Buckskin Horse ACEO card watercolor

Buckskin horse done in watercolor. This is an ACEO card. I used my horse Class as a model for this painting. She's a bay but I changed her coloring. I love using her for a model because she's so pretty.
donna

Square Butte on Yupo paper.

Another painting of Square Butte. I put a little farm in this one. Nice little farm house with a great big shop. Isn't that the way it goes on a farm? :)

This is another aceo card. Only 3.5x2.5 inches in size. I like the way the paint slides around and does it's own thing on this Yupo paper. It gives this particular painting a soft look.
donna

Landscape, Square Butte, Vaughn, MT

We live below Square Butte, the butte of Charlie Russell fame. It's always changing, it never looks the same two days or two minutes in a row. I love the way the light plays across it's surface. I decided the other day I need to make more paintings of this wonderful landscape. So here's the first!

2006

2006 has been a successful year for me as far as my artwork has gone. It's the first year in a long time I've sold so many paintings and got so many paintings finished. There are two major reasons this has happened. My desire to do it, and my spouses desire to have me do it! Robert's very supportive in three major areas. He doesn't expect me to work anywhere but on my art. He encourages, critiques, and physically helps me when I need it. He and I both like to work alone, so when I'm in the studio, he's happy to be working on his own projects, he doesn't need me to babysit him while I work and vice versa.

This year hasn't been easy as far as personal problems go. Robert has had his left shoulder replaced, his neck fused and his back fused. He has scars upon scars from all these surgeries. So you can guess a lot of our time was spent in the hospital, going to therapy and recuperating from being in the hospital. My grandmother passed away, my dad had his shoulder operated on. We went camping for several days with our kids. We got married. We bought a 14X70 trailer house for a new studio and got it hauled in here.

There have been many things going on to keep me from painting but at the same time, I've done nearly 200 paintings and sold most of them!

I tried painting en plein aire for the first time this year. I did some unique landscapes, some crazy experiments and bought some new mediums. Painted some animals other than horses, which is hard to believe. All in all, this was a great year!
Donna

Quick studies on Yupo paper.

When I'm practising my drawing, or playing around with paints and papers, I'll spend 10-20 minutes on some quick study work. Mostly, I try to get the shape of a horse on paper and I'm using my how to draw horses books for examples of different positions horses can be in.

These studies are drawn on Yupo paper and I used my watercolor brush to do the drawing. Yupo is plastic paper so it's a unique experience. It's slick and it's not absorbent. The paint sits on top of the paper. You can wipe it off after it dries and you don't even know there was a mark there.

It's perfect for loose flowing things like the mane on the top horse. You can also flow in the shape of a horse, then go back in and draw the details on top. If you do this, you stroke the lines on fast or you'll melt the layer beneath them. Nice thing is, if you put a line where you don't want it, just wet it and pick it back up again. Let the paper dry, then place the line where you want it to be.

I suppose you could wash the same piece of Yupo off and paint on it forever! It's fun stuff. I think I went to Yupo.com to find the paper and they sent me nice sample packs so I could try the paper before I bought some. It comes in different weights and it's all fun to paint on. The title to this post is a link to their American website.
Donna

The Christmas Pony, aceo card.

Mom and dad went out and found a pony for a Christmas present, now he's worried his new mistress won't like him!
Donna

Updated Rooster.

I added some sky color to the rooster. It gave him some drama, more movement, more anger. I like him better now.
donna