Weekly Update

Here's a different view of Ravenhill. I'm still working on the changes to his blanket. I've given him a star and snip, and worked some more on his eyes. I also toned town the hooves a little, they still need more work.

 I just love the way Lajjina is coming along. I've been working on her her dapples, mane and tail and head. I thought she would look nice with a thin stripe.

Finn is very close to looking the way I want him to look. I think I will work on his hooves a little bit today and then set him aside to dry for a while.

That's it for this week! I am detailing the dapple grey Dinky Duke and hope to have him done within a couple of weeks.

Brush Review

I thought I would do a brush review this week instead of boring you all with pictures of the same three horses. This is the Robert Simmons Expression detail spotter, size 15/0. I bought this to try it out and see if it held up to my favorite Loew-Cornells that I reviewed previously. The Expression brush was much cheaper, so I was really hoping that I would like it. Unfortunately, I didn't.

The problem? My hand size! I have very small hands. They're almost freakishly small for an adult, but the Expression brush has a huge handle. It has a long taper down to the brush, and the part where my hand rests is gigantic and unwieldy. It makes the brush feel unstable in my hand, and I have to grip close to the ferrule to use it. It seems to be made for someone with really large hands. It's not comfortable at all. Here's a photo of my hand holding the Expression:

and my hand holding the Loew-Cornell:

See what I mean about the size? The Loew-Cornell is just much more comfortable and easy to handle.

The Expression brush tip itself is just fine, in fact I consider these two brush tips to be very comparable, so if you have huge hands then you might find the Expression right up your alley, especially for the price. I paid $2.64 for it at Dick Blick.

Weekly Update

Ravenhill's owner has graciously allowed me extra time to tweak his blanket. I felt that the white was creeping too far forward and so I'm changing it to be more like the references that I originally used. I also started adding more color to the hooves and put a little color on his eyes.

Here is this incredible Lajjina resin, she's kind of awkward to paint but I just love her. I'm planning on giving her some kind of facial marking, a stripe and star maybe, nothing too big. I haven't worked on her dapples much.

I hope this photo shows some of the subtle dappling I decided to put on Finn. He's got some reverse dapples on his hind end, and some dapples on his neck, and then his body has some very subtle dappling that looks almost like mottling of the body/saddle color around his belly and topline. I'm still working on all of that.

And here's a Taboo that's been waiting for me for a while. I have ambitious plans for him, he's going to be an extended blanket appy, and his coloring is a dull liver chestnut?
That's it for the pictures this week. I am extremely busy with appointments and meetings so I may not get a lot done the next few days. If anyone in the area is interested, I will be participating in the First Thursday art walk in downtown Seattle this Thursday, from 5-9pm at the Angle Gallery in the Toshiro Kaplan building. I'm showing some of my paintings of marbles and a large painting of candy bunnies. Here's a link to my blog with more information if you're interested in checking it out. It's a really cool building, you can walk around the entire block and there are galleries on every side.

Sum of All Parts

Some of you who read this blog may know that I have some insecurities about how slowly I paint. It's a source of great frustration for me, because I love using oils, but my technique is such that it takes an inordinately long time to get anything finished. I often see other artists who can finish 5 or more pieces to every one of mine, and it makes me feel like I'm moving in slow motion or underwater. I definitely would be the tortoise in the "tortoise and hare" story, that's for sure. Sometimes I feel like I'm not even part of the hobby because I'm not always out there with something new every few weeks.

But I have discovered something that may help me speed up a little bit. I like to use alkyd mediums when I paint, which have a moderate drying effect, but they don't work the same way as cobalt or japan driers do (supposedly they are a more flexible film not prone to cracking). So I did a little experiment with three of the mediums:

Winsor & Newton Liquin Original, Daniel Smith Oil Painting Medium, and Liquin Fine Detail. I used Rembrandt's Permanent Red Light for this experiment because it seems to stay wet on my palette for weeks at a time, and I mixed about 15% medium with paint. The results were interesting. Liquin Original and DS Painting Medium were pretty much dry to the touch after 24 hours, but Liquin Fine Detail had a tacky feeling to it. It took a couple of days before the Fine Detail medium felt more dry. And wouldn't you know it? That is the medium that I was using to paint my models with! So I have switched over to Liquin Original (which I LOVE) and I'm much happier with the drying times now. I plan on having a more thorough review of the mediums in a future post.

Another thing I am trying to do is to paint only part of the model in each session. For instance, I have divided it up into underside, body, head, mane/tail, legs, so that each day I can concentrate on one part of the model while the rest of it dries. That way I can keep painting on each piece every day. I don't know if this actually makes anything speedier, but it feels like it to me.

I have a bunch of pictures to share, but I guess they can wait 'til the next post since I've run on with this one.

Weekly Update

I've been working a lot on Ravenhill, refining his color and blanket. I also worked on his mane and tail some more. I plan on working on his head and legs a little more, and his blanket still needs a little more coverage. I have barely touched his feet yet.

Here's Lajjina's offside, I've worked some more on her overall color and I felt that her light areas were getting a little too yellow, so I'm starting to tone that down.

Finn has had some major work done to his coloring. I felt that he was getting too reddish and brash-looking, I'm going for a more subtle look on him.

Those are the three pieces I've worked on the most over the last week, as well as continuing prepwork on a couple of other pieces. I will probably remain focused on these three pieces for a little while.

Weekly Update

Well, I'm happy to say I was able to finish up both of my projects over the last week, so I'm back to my regular schedule this week. Here's a peek at the finished NAN donation. I've got a full set of pictures of him in the "Dilutes" section of my website if you'd like to check him out. He was really a joy to paint :-)

I got another layer of paint on Lajjina. At this point I would say she is maybe 30% done. The way I paint uses semi-transparent color and I often use glazes, so it takes a long time to build up color, and the color changes a lot before it finalizes. Anyway, She still has a ways to go, and her dapples still look very blobby and weird so they will be worked on quite a bit. I can see a couple of socks on her.

Ravenhill and Finn got sprayed so I can evaluate their color better. They are both approximately 75% finished, and I'm also continuing to prep a couple of commission pieces. Next week I hope to have some more good pictures!

Visit to Dick Blick

I often order from Dick Blick's catalog. I have found that they have the most items that I like to order, in stock, so I usually try to go with them when I'm ordering online. Their prices aren't the cheapest but they are reasonable. I really like their dependability and I also like the way their web site is set up, it's pretty easy to find most of their products.

Blick recently opened a store in Seattle, so I made the way up there last week to check it out. It's a very convenient location for them (close to several art schools) on Broadway and Pine. Their web site said they had validated parking, but I couldn't find the parking garage so I ended up parking on the street and paying for it. The store itself is big and very well-stocked. I was in a hurry because I didn't have a lot of change for the parking meter, so I kind of rushed through it, but I did notice that they had a lot of different brands of oil paint, lots of different colored pencils in open stock, and airbrushes and airbrush supplies, too. They had a much larger collection of paint and pencils than Daniel Smith's store. I forgot to look at their canvas, paper and stretchers section, though. They are probably going to give Utrecht, which has a smaller store not far away, a lot of competition.

There were two people at the checkstand and it was crowded, and I'm sorry to say both cashiers seemed a little surly. Maybe they were just having a bad day. I did find out the parking garage is behind the store in the alley.

So now I have to decide whether I want to shop at their physical store or continue to order online. If I order online I have to pay for shipping ($6.95?) but if I drive to the store, it's about $2.50 or so in gas, plus about an hour and a half of my time. I will probably end up just ordering, unless I'm downtown and have some extra time to shop, which isn't very often.

Other news: I have two deadlines I am trying to meet by the end of next week, one being the NAN donation and the other is a painting that I'm working on for an upcoming show in June. I must get these two things done, so the next few days I will be working on those two projects exclusively. Then I will get right back to commissions and other sales pieces. In the meantime, here is a photo of the Dinky Duke I've been working on. He's one of my on-and-off sales pieces, but he's finally getting to a point where I can start finishing him up: