Kim's Art Progress

As the weather hasn't cooperated much for riding actual horses outdoors, I've continued to spend time in the house hiding from the wind and bright snow by drawing.  I've made some good progress, and I'm really happy with the improvements I'm making!  I still use the graph to get the image onto larger paper, but I find I'm using it less and less as I'm able to look at the drawings as merely light and dark areas rather than "eyes" or "nostrils".

I went back to the art supply store and picked up something called a Conte Crayon, which gives me much darker darks than I get even with my variety of pencils.  I also got some charcoal and a blending stick, which looks like a wadded up stick of paper for smudging things.

My first experiment with using a color other than black was adding yellow to the jump rails in this one.

 I love how this horse jumping at liberty turned out, mostly because it reminds me of Thai, my old OTTB who loved to jump.  If animals come back in reincarnation, Thai came back as Highboy.

I've found that eyes are difficult for me, so I picked out a few images that were close-ups of horse eyes and worked on them.  I'm really happy with this one of a racehorse wearing blinders  .

One of my goals is to be able to draw from photos, not just draw from other people's drawings.  This is a photo of One For Nothing, or "Note" around the barn.  I'm happy with it, and feel pleased that it actually looks like him!

This was my second photo attempt, me with Fason.   I haven't tried drawing humans much, just jockeys in the saddle.  Fason looks like himself, but I'm not sure that I look like myself!

I also picked up some brown Conte Crayons and a few brown pastel pencils.  This is how my first sepia horse eye turned out. 

I really enjoy doing these, and my attempts at working from photos are coming along.  Eventually I'll have to figure out what to do with all these drawings, right now I just like making them.  Perhaps some of them will find their way to being displayed on some of our walls.  I tried for years to be draw horses, as my childhood best friend, Whitney, can testify.  She saw these on facebook and was super impressed and surprised, probably because despite years and years of trying, AT BEST my drawings looked like cartoons.  My suspicion is that the brain injury jogged loose something artistic in my head, and now I can do it, because I sure couldn't before.