Denman & Kauto Star

I finished the painting of Denman and Kauto Star this morning and am very pleased with the result. I had used the black background to start with as both photos I was working from had them looking out from their stables so their necks blended into shadows but I absolutely love the dark background as it's made them stand out so well.

I've also received an art blog award from two wonderful artists whom I admire greatly, Laura Hardie and Lene Daugaard so am very excited to receive the award.

I have been asked to list 7 things I love and then pass on to 7 art blogs I admire. The 7 things I love are...

1 My hubby Chris, he's extremely supportive and has been great over the past few months

2 My cats Simon and Izzy. I would go slightly mad being in the house all day on my own if it wasn't for their strange behaviour that keeps me amused

3 The hot summer sun on my skin, it wakes me up and makes me feel alive

4 Home & Away and Neighbours, some call them a guilty pleasure, I openly rave about loving Australian soaps!

5 Travelling, I have a long list of places I want to visit

6 Wine

7 My friends, and yes they know I love wine before them!

The 7 blogs I will send the award to are:

Peggi Habets

Alecia Underhill

Jason Morgan

Jenn Pratt

Tracy Hall

Gayle Mason

Cat McMillan

Denman & Kauto Star

Nearly at the finishing post. Sorry, that was a terrible racing related pun!

Denman & Kauto Star

Please excuse the light reflection to the left again!!

Time Management

It took me a while but last night I finally picked up my favourite book called I'd Rather be in the Studio by Alyson B Stanfield which is full of brilliant advice for artists. I started reading it last year but life took over and this book was replaced for a while by self help books galore! I'm now in a much better frame of mind to take on board and implement her advice plus I now have a larger work space in which to organise myself, my administration and my art. First things first is to organise my time and I have decided to produce a weekly planner and actually write down when I will do certain things instead of my usual get up in the morning, catch up on emails and paper work and then muddle through the day. I gave myself this morning to go for a long walk whilst the sun was out and there was still snow on the ground. It's a common mistake of artists to not give themselves any 'me' time and spend all day every day painting and dealing with the business and this can end up making them resent what they used to love doing plus not getting out of the house regularly is very unhealthy for both body and mind. I'll be the first to admit that if the weather is grey and miserable, such as yesterday, that implementing these ideas and getting moving is the last thing I want to do, the first thing I want to do being sit on the sofa and eat my weight in chocolate, but I will try to keep to my routines and hopefully this will make my motivation easier to come by on the cold wet grey days.

I also realise that this year I need to focus on marketing and selling myself as an artist and the first thing I will be starting on is creating a good Artist's Statement. If I can write down how I view my work, how it's created and how I want others to view my work, it will make it easier for me to speak about it. This is all in preparation for the big Equestrienne Exhibition I'm going to be part of in March as normally exhibitions are held by galleries and the artist's have very little to do with them but this exhibition will be run by us 6 artists and I need to learn how to be more confident with the people viewing my art. Fingers crossed!!

Denman & Kauto Star

I've finished Denman this morning and am happy with the result. I might make a start on Kauto Star this afternoon but it's so cold I'm not sure my hands will co-operate. I wear fingerless gloves and a scarf on a normal day so what with all the snow we've had today and the single glazing in the spare room/studio, it's bloomin' cold in there!

Snowed in again!

Here's a short video of the snow coming down in our garden this morning. We weren't forecast any snow, in fact, just watching the national news we're not supposed to be getting any snow right now, but there it is and it's coming down hard and fast! We're now wishing that we had moved to a village with a shop as we're running short on food.

Denman & Kauto Star

Amazingly, even though we had loads of snow last night and therefore my hubby couldn't get to work, I didn't drag him outside to build lots of snowmen and have massive snowball fights with anyone who walked past our house, instead I sat down and painted. It could, however, be something to do with the short amount of time I have left to work on 3 exhibition paintings plus my commissions and I am worrying that my exhibition paintings might not have time to get framed before going on show.

We did manage to go for a lovely long walk in the snow this morning and I've some great photos as it was absolutely stunning out there. I live in the Forest of Dean and we walked around Soudley Ponds and then up into the forest.

Our cottage is over to the far right of the picture.

Soudley Ponds

Me attempting an arty shot!

Fresh virgin snow, untouched until we tramped through it!

So pretty!!!

Exhibition Piece - Denman & Kauto Star

This painting is for the exhibition in March during Gold Cup week. It's of Denman and Kauto Star who were the last two years Gold Cup winners and also stable mates at Paul Nicholls yard. There's currently a bit of light reflection to the top left of the painting and the background is actually all the same colour tone. I found setting them both on the canvas quite tricky as they've come from separate photos so I hope I've got the sizing as near as possible and that one won't end up looking a lot larger than the other!