continuing with "mustang sentinel" and good news

before i get into the current painting let start with the "good news" segment. i received notification about a week ago that i had been juried into a solo exhibition at la crosse's pumphouse regional art center.  the show will run from just after the first of the year (2013) until the end of february and will feature my portraits, figure and figure in landscape paintings. i am quite thrilled with this as there were a lot of really good artists who applied and to be chosen from this large and august group is a huge honor.

next steps on "mustang sentinel"

now on with our mustang. i corrected some small anatomical things that were bothering me on the horse by lifting, blotting, and repainting. i suspect that one would have trouble seeing the changes which only serves to accentuate that i was fussing and not really doing anything substantive for the painting. at least, i feel better! i worked some on the background and mid ground. using a #12 round kolinski brush i painted in some midground sage brush with earth colors and brown madder darkened and dulled with a bit of cobalt blue. the dark green bushes just to the right of and behind the mustang are painted with a combination of hooker's green, quinacridone gold, and burnt sienna. i scraped some texture into them with the palette knife. these were also used as a negative shape to define the yellow orange shrubs along the fence line which came off a little more insipid than i had intended so i darkened them with brown madder, quinacridone gold, and burnt umber. the fence posts were painted with cobalt blue and burnt sienna allowed to mix on the paper after applying with a #6 round sable. again, the texture was scraped in with the palette knife after a few minutes to allow the sheen to disappear from the wash. lastly for today i decided to push the mustang back into the scene a little by painting the dark green bush on the left in front of her rear quarters.this was done with the #12 round and the same colors as the other green flora. there really isn't much more needed at this point save a corresponding dark bush on the right side and maybe some scraggly remains of some barbed wire. since i have run out of time today i will have to finish this tomorrow. that being the case i will think about what is next in terms of projects, but i think it will be either a figure- or portrait-type painting.