Horse Breed: American Bashkir Curly Horse

Last week's horse breed was one which I was not familiar with, but I fell instantly in love with them, the American Bashkir Curly. As the name indeed implies, these horses have fairly long coats which are, to varying degrees, curly. I just want to give them a big ol' hug!

Horse Breed: Percheron

I really hesitate to post these, quite honestly, they are so bad. :) But you know, I'm going to do it anyway, because you win some, and you lose some, and then you learn and improve. In theory. :) The drawing isn't really "so" bad, though I'm still struggling with the pencil-only drawings, it's just not my medium.
This one, though, looks like a third-grader did it. I can't believe it's so terrible. But it's okay. I can laugh at myself. This is actually my very very first try with gouache, and I really like the properties of the paint, I just need to learn how to use it and such. I keep wanting to go back to fix this, but the paint's already getting a little thick and I'm sure it is going to threaten to flake off the page eventually, anyway. Well, all I can say is that a black horse was *not* an inspired choice for my first foray into this medium.

Oil Paint Tube, oil pastel, 7x7-ish

Horse Breeds: Icelandic

I am late in posting this, but the breed for last week was the Icelandic horse. It's a very interesting (and cute and cuddly) breed. They are actually very small for horses, but are still called horses and not ponies as they are considered to be an adult's riding horse, in one day they can go 35 miles carrying 155-220 pounds. They also have an interesting gait which is rather unique to them called the "skold" which is similar in speed to a trot but much smoother. They are, of course, from Iceland, where there is a law in place that, due to the closed nature of the breed (and their susceptibility to disease), they may be exported, but they may never return to Iceland, and no foreign horses may be brought into the country. As for my drawings this week, I am not really happy with the first one (I cringe seeing where I placed the withers) as I was having difficulty with their deceptively simple proportions. This is in my large 11x14ish book.
This is watercolor pencil, approx 7x7, a little better than my drawing.And a Graphitint sketch, approx 4x4. She's shaggy because she's in her winter coat....but sooo cute!

The Road to Neunkirchen, 6x10, watercolor, watercolor pencil, oil pastel

This started out as a watercolor. But I'm never happy with watercolor. So then I finished most of it with watercolor pencil. I was reasonably pleased until I totally messed up the sky. So I fixed that at home later with oil pastel and I am again reasonably pleased. When we moved here, I thought we'd have more snow. It's just an occasional coating of the ground. I made parts of this too green, but I am quite pleased with how I captured the fields, I think I got their essence, more or less.

Horse Breeds: Arabian

I have started a new project for the year. Fifty-two weeks of horses! One breed every week. I am so excited!! The first image is pencil, I will say it is 11x14 even though I haven't measured it, the second is Graphitint pencil, approx 7x7, where I was trying to capture the beautiful rose gray color of this fellow's coat. Since Graphitint pencils are new for me, I was only mildly successful (though someone did tell me she could tell it was rose gray!).

Anniversary Bouquet, 16x22, watercolor crayon on Hahnemuehle matt paper

Not finished yet.