Sketchbook: Smartest Fletch

This is a charcoal sketch I did today of a the third top selling 2yo at the Futurity Sales this past December. I had worked on a pastel but needed to go back and work with charcoal so I could easily work out proportion issues. I used vine charcoal with this drawing, it is so easy to model and to erase when need be.

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.