A few things

Sorry I sort of fell off the wagon last week. It was sort of crazy and I took a minor vacation from life (and did nothing).

My Silversun Pickups station is my favorite station on Pandora, ever. Until they play Vampire Weekend. I was listening to it with my phone while I was riding yesterday, and their song Oxford Comma came on. It was extremely aggravating, and my ride promptly went downhill from there. Thanks Vampire Weekend.

Finn has been weird lately. 99% of the time I can blame this on me, so it looks like we need to go do some no stirrup work. And we need to work on stopping off my seat. Again. He was doing really well with it, until Vampire Weekend came on and I guess he fed through my tension and forgot he knew how to stop like a nice pony, and not like an inverted, gaping mouth camel. It's ok Finn, we all have bad days.

Anyway.

Here is something I'm working on! I'm not all grumpy today I swear. I've been doing stuff.



I'm not sure where to go from here. I have some ideas. I want the birds to be red, even though I know there are no red swallows. I just need some red. The background will stay white & gray. Note to self: never stain blocks with crappy IKEA stain before you draw on them. Because drawing over that crap is annoying. Then I realized I was going to paint oils over water based stain, so I may have to start this over from scratch. Oh well, it's an experiment anyway.

Man... Modest Mouse - One Chance just came on. Damn that's an awesome song.

Sketchbook Sunday

I've always been so in love with the live oaks here.

Sketchbook Sunday

Some things I drew...



Hey it's 7-11 today! Awesome!

Brought to you by Sudafed PE

Horse pirates! YAR!!!!
I thought this up while brainstorming for new tattoo ideas. I don't know that I would actually get this tattooed... but you never know. I want to mess around with it some more.



Also... I finished this, but I forgot about it.

I have been severely lacking in the productivity department lately. Mostly because this time of year, every year, my sinuses want me to die a horrible, slow, agonizing death. It's not fun. I will awaken from this fog and get back to my life one of these days. I love the summer. I truly do. But it's like my body has to break into it every year.

Oh well. Until then, I'll (legally) drug myself profusely and see what happens.

the vines

Here is something I've been working on lately. I'm not sure where to go from here, but I like it so far. It needs color of some sort. It's also very small, but small is ok. I like it anyway. I'm still working on remnants of wood from deck building.



At the moment I have so many ideas, and so many thoughts I want to get out. Things I want to paint. Things I want to share with the world. Things like that. But oh have we slammed head first with ours eyes closed into "the busy season" at work. The weather has also been LOVELY. When I'm not at work, I've been walking the dogs (with much rejoicing on their part), or making vain attempts to ride. That's the curse of an outdoor person I guess.

I've decided I need a hammock. Mmmmm yes.

Something different

I've been chugging along on this for the past 2 weeks or so. It's something a little different for me, but I like how she turned out.



I didn't like her hair the first time so I changed it.



She was done in oils & graphite on recycled wood. I still have several pieces of 1x6 leftover from our deck. I think I need to experiment with gluing them together or cutting them into smaller pieces, so I don't get sick of working in a narrow format. It worked well for her though.



Now... to open that Etsy store!

Ichiban

Ichiban means "first one" in Japanese, or so I've been told.



Ichiban is my first painting of the new year, my first painting in oils, and our friend's very awesome dog.



This was painted on a leftover piece of wood from our new deck. We finished building it after Thanksgiving. Our friends helped us build and dedicate it before they moved away. I don't think I've ever made anything more fitting.

And I should give a shout out to my new friend...



Hello baby.

This post has been brought to you by Artograph, courtesy of the great and wonderful Kenneth. This was my Christmas present from my husband. Previously, transferring sketches to be painted was a huge pain in the ass, not to mention a several hour endeavor. Thanks to you Arty, my life is 10,000 times easier.

Have a good weekend!

new ventures

Today I painted in oils for the first time in my life. How I got through 4 years of art school without painting in oils is beyond me. Today, however, I tried and it actually wasn't a disaster. I'd known I wanted to do it for ages, I just never made the plunge. Perhaps... this is a new direction. We'll see. I'll post it when it's all done and mostly dry.

I've been in the house painting all day. It was pretty cool, but I'm going a little stir crazy. I didn't ride today or yesterday because of The Cold. The high in this part of country today was 45. While that may seem tropical to most people, for Savannah it might as well be the north pole. No one else at my barn wants to ride in this, and I hate riding alone, so sitting at home painting under the glow of the space heater it is.

I did brave The Cold and walked the dogs yesterday. They were most grateful, but really dogs... despite your persistent begging it's not happening again this soon. You have a wimpy southerner for a mom.