way that the sky appears superficially blue but is in fact a little stormy – much like Rodney himself!

I am really pleased with how he turned out. I just hope that Katherine is too. And that Rodney arrives safely in Alabama… we’ll find out in Part 3 I guess.

Originally posted on Tails From Provence. Reblogged with permission. Photos [Rodney], [Lyricc]. Link [Reveal]. Welcome Martine.
~~~

Painting Dr Whooves Part 1
or
How an Internet Friendship can be a Real Thing

When I posted my New Beginning post a couple of months ago, a long-time blog reader responded immediately.

“I’ll be your first commission, don’t even have to wait for the advertising post. Seriously, I believe in supporting artists. That is, I assume you aren’t painting with gold leaf?

Pick an idea from the blog & go to town. I’d be careful with cats. Some of them have passed on & I’d be too upset to appreciate a picture. Horses who have passed on I’d be okay with. Go figure. It can be a head shot, full body, showing, not showing, home team, ASB, pasture, jumping, saddle seat. Whatever amuses your artistic soul.”

Katherine (of Rodney’s Saga fame) and I have been mutual blog followers for at least six years now. I tune in and out of her blog and she tunes in and out of mine. (In fairness, I also tune in and out of mine… as do all of you regular followers!) We’ve sent each other random gifts for a Pay it Forward sort of thing and she was one of the winners in a draw I had ages ago. We are kindred spirits in an Age, Horsiness and being Female sort of way. Would I have said we’re friends? No.

And yet…

Within minutes of me publishing that blog post, she was there, boosting me in the most positive way anybody possibly could.

We messaged back and forth. She jumped right in and opted for the ‘large’ size picture. I went off and rootled through her blog. Looked at various horses. Various poses. And I kept being drawn back to this guy.

It’s not a flattering angle. The horse’s head and neck appear enormous; his body and what you can see of his legs seem tiny. The light is strong and casts very dark shadows. The head collar does nothing for his pretty face.

But it’s Rodney. Wearing his Dr Whooves scarf (apologies for mis-spelling in the previous post).

Rodney is the reason for Katherine’s blog. He’s the OTTB that she bought to bring on and event when Previous Horse was no longer up to the job. The one about whose greatness she would write for years. The one whose ribbons and trophies she would display proudly in her house; the one about whom she would reminisce in her old age.

Well, that was the plan.

Rodney turned out to be… umm… “complicated”, or even “Very Complicated.” His Saga has been going on for nine years now and he has yet to set foot on a dressage arena, let alone a cross country course. The plan changed to fit the horse, and Rodney became a long-term learning project. Still complicated today, at the age of nineteen.

But Rodney’s Saga is also one of those horsey blogs that’s survived. Let’s face it, most of us crumble away after a few years (apparently five. Can’t remember where I read that) but Katherine keeps writing. Every Darn Day. Which is damned impressive.

So it seemed right that Rodney, the reason for the Saga, the reason that Katherine and I got to know each other, should be my model.

I messaged Katherine; she sent me a high-res photo.

And I got to work.

PS I was also very tempted by this photo.

I love the action, the concentration, the intent. But this horse never had a Saga written about it.

It had to be Rodney.