Painting at the Horse Show - Blowing Rock NC

A great two weeks of horse show and painting. Ponies and leadline, dogs and barns, horses and spectators.  I had hoped to get more paintings finished of the show and grounds, but a number of commissioned paintings were completed at the show. Some from photos, others from setting the easel up on location and painting. Here are a few....

Pony Morning - Blowing Rock 11 x 14 oil on canvas

The Wave - Leadline  8 x 10 oil on linen panel

Not much more to say about this.

By the Ingate  8 x 10 oil on linen panel (this painting is available)

In the Boxes 8 x 10 oil on linen panel

(the people in this painting were constantly coming and going, they were not all together at any one time.  This painting available.)

At the Barn  8 x 10 Oil on canvas

In this painting, the barn was painted on location, the figure added later from a photograph (it was a gift to him) 

Another view of the Boxes,    "Keg",  8 x 10 oil on canvas

A commissioned painting of her horses in their stalls, this collector agreed to have the second horse eating the fern.  Thank you, so much more interesting,  Oil on canvas, 8 x 24

4 x 6 Oil on linen panel
This painting was commissioned and given to the horse's owner as a gift from the rider.


More leadline paintings, horseshow paintings and eventually you will get to see paintings that are to be gifts some time in the future.

Thanks, Steve

Painting of Charlie and Multimedia Linen Panels

This post is about a recent painting and I have decided to write about it in two parts. First you get to know about the subject of the painting, the late Charlie Dashiell and below the second image about the panel it was painted on.

We met Charlie when exhibiting our art work at Virigina Horse shows. He had been repairing tack and doing leather work "since Hector was a pup," as they say. His shop at the shows was an old trailer and by the time we met him, he was organizing the concessions and vendors for a number of horse shows. Theresa and I got the chance to got out to dinner with Charlie one night before a show. Lots of stories, from when as a boy he rode a pony to school to histories of the shows and his take on some of the personalities. He was definitely one of a kind.

This painting is an 8 x 10 oil. This is at either the Upperville Horse Show or the Rose Mount Horse Show, I am not quite sure

Here is the painting in a walnut frame.

Okay, for all you artists, this painting was done on a linen panel. The texture of linen is distinct from that of cotton canvas, a bit more fun to paint on. The linen is mounted to Multimedia Artboard, a resin and fiberboard, which is an archival substrate. The linen is oil primed as opposed to an acrylic primer. The oil primed linen gives a brighter color as the oil is not absorbed into the primer, as is the case with acrylic gesso. The rigidity of the panel prevents the flexing of the paint layer that occurs with stretched linen as it changes with humidity and temperature. The panels come in thicknesses from paper thin to 1/4 inch and are extremely lightweight. Great for travel.

Note: Multimedia Artboard did give me some panels to try. I did like them and I do use them, that is why I am telling you about them. ( I don't write about the products that I don't like and use.)

Painting a Series Leadline Class at Horseshow

I don't think this would be considered a series just yet.. I am working on a painting, 12 x 16 that I originally did as a 4 x 6 oil for the 1hundredpaintings blog. Here is a look at that painting. You can click on it to see the original blog post.

Here is a photo of the 9 x 12 painting in it's early stages

Here we are a bit further along. The trick here is not to lose the spontaneity of the little painting while refining the details. Her expression is rather tricky to paint also. It doesn't take but a dab of paint of the wrong value and she will be pouting.