new stuff

I finished up the Rhode Island Red drawings today, finally! Now I'm trying to crank out more original work for Draft Horse Classic. I've made a couple of those painted chicken plaques so far and want to make a few more, but I'm just not crazy about painting. This will sound weird coming from someone who works in colored pencil (the epitome of tedious) but somehow I find myself getting impatient with painting. All that mixing and rinsing and drying. It either dries too slow and then I end up lifting off too much color (when trying to blend stuff), or it dries too fast and I can't blend a darn thing. Arg, I think I need more practice, and I get too bogged down trying to make everything look "real."

So I did a couple of horse drawings in oil pastel (on wood plaques) and they look pretty darn good! I haven't used those things since high school...seriously. Messy but fun. There is the risk they won't dry out in time (maybe if I leave them in front of the fan it would help?) and then I need to varnish it, which hopefully won't take too long to dry either. Darn it, why do I wait til the last minute all the time! :-D I will photograph all this stuff eventually. I have, let's see, 2 more horse images and 3 more poultry images that I would like to complete for next week. Tomorrow will be a busy day!

So until DHC is over, I probably won't be doing any Standard work. Of course that makes me worry even more about deadlines, but I've known all along that for almost two weeks around DHC that's all I can do is just get ready for it. Anyway it's kind of refreshing just to do some other kinds of artwork.