Friday, September 4, 2009

Waiting for Foxes

An Early Start, SOLD
Well, the book is done, in Blurb's hands, hope it makes it here in time for Polo for the Cure! Doing the paintings for this has been a good project. Doing it with the deadline of this September meant I did need to include a few older paintings. It is 60 pages and includes 24 hunt report entries, each with a landscape painting from my time whipping-in, with added sketches, drawings, paintings of hounds and horses. Several of the past blog posts have been excerpts and paintings from it. Dealing with Blurb has mostly been fine, actually making the book wasn't bad, rather fun. Click on the book's cover in the Blurb icon to see a preview.

Thursday, September 3, 2009

Meissonier

Etude de cheval pommele, copy

Every painter has earlier artists, icons, to whom they look for inspiration, guidance, even education. Jean-Louise-Ernest Meissonier is one of my heros. 'Study of a dappled horse' painted sometime in the 1870's was one of his sketches for, undoubtedly, a war horse. Although he painted many subjects, a good body of his work were grand epic things chronicling the conflicts of his time, these sketches of horses are what interest me most. Not so surprising considering my own likes.