In Between Days

Spiderman

Borrowing my title from another Ben Folds song today. I believe it's a cover, actually. Either way, I like the song and the title works! I figured I'd better make a post before everyone thought I fell off the face of the earth after my Thirty Days-plus-one! I did take a few days off from the easel, but now I'm back at it, working on some of the larger/more complex WIPs I put on hold for April.


The first thing I want to do is thank my guest artists/bloggers for helping me out in April: Kim Ratigan, Carrie Lewis, Donna Ridgway, Kimberly Kelly Santini and Karen Thumm. You all helped to preserve my sanity in a busy month, and all the posts were well-received. At the end of March/beginning of April, I was given a couple of blog awards, and I didn't post about it for the sake of my Thirty Days' continuity, so I'm addressing that now! Thanks to Wyanne Chase of Art By Wyanne, and Karie-Ann Cooper for the awards! I hope you'll take the time to have a look at both these wonderful artists. I'm going to pass the awards along to my guest artists as thanks for helping me out! I really appreciate it!

Leo

I feel like I dropped the ball, not devoting a post to the results of this year's Derby, especially after the painting challenge last Friday! I probably did enough gushing on Twitter about it - Mine That Bird, Canadian Champion two-year-old last season, was given his first lessons at Pine Valley Training Centre, operated by Paul and Gemini Caine. Pine Valley is where the 'kids' I deal with go - the yearlings when it's time for their careers to begin, and the racehorses when they're ready to be legged up. I'm pretty thrilled for them up there, being able to say they broke the Derby winner!

Life carries on here on the farm - the two boys are growing up, and I'm still dealing wit breeding season. On the easel, this week I started back to work on the painting of Bear Now on the training track. I'm working on the underpainting now, and have put two sessions' work into it so far - still very early on in the process. Just to refresh, this is 18 x 14 oil on Raphael linen panel.


Well, that's probably enough for now. Have to include a couple photos of the boys. Leo, three months, already losing his foal coat; and Clever's son at a month, with all the white! I'm calling him Spider until I hear differently, on a great suggestion from Elizabeth McCrindle. Of course, much of the time he gets "Spiderman" instead! That works too. He thinks he's a superhero!