C'mon, Come Play!

It was such a nice day today, it was kind of hard to come in and start painting. I spent the morning in the barn, doing more horse management - horses in, horses out, grooming, and so on, and started on stalls. It would have been very easy to just hang out with them out there all day. Because of that, I decided to do a painting that I knew would be fun!

This is 7 x 5 oil on masonite, and in order to deal with painting a black horse, I deviated from the limited palette I've been using. This is Broderick, and his photo was provided to me by his owner, Rebecca Lerwill. Rebecca is an author, and her first book, Relocating Mia is my current read. She recently published the sequel, The Acronym, next on the list! Because of all this painting this month, and the new additions to the farm, I'm not as far along in my reading as I'd like. I was also feeling more like writing than painting today, so maybe this is a strange compromise on not really managing any writing of my own - I'm featuring an author's horse, and hoping you'll check out her books.

Broderick has grown up a bit since this photo. He's a Friesian, and has a bit more bone than the Thoroughbreds I've been painting of late. No question he's just as cute, though! I did get to the point where this was too wet to do as much as I'd like, but in keeping with the project, I'm posting it, regardless!

My own fiction work in progress stars a black Thoroughbred filly. I tried to beg off the painting today by saying I'd write 1,000 words instead - you know, the opposite to "a picture paints a thousand words!" Fair trade, right? But no one would let me off the hook. For more fun I decided to find a little excerpt from what I've been writing to tag onto the end of this blog post...one that mentions the black filly, of course! This filly is probably a lot like Gracie, and likewise, I'm fully aware I've made her what she is so far! Now I'm off to watch the end of the hockey game!

He leaned on the top railing, a few of the mares grazing not far away. Chique’s baby sister stood quietly beside Sotisse, looking introspective, Pete thought. The filly made no movement to come over. How different she was – she was of a similar build, and as black as Chique, save for that star that dripped down to a stripe and ended as a snip between her nostrils – but she was decidedly more aloof. A lot of Chique’s in-your-face attitude had to do with his own interaction, he knew. They had made each other, in a lot of ways.