Weekend at the Ranch

April was the first foal of the year. She was born in March but lost her dam 12 hours after she was born. She was hand fed for a few weeks but just this week was adopted by a Clydesdale mare that lost a foal.



Colena had another colt this year, born this past Thursday. He is not yet named, but he his running his protective dam all over the pasture as he explores his world.


My horse Squirt is enjoying the luxurant growth of grass and clover in the pasture which he shares with his buddy Badger and a yearling filly.



This time of year the pasture is full of paintbrush and other wildflowers.

SketchBook: Nasher Sculpture Garden-Rush Hour

Our Sketching in the Galleries class was held in the Nasher Sculpture Garden. Our Instructor led us to Rush Hour by George Segal.
I spent all evening on this as the mosquitoes worked on my back LOL. Today I did some additional work on it with Nu Pastels to refine and diffuse some features.

Super Stakes Sale 2007

This past few days I have been in Fort Worth preparing for and photographing the Super Stakes Sale at the Watt Arena. Friday evening I went to Ft Worth knowing that some time in the afternoon a storm front would pass through. It came through starting at 3:30pm and included a few tornadoes north east of where I was at Will Rogers Coliseum. Today, Saturday, I photographed the annual Super Stakes Sale, Blue Laboon (image from 2005 Futurity at left) topped the sale at $135,000. Read more about this sale at www.SallyHarrison.com.

Sketchbook: 18th Century French Portrait

Tonight our Instructor, Cindy Hurt, directed us on a tour of portraiture. She chose a French portrait of a woman as an example and most of us followed her by drawing the same. As we drew she guided us on how to determine the proper proportions and how to measure, calling our attention to such things as how many noses tall is the head, or how how to measure the proper distance between the eyes, and their proper placement.
Cindy is one of the best instructors we have had at the Dallas Museum of Art Sketching in the Galleries class.

In the Kitchen: Chicken Tomatillo Yellow Squash and Green Chili Soup

I decided since I caught a cold, that a good hearty chicken soup was in order. I started with a package of chicken thighes (Skin on, but removed), one chicken breast, and cooked it in Chicken broth with garlic and hot fire roasted green chili. After the chicken had cooked a bit, I added 6 cut up tomatillos. I cooked this till the chicken was about done and then added about 3/4 cup of rice and 2 yellow squash (sliced). When the chicken was falling off the bone, I served the soup with field green salad with gorgonzola cheese sprinkles with basalmic vinegar and olive oil dressing.

On Location: Fasig-Tipton Texas 2YO in Training Sale

On April 3, Fasig-Tipton held their annual 2YO-In-Training Sale. The top seller was Righteous Brother (Hip 217), A Storm Passage/Sweep and Roll dark bay colt at $180,000 to Heiligbrodt Racing Stable signed for by Steve Asmussen. This colt is shown in the photos above in being shown in the walking ring. He ran a 10.00 in 1/8 mile during the Undertack Show on Sunday, April 1.


Hip #308, A Gulf Storm/ Cheyann Scout dark bay/brn colt consigned by Leprechaun Racing was sold for $170,000 to Mike Cornett for Paul Mostert.




Hip #285, A Siphon (BRZ)/Bea Silver bay filly was also purchased by Mike Cornett for Paul Mostert.






This Donkey was watching the sale from across the drive at Lone Star Horse Hospital while he recovered from ??
The trip home was almost as eventful as the sale. As the result of a semi overturning practically in front of the Lone Star Park drive traffic was forced to make a right and detour to an alternate route to I-30. This path took me through the Trinity River bottoms, past numerous stables and a huge Irving Trailer Park.

In the Kitchen: Salmon Potato Green Chili Cakes

The menu for tonight was Salmon Potato Cakes with Green Chili with a Tomatillo and Yellow Squash Garlic Sauce. The potato cakes were prepared by combining 1 7oz pouch of drained pink salmon, 3 table spoons of Hot Dice Green Chilis, 3 white mashed potatoes, 1/2 cup of milk (I used goat milk) and enough Arrowhead Mills Multi-grained pancake mix, and one egg. I mixed this until a thick pancake batter consistency and then cooked on a iron skillet sprayed with a vegetable oil non-stick spray.


While I was cooking the salmon cakes I prepared a Tomatillo sauce by cooking 5-6 tomatillos with 3 grated cloves of garlic and salt to taste. I cooked until mixture was nearly thickened and then added one dice yellow squash. I cooked this til squash was cooked and sauce thickened. I served the two Salmon Potato Green Chili Cakes covered with the Tomatillo Sauce. It was so good I had another. -JA

Sketching in the Galleries: Apollo Attacks

This week we were in the 18th - Early 19th Century European Galleries. Our assignment was to pick a painting and draw a small portion of the view, maintaining composition and filling our paper with image. I chose a painting of the era which typically had a mythical basis. This one included Diana and Apollo attacking. I chose to depict Apollo and his horse and a praying victim.

Sketching at the Nasher

Tonight was free night at the Nasher Sculpture Center and as such our sketching class crossed the street to have our Sketching in the Galleries Class in this world class sculpture museum. Our assignment for the evening was to choose a fairly realistic sculpture and initially sketch our choice, then to abstract this first sketch without referring to the original. We were to the repeat this process a third and possibly forth time from the preceeding drawings. I chose Aristide Maillol's "Night", a bronze cast in 1960 as shown in this photo by David Heald.

Tree Study

This evening I photographed trees to show the line and design of spreading and intersecting lines. Most of these trees were backlit, but I included a few blooming fruit tree images.
I have posted a Flash Gallery at www.jarnoldphoto.com/trees/index.html.

My Horse moves to his Spring Pasture.

Today my horse Squirt moved to his spring home in the lower pasture. His pasture mate, Badger is of similar age and is also a gelding. I just hope I can catch him when I want to ride. Badger likes to run and the combination of those two may make a quick ride a little easier said than done when they team up and play try to catch me now.

Lunar Eclipse

Tonight after photographing a Cutting Horse show I stopped by the ranch to check water levels and found this sight. I had forgotten that I had read there was to be a lunar eclipse tonight and that there was a narrow window in North Texas in which it view it.
When I saw this I had to get out the camera and get a few photos. As I filled the waters outside I continued to watch the moon and watched it gradually returned to its normal full state for this time of the month.

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.

Still Life: Basalmic Vinegar, Red Pepper. Tomato and Garlic

Here is another Still Life from my collection.
Additional images may be seen in my
Still Life Web Gallery

In the Kitchen: Chicken Tomatillo over Rice

This morning I prepared some of my famous Tomatillo sauce. I boiled the tomatillos til they were soft in salted water with crushed garlic.
This evening I reheated this sauce and poured over a braised chicken breast and rice. I served this with black beans.

Ft Worth Stock Show

The last few days I have been going to the Ft Worth Stock Show. I was sent there on assignment to photograph a Stallion that is standing at my Brother's ranch. When my assignment was complete I photographed one Calf Roper from a point of view not often photographed.

I was about to leave the Justin Arena area and I walked by the Sale Arena where I spent many hours in December. I peeked in to discover that the 10th Annual Cowboy Tales event was underway. I stayed for about 4 performers, my favorite of which was Stan Mahler. He sung several cowboy songs, one of which was about New Mexico.

Sketchbook: Springbox

Tonight our DMA sketching group went to a gallery where
there were some Cornell Shadow boxes. Our instructor told us about Cornell building these boxes as sort of a homage to movie stars and other heroes. She suggested that we create our boxes and dedicate them to someone, either publicly or privately. I drew this from found objects which in this case were real but at this time extracted from my memory. I dedicated it to Cornell.

In the Kitchen: Chicken Stew with Field Green Salad

Having been at the ranch enduring quite cold weather and ice I was in the mood for something comforting. For this I created a chicken stew with carrots, rutabaga, red potatoes, and flavored with garlic, a little salt, and a few bay leaves and a little dried chili. For my stews I typically choose thighs, which I boil to the meat is almost coming off the bone. I add the root vegetables after the chicken is cooked but before it is falling off the bone. I also added a few bay leaves and a little bit of dried New Mexican Chili pod to spice it up. I have to be careful with the chili as it can get too hot very easily. After the vegetables and spices are added I add more water and then continue cooking until the meat falls off the bones.

Sketchbook: The Reapers

This is the last weekend of the Van Gogh Exhibit at the Dallas Museum of art. I decided to take advantage of extended hours and sketch from the collection. I worked on two drawings of Wheat Reapers. This is the one I liked the best. The original Van Gogh drawing was in black chalk on paper.

These are some berries I found on a walk through the woods. They were along the fenceline after I left the wooded area.
This is a buckskin broodmare. She is always interested in publicity.
At the end of the day I look for the interplay of light in the clouds as day meets night.

Vizsla Playing with her pups

During the Christmas/New Years Holidays I spent a lot of time at the ranch. One of the highlights was watching my brothers Viszla dog playing with her pups during the afternoon outside recreation time.