The photo above was my reference photo for the painting at the top of this post. My subject is my horse, Class. Her registered name is Crescent Lass. She's a retired race track mare.

As my paintings sometimes go, I thought I was going to do a realistic portrait of my girl...I thought I'd make the wind blowing a little harder than it is here in this photo. I got started with the paint and I was working on the horse. I thought why make her brown, I think I'll make her grey. All of a sudden I wasn't painting Class any longer. I played with the paint until I had trees behind her, snow on the ground.... I began to think about a sunrise we saw in Iowa when we were driving truck... The title came to me! I'm going to call this "Dawn of a New Day".

The nice thing about a reference photo is this. It doesn't have to tell you what to do or what the painting you make from it will become. You can let your painting be whatever your imagination wants it to be. Sometimes I have a wild imagination. I admit it. That's the fun of being able to create new worlds on paper and canvas..
donna