new drawings

I've been enjoying watching the Melbourne Cup, but haven't quite got around to doing any racehorse sketches. Here are some non race related ones from today. Click to see them closer. The second one is on lovely hand-pressed watercolour paper.

online exhibition 1

Here is a 'wall' from my 'Balios' exhibition, for those who couldn't make it. You may have seen some of them before on this blog. I will also put up some of my coloured ink paintings this week. Wish I could offer some nibblies and a glass of champagne online too, but you will just have to imagine.

Horse Skull, ink on acid-free paper. [sold]

Cat Skull, ink on acid-free paper. [sold]

Half-Pass (dressage), pencil on acid-free paper.

Arabian Headstudy, pencil on acid-free paper. [sold]

eucalyptus leaves

dog portrait in pencil

Here's a drawing of my husband's beloved dog 'Helen'. Unfortunately she needed to be re-homed, but I got to meet her for a day. Very lean, sleek and full of love and mischief!

thoroughbred detail

greek horse statuette

arabian horse pencil study

horses I know - juno

Juno pushes herself up after having a good, luxurious roll in the dust. After getting up she gives herself a good shake, like a wet dog, and then wanders of to graze - satisfied in having undone all my careful grooming efforts.

horses I know - la maglia rosa

Here is a drawing of a friend's horse, Maggie AKA La Maglia Rosa. She is a Thoroughbred/Warmblood cross, which seems to mean she has the endless energy of a Thoroughbred and the size (and enormous movement) of a warmblood.

My husband and I have got so much joy watching her grow from a gangly, enormous-eared and rather silly adolescent to a magnificent (but still rather silly) adult.

Is there anything more moving than having a horse gallop up to you at the fence? Maggie comes to a sliding stop, enveloping us in dust, and expecting to be petted and entertained. She has to be involved in anything that's going on. She is also the most tactile horse I've ever met, loving to be scratched everywhere, and having a tendency to lick your face and hair for as long as you allow (or until her teeth make an appearance). Here's a drawing of her, with reference to some photos my husband took (she moves too fast to be sketched!).

saddle drawing

Drawing of saddle - have to practice drawing tack as well as the horses themselves!

Drawing and Finding Characters

Looking back over my sketchbooks I found some drawings of people (!) and noticed a pattern in them. As a fiction writer, I find I sometimes draw characters in order to better understand them. The pencil drawing here is of JRR Tolkien’s Eowyn (from the Lord of the Rings). The drawing is clearly expressing one part of her character – that which is vulnerable and open. It does not really express the more war-like elements of her story. I was really thinking about this aspect of her characterisation after seeing the film interpretation and finding Eowyn more fragile than I had imagined her. A contrasting drawing is that of Elsa (a character from my own fiction manuscript).

I drew this image at a time when I was imagining her character evolving from a quite passive girlhood to a more severe adulthood. Again, this is only one element of her character, but the drawing allowed me to really witness her potential to become a dangerous and even frightening person - thus helping me in my writing!

Here's a pencil drawing of a horse doing the dressage movement 'half pass'. The horse travels sideways and forwards at once. This particular drawing was inspired by Ulla Salzgeber's Olympic dressage horse 'Rusty'. I wanted to convey the power and dynamism of his movement.