Sketchbook: Stallion

I drew a buckskin stallion from a photo, trying to keep the sketch as loose as possible. I was attempting to move the near front leg a little forward than it was in the photo. It was most difficult to keep proportions correct.

Sketching in the Galleries: Gober's Foot

Sketching in the Galleries at the DMA was in the Fast Forward exhibit. Most of the art in the gallery we were asssigned to sketch from, I found to be quite disturbing with exception of this one foot sticking out of the wall. The artist was Robert Gober.

In the Kitchen: Chicken Salad

For lunch on a warm February noon I decided that chicken salad was in order. I took two cans of chicken breasts coated with mayonaise and grated one large clove of garlic and about 2-3 tbs of diced shallots. I then chopped up 4-5 leaves of thick leafed spinach, added about 3 tbs of hatch green chili (canned), and about 5 black nicosia olives chopped. Finally I diced about 5 cherry tomatoes and mixed in the salad.

First I made a wheat toast sandwich, but that was not enough so I finished off with a wrap made with a Central Market Southwest Flour Tortilla.

In The Kitchen: Chicken Sausage Alfredo with Spinach

Tuesday evening I prepared a Chicken Sausage Alfredo using Chicken Queso from Central Market. While the Sausage was boiling in a shallow 12" skillet, I sauteed butter, garlic, white mushrooms, and spinach and diced yellow squash. When the sausage was finished I prepared the Alfredo sauce using a packaged mix, goat milk, and the remaining water used to boil the sausage. I poured some of this Alfredo sauce over the cut up sausage, and spinach/squash/mushroom mix, and the remaining I mixed with cooked Fetuccinni.

Images on the ranch

Saturday afternoon I went for a walk at the ranch looking for some unique images. The first I came upon was some leaves floating in the swimming pool. colorful leaves a floating in a pool of currulean blue was too much to pass up.


I then walked over to the fence and took some photos with the fence extending to a vanishing point far down the hill. After I downloaded and processed the image I found that the fence extended into double green hexagonal lens flare artifacts.

Sketching in the Galleries: The Nasher Matisse Exhibit

Tonight our Instructor Linda Ridgeway took us across the street to the Nasher Sculpture Center where we sketched some of the sculptures in their part of the Matisse Exhibit. Their sketching in the galleries policies permit the use of charcoal and pastels so we really had a chance to do some serious drawing. I chose the bronze head above. Linda showed us how to do some loose sketching building from what we had learned the past two weeks and add modeling after the proportions were established.

A Pair of Pears

I purchased these two pairs a few days ago with this shoot in mind. I photographed a series of these two pairs from different angles. The series may be seen in the PairofPears Gallery.

In the Kitchen: Split Pea Soup with Ham

I was in a bind. I was quite hungry and had not put any meat in the refridgerator the night before. I went by Kroger and bought some of my favorite canned ham, dried split peas, and went home to start my soup. I combined the split peas, cut potatoes and carrots, Cut up ham, 4 cloves grated garlic, and some thyme in 5 cups water and set the pot to boil. It took over an hour to get the peas to soften even thought the package said 30min. I served with buttered sourdough toast sprinkled with Parmesan cheese.

At the Cutting Horse Show

Hey, I am not the complaint department. Go back to the herd and hash it out.

Ranch Views: Longhorn and Filly

This late afternoon I was driving down a county road and found this Longhorn cow next to an old rusted open stock trailer. I returned later, parked, and took photos from different views. Although the sun was on the wrong side of my subjects, I still preferred this one. Later I returned to the ranch to visit with the pasture horses in the late afternoon sun. Soon after I went into the pasture this filly came over to see what I was doing.

Sketchbook: Elephant Garlic

Today I took a garlic still life from my photo collection and experimented with a watercolor sketch on 18x24 paper. I did not spend a lot of time, and used only sketch paper suitable for light washes. I was preparing to head to the DMA for Sketching in the Galleries, but this was much better than what I came up with there.