Friday, May 01, 2009

Derby


I know today was Oaks Day, but the surprise I mentioned yesterday was a Kentucky Derby inspired pARTy! One of my guest bloggers from this month, Kimberly Kelly Santini, each year paints horses instead of dogs for Derby Week. Earlier in the week, Kim issued a challenge of sorts – that Friday we do a daily painting from the same image. It sounded like a lot of fun to me, so I dug up a selection of photos, and we nominated mutual friend Juliet Harrison to choose one for us. Kim put together a blog for the event: The Virtual pARTy. If you pop over there, you'll see the image we worked from; an early progress shot of my piece, and both our completed paintings.

I'm posting mine here. This is from a photo of Peaker, who is Billy's older half-sister, Clever's first foal, and also half-sister to the new guy who remains nameless! I admit the likeness got away from me a bit. I think it looks more like Gracie - hmm, imagine that! Understandable, I guess!

The painting is 16 x 12, oil on canvas, and I used my favourite limited palette, plus a bit of Naples Yellow and Unbleached Titanium.

Tomorrow is Derby Day, but as mentioned Friday is traditionally the Kentucky Oaks. I didn't get away to catch the race, but I had to look up the result, and was so happy to see Rachel Alexandra won - by twenty lengths and change! So now, I'm off to watch the replay. Tomorrow, Derby Day!

5 comments:

Tina said...

So wonderful, as always. You are so lucky to be around such beauty and grace with horses, it comes through in your paintings, your love for them, you do such a nice job.

Adventures With Big Filly said...

Beach was very excited about the Derby this year! ~ Tia

Linda Shantz said...

Thanks Tina!

Yes Tia, we were pretty excited here too, especially because Mine That Bird raced here at Woodbine last year!

So excited, in fact, that I somehow managed to delete half the title of the post...though thankfully, it still makes sense! That's what I get when I give Monster the night off and let Gracie try her hand at editing!

LDWatkins said...

The Virtual Party link doesn't work for me, but your painting is so beautiful, always enjoy your work.

Linda Shantz said...

Thanks for pointing that out, Lynda - I had the URL wrong! You might have to refresh the page, but try it again...it's http://the-virtual-party.blogspot.com