Create rather than consume...

Saturday, April 23, 2011

Yellow Morning

Yellow Morning, 2'x4', Acrylic on OSB

I finished this piece today. It's been on my easel for the past month. This piece came very easily after a couple weeks of sketching. It was born out of a poem I wrote a few weeks ago after sketching at Horse Palace. The poem was a memory of visiting the horses at Union Park (racetrack near my house in Marabella) with my Dad. It's been a very fun painting to work on. I made a new brush to make some of the effects I wanted.  

Hope you enjoy it. 


Friday, April 15, 2011

Drawing Horses

On Saturday mornings for the past couple of weeks I have been going down to Horse Palace at Exhibition place. Horse Palace is today a riding academy for aspiring urban equestrians. It's also the stable for the police horses. The building was built in 1931 and it's said to be one of the finer equestrian facilities in Canada. Luckily, I stumbled onto it from a quick internet search and a couple phone calls. Its such a beautiful building and the horses are amazing. There's something about being there that totally calms be down. The horses are tame and the people there don't mind me petting them. My favorite at the moment is a brown mare named Tess. Her coat is the perfect color brown and she's really gentle but strong.

My sketches are getting better. It's been pretty sobering to realize how different it is to sit and sketch a building vs sketching a moving animal. In the beginning I had tried drawing horses from pictures but it was all too stagnant. Plus I've noticed that in sketching and observing  I'm learning things about their shape and the way that they move that I didn't realize before. Capturing movement is the most difficult thing. I think that this is going to be something I do for a long time, rather than as a short term project. It's really rewarding in ways I can't describe. I feel so much more alive and connected to the world around me when for most of the rest of my time these days, I feel so separate.