Friday, November 8
Nov. 9th, 2024 01:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gottawonderToday I am grateful for:
Finally happy with a painting I was working on. It's pretty "girly", a unicorn playing in the sea, but it makes me happy.
It is somewhat based on a tarot card from a deck I bought recently. I found the waves to be difficult to get right, and the shading of the unicorn.
When I got up, there was a marketplace notification, and some guy wanted to buy one of the offcut pieces of linoleum. I was only charging five bucks for it, but he was driving over half an hour from the city to come get it.
When he saw the piece, he was like "I don't even need anything that big", though he took it.
My thoughts? Why would you drive an hour round trip out to the middle of nowhere for a chunk of linoleum, when all you needed was a four foot square piece? You could go to ANY store that sells linoleum and find an offcut that would work. The ReStore. Or ask probably any friend that owns a house, since every person I know that owns a home will have chunks of linoleum stored there.
Well, he got his linoleum. I hope it works out for him. Maybe tomorrow he's going to drive a few hours to meet up with someone from Marketplace to buy a partially used bag of cat litter or something.
I expected someone from the town three miles away from us to buy it.
It was a beautiful warm day today for this time of year, and it was pleasant to be outside working with Wonder and Dandy.
Then I went to see River.
We had a really nice session today. He was very soft and responsive, and had good energy, and did well with our work today.
In our ridden work, we were able to get a bit of collection at the canter with just the neck rope.
A VERY NICE session. I would love for more of them to be like this.
I stayed to work a horse with the young woman with health challenges as she had her lesson.
This person wasn't feeling too well today, but R convinced her to try to ride, and she seemed to do fine once she got going. I know it's not easy to know how this woman feels on a day to day basis, but I have a sense that it's probably very important for her to stay active and work with a horse on her lesson day. I don't think she gets much other exercise.
I worked with a chubby little mare named Poppy whose owners don't seem to visit much once the summer shows are over, and don't work her very hard when they do come. This pony is a very easy keeper, and probably could be used every day to help her maintain a better weight.
I did some therapy stuff to help her loosen her hind end, as she always seems tight there, and then a bunch of lunging. Her canter is very odd, though she seems fine running around with the other horses in the pasture.
Then R seemed very chatty, and I was fine being chatty, so thus it goes. She seems to like getting herself all worked up into a good, cheerful rant about things that bother her every Friday after this lesson time, since we are there together at the end of the night cleaning up the barn together.
She started out ranting about Covid vaccines, and yeah, it's like that. I sort of redirected the conversation to "obesity epidemic" which I am a little more comfortable with, and she was okay ranting about that.
It's oddly funny that this seems to be a pattern, that she likes to get into a good rant (it's not really a conversation). I know I do that with my husband. Women I think, just need to do that sometimes.
There's nothing hostile about it, she just likes to talk about something, and doesn't really expect anything in return, so I just kind of go along with it.
When I got home, my husband was right behind me from the climbing gym, and we noticed that there were some faint Northern Lights.
I grabbed Wonder, we got Roxy outside, and we walked around the horse pasture in the mostly dark for a while with a beautiful moon and the Northern Lights. It was pretty lovely.
Then we watched "Daybreakers", a kind of vampire movie that was a bit hokey, and very gory. Fun stuff.
Finally happy with a painting I was working on. It's pretty "girly", a unicorn playing in the sea, but it makes me happy.
It is somewhat based on a tarot card from a deck I bought recently. I found the waves to be difficult to get right, and the shading of the unicorn.
When I got up, there was a marketplace notification, and some guy wanted to buy one of the offcut pieces of linoleum. I was only charging five bucks for it, but he was driving over half an hour from the city to come get it.
When he saw the piece, he was like "I don't even need anything that big", though he took it.
My thoughts? Why would you drive an hour round trip out to the middle of nowhere for a chunk of linoleum, when all you needed was a four foot square piece? You could go to ANY store that sells linoleum and find an offcut that would work. The ReStore. Or ask probably any friend that owns a house, since every person I know that owns a home will have chunks of linoleum stored there.
Well, he got his linoleum. I hope it works out for him. Maybe tomorrow he's going to drive a few hours to meet up with someone from Marketplace to buy a partially used bag of cat litter or something.
I expected someone from the town three miles away from us to buy it.
It was a beautiful warm day today for this time of year, and it was pleasant to be outside working with Wonder and Dandy.
Then I went to see River.
We had a really nice session today. He was very soft and responsive, and had good energy, and did well with our work today.
In our ridden work, we were able to get a bit of collection at the canter with just the neck rope.
A VERY NICE session. I would love for more of them to be like this.
I stayed to work a horse with the young woman with health challenges as she had her lesson.
This person wasn't feeling too well today, but R convinced her to try to ride, and she seemed to do fine once she got going. I know it's not easy to know how this woman feels on a day to day basis, but I have a sense that it's probably very important for her to stay active and work with a horse on her lesson day. I don't think she gets much other exercise.
I worked with a chubby little mare named Poppy whose owners don't seem to visit much once the summer shows are over, and don't work her very hard when they do come. This pony is a very easy keeper, and probably could be used every day to help her maintain a better weight.
I did some therapy stuff to help her loosen her hind end, as she always seems tight there, and then a bunch of lunging. Her canter is very odd, though she seems fine running around with the other horses in the pasture.
Then R seemed very chatty, and I was fine being chatty, so thus it goes. She seems to like getting herself all worked up into a good, cheerful rant about things that bother her every Friday after this lesson time, since we are there together at the end of the night cleaning up the barn together.
She started out ranting about Covid vaccines, and yeah, it's like that. I sort of redirected the conversation to "obesity epidemic" which I am a little more comfortable with, and she was okay ranting about that.
It's oddly funny that this seems to be a pattern, that she likes to get into a good rant (it's not really a conversation). I know I do that with my husband. Women I think, just need to do that sometimes.
There's nothing hostile about it, she just likes to talk about something, and doesn't really expect anything in return, so I just kind of go along with it.
When I got home, my husband was right behind me from the climbing gym, and we noticed that there were some faint Northern Lights.
I grabbed Wonder, we got Roxy outside, and we walked around the horse pasture in the mostly dark for a while with a beautiful moon and the Northern Lights. It was pretty lovely.
Then we watched "Daybreakers", a kind of vampire movie that was a bit hokey, and very gory. Fun stuff.
no subject
Date: 2024-11-10 07:17 pm (UTC)I belong to a FB group called RUDE ARTISTS, who only provide criticism - the ruder the better. But many of the critics only look for "academic" painting. Often they criticise and don't know what they're talking about. Style is sometimes foreign to them. Being in the group teaches me the value of constructive criticism.
Would you like constructive criticism for improving your nice painting?
no subject
Date: 2024-11-11 07:48 am (UTC)If you can think of one or two useful tools for a future work, couched politely, that would be fine.
I do spend a fair amount of time reflecting on my work before I consider it to be "finished", and though I know it's still not going to be perfect when I'm done, I know I've done the most I can do with that work because you just reach that point.
I realize that there isn't a lot of contrast in it, and that the color of the sky is weird and it's not clear if it's night or day, and that it would have been more effective to have the unicorn be more distinct, the waves more symmetrical.
I was working from a tarot card, was trying to capture the mood, and of course I didn't know what colors they used so I did my best.
I already understand things like darker at the front, lighter to the back, and perspective could have been created by progressively smaller waves or what have you. The flatness was a deliberate choice.
no subject
Date: 2024-11-11 08:09 am (UTC)The main suggestions:
1. Use a circle template to get an accurately round shape to the sun
2. Erase or soften the hard edge on the sun once you achieve the right shape - the sun does not need an outline
Smaller suggestions:
1. Thicken the unicorn's horn
2. Create movement in the position of the hind legs, which can make a horse look like it is rearing instead of prancing in the sea
I don't think there are design or colour problems. What do you think of the suggestions?
no subject
Date: 2024-11-12 03:05 am (UTC)I waffled on the outline for the sun, as I had left it without one, but then it all looked like one giant amorphous blur instead of an orb.
I agree with roundness, I tried to fix it and could not.
Okay to thickening the horn.
Maybe next time with the legs, I can't do much to fix these for this image. Rearing was the intent, but prancing might be fun too.