100 Degrees and Reworking Paintings

     Here in the NorthEast we are experiencing the mother of all heat waves.To borrow a line fro the movie Biloxie Blues..this is like Africa hot! One hundred degrees is just...well... unnecessary. What do people do down south who have to endure this kind of weather on a more regular basis?

I am definitely a cool weather person. Love my sweaters.

So what are all of you doing to keep cool? I took my son to a movie, went to a support group meeting and am planning to pull an all nighter in the studio. Okay..maybe a half nighter. I have an acrylic painting of a horse in half pass that I have been staring at for the past few weeks trying to decide what to do with it. I love the horse but the backgrounds just irks me. So I am planning on reworking this one. I like the arena but the rest has to go.  I will post the results as soon as I finish it! Oh , that is if I can figure out how to post photos from my iphone! :)

Now for my question of the day. Does anyone know if you can post photos to Blogger from your iphone? I can't seem to find any info online on how to do this. Anyone?


Now I know I said I would be posting details from the Alvaro Castagnet workshop but I have lots of images that I would like to include.  makes for a more interesting blog post. Don't you agree?

Stay cool!   :)
Deborah

Happy New Year! Newf watercolor and Dressage Painting

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday! Now it is back to our regularly scheduled programmimg! :) I took a holiday break and now I am back to work in the studio. 
I have some interesting blog posts coming up.. so stay tuned!
I've  got a wonderful new easel...The Cheap Joe's Signature Field Easel which I will review here with photos. I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this easel
I will review a book that a wonderful author/friend wrote. The book is titled Memoirs of a Bathtub Psychic by Bethanne Elion. I know it is not about art (although she is an artist, too) but this book is a wonderful read.
I will be posting more about the painting process itself. Lots of WIPS and commentary on techniique and answers to some of my most frequently asked questions.

I am looking forward to creating some wonderful new art this year.  Here is the start of a new dressage horse and rider work in progress. This is very large 30 x 22 (full sheet) watercolor. This is the initial stages of glazes ...lots more work to be done on this. After doing so many smaller pieces last year I have been wanting go larger!

I also have a couple of pieces that I had started that got put aside as commissions and pressing commitments came in. One of them is Newfoundland pup that has been haunting me. I started the painting.. early last year (I think) and as I was organizing the studio it's cute little eyes (which I had almost finished painting) were peering at me over a stack of canvases. This one I will finish this week. I got a huge chunk completed last night.

The eyes are almost completed here. This painting will require a lot of glazing. This is my typical portrait style watercolor . I thoroughly enjoy doing these and I haven't done many of late because of my many acrylic painting commitments. I need to take my time at this point to lay done the initial washes of color. This will help to creath depth as the painting progresses and the values deepen. So does anyone recognize WHO this little Newf pup is?

Enjoying the process!

Deborah

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Deborah O'Sullivan
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Jumper Schooling on the Flat WIP2

More on this little jumper painting. I had fully intended to finish this little painting last week but I wasn't feeling great. Those darn ticks got me again. I have Lyme...again... This is becoming my spring right of passage. Please, guys, check yourselves and your animals thoroughly for ticks after being in the great outdoors.
Okay, so back to this painting. When I first started out in horses I did the jumpers. I had a super Amateur Owner (A/O) horse named Mr CJ Bonkers. He was a super, super TB (ex racehorse) that I picked up cheap by paying his back board. His owner didn't want him anymore and he was just left in his stall for a couple of months when I found him. He was a very difficult, complicated spooky guy. But we clicked and we had a blast together. He was very accident prone..needed to be wrapped in bubble wrap....:) ..constantly getting stitches for this, cold hosed for that. He couldn't be tied and he spooked at everything when I first got him. His name was actually very appropriate! :) But this boy could jump and jump well and he was super fast. And I loved him dearly. We competed very successfully on the East Coast in the jumpers until I retired him at age 14 because of odd lameness issues that no vet could diagnose. Turns out he had LYME disease! Seeing a theme here? This was back in the early 80's before vets around here would routinely check for it. He was treated but never came 100% sound so he was lightly ridden, hunter paced, etc for fun .He loved to do stuff. He had an untimely, tragic death in a pasture accident at the age of 18 on Thanksgiving morning. He was an incredible boy. I am sure some of you have known a special horse like this. I'd love to hear about them!
So what,you may be thinking, does any of this have to do with this painting? The horse in the reference photo that I used for this could be his twin. So I will be using some of CJ's photos to complete this. I really will have this finished tonight.
This one is for those special horses. Let's hear about yours!