Truckers Like Horse Art Too (conclusion)

After having so much fun adding vibrant colors to Valraven, I was a little reluctant to bring it back down to grayscale. I had to do it for the book though, and I couldn’t wait to see which colors other artists might choose for it. It took its place as page fourteen in Fancy Prancers – A Fine Art Coloring Book of Horses.

Truckers Like Horse Art Too (cont.)

The sketch was originally intended to stand alone and I called it something generic like “Pony in Motion.” Later I grew bored with the plain graphite image. I wanted a more dramatic background, some color, and I wanted to play with acrylics. After some collage work, I mixed up a bunch of paint and carried everything out in the front yard.

My two boys were hopping around like fleas in their excitement over me being outside with cups of paint. They’d never seen me splash paint on a canvas before. Not that I hadn’t done it a thousand times already with watercolors, but that was mostly before they were born. So I splashed and flicked and poked and splattered to the tune of “Can I do it??!! Can I do it??!! Can I do it??!!” Not that they hadn’t done it a thousand times before with finger paint and watercolors, but this was different – this was Mommy’s “‘spensive paint”.

So I let them each flick some paint on with a large brush, and they were somewhat satisfied. What they really wanted to do was fling the paint at each other. I was more satisfied after gluing the graphite pony on and adding a coat or two of varnish. Valraven was fun to do, and I believe more fun to look at than a plain graphite pony.

Truckers Like Horse Art Too

Not long ago while on vacation, I was riding in our van with my sketch pad in my lap. I was working on the horse in Valraven, a mixed media painting. Wearing motion sickness wristbands, trying to convince myself they were working, I scribbled, erased, scribbled, erased. The guys were listening to a book on CD and my husband was in a driving trance.  We were on a four lane highway in Northern California, heading south.

An eighteen wheeler inched up along us on my side. He was keeping the cab of his truck right there, next to me. There wasn’t much traffic, and just as I started to wonder “What the . . . ?” he tooted his horn very briefly. I looked up and saw him leaning forward, pointing down at my sketch, which was almost finished. He smiled, gave me a big thumbs up, and then rolled on past us.

My husband glanced over. “What was that about?”

“Oh, just 80,000 pounds of art aficionado . . . “