Sunday, September 21, 2008

"The Inviting Path", first of a series


Don't you love it when you finally get going on something you know you should be doing? Finally, I finished my first bookmark painting. I call it "The Inviting Path". After all these years of trying all kinds of horse riding activities, my absolute favorite riding endeavour is heading down a trail in the wide open spaces. There is such a bonding experience between rider and horse from doing something so simple as going from point A to point B down a path, whether it's for an hour or 24 hours!
As this painting is for a bookmark purpose, I wanted to tie in the theme with purpose. Reading a book takes the reader on an adventure for fiction or fact. If you will, taking the reader down a path. So here is a path painted that I hope folks find just as inviting as the book it's in to read! Notice how the horse has the right ear facing back; he's listening to the rider or reader in this case to keep going forward!
This is a freestyle painting, I used no reference photos, just what I saw in my imagination. My watercolor pencil palette was pretty simple of a few greens, yellows, browns and indigo blue and ultramarine blue for the background and my horse is a few violets, paynes's grey, indigo blue. I decided to put in a wildflower field in the distance and used a permanent red, orange chrome and a pink to add some bright color. Bookmark size of approx. 2.25" wide by 7.25" high on white Lenox 100 cotton rag paper (I LOVE this multi-purpose art paper for small projects!) I will put this painting inside a vinyl bookmark sleeve and embellish the top with a leather cord and wonderful silver horse charm. I plan on putting this up in my Etsy shop as soon as I get a few more bookmarks created.
Ok, so now that this first one is started, I'm going to stay on this momentum and get going on the next! And I will be sure to post it on the blog as soon as I can!