Updates!

Alright! So Here's the update I've been promising you for days while I feed my photoshop bug and work on chalking up some charcoal outlines for paintings that I will be doing in the next week here (three commissioned horse paintings coming up - I'm beginning to think my rep is going to be 90% horses forever! Not that I'm complaining...) but here's what went down a week ago today!

I headed over to the Edmonton Garrison (a place where I spent a lot of my childhood activities visiting my friends, doing rushed Tim's runs in high school, and driving sleighs and wagons for base family events) bright and early Saturday morning with a big, bright green bin full of supplies and gallery books and set up in the indoor arena of the EGSC. What a great facility, too! Gorgeous animals, great people, and the arena was gorgeous (if a little cold).

There were some very interesting clinics that happened throughout the day, and as I was set up right in front of the riding ring I got to watch it all. I might wish that either there was two of me or I had more downtime, because two great things were happening - useful, interesting clinics, and A LOT of interest in my artwork. I couldn't watch and help people at the same time.

I had a dry/sore throat by the end of the day just from talking! I had people continually interested in the process and what exactly I do, lots of people showing me pictures and asking me how I would do them, and then placing commission orders. I didn't sell originals, but with how many orders I placed that doesn't matter so much! I also had a couple of other artists who are looking to jump into professional waters come up and ask me some questions about the business and how it works. I am always more than happy to give aspiring artists a helping hand, and they were awesome to talk to.

The clinics, as I mentioned, were phenomenal. There was a Parelli clinic that I actually didn't mind (some Parelli-based clinics are not very well done, and Parelli fanatics tend to scare me), a good jumping clinic from the pony club, some gaited horse clinic and a clinic about photographing horses which I really wanted to watch (I take a lot of my own reference photos), but I got a rush of customers. I caught the tail-end of it though, so it wasn't that bad!

All in all, a great show. Super friendly, awesome, nice people that I just fell in love with, everyone was so great! And I got to see my good friend Sherry from over at Fern Valley Appaloosas and have a nice chat with her!

Here are a couple of photos from my table, and I'm back off to working on art!

Once again I am failing to mention the sale...

I am just giving 'er on this Photoshop painting and don't want to stop. So here's an update and if I still have a brain when I go to bed I will talk about the Equine Expo.

Digital painting

It's very late at night/early morning, so I'm just going to post this here and take off on everyone. I will eventually post about how extraordinarily well sales went at the Equine Expo and how much fun I had there, but it will have to wait!

Here's an OC design I'm doing for myself. It will eventually be a mid-day forest scene but this is the WIP of the main character of the painting. I'm doing this freehand in Photoshop, and have had quite a few hours on it already.

Full body:

Details of the face:

Out at an equine expo tomorrow!

Just going to drop this poster off here with some promo info and to show off some of my digital design abilities!

Also I have a business card now. Here it is!

Scanned the Clydesdales - I am in love with coloured paper!

I've seen a lot of coloured pencil and pastel portraits on coloured paper before and always thought they looked nice, but I didn't realize how much they really made the picture pop right out! This was an experiment gone very very right and I'm just hooked now.

Quick update!

Just for fun, and also a bit in anticipation for the art sale I'll be doing, I picked up a pack of different coloured paper to put some coloured pencil portraits on. I was pretty excited about it and have started on an original on an orage sheet. Meet the new team!

Piece will be for sale when it's done.

Here's the WIP! Sorry for the low quality, quick digital camera picture.

EDIT:

Oh, and I scanned the cutting horse!

Two more things!

First of all, I just realized that I never published a completed version of this painting and I must say I'm upset with myself! This is my favorite painting I've done so far.

And the other thing I forgot to mention is that I am opening up tutorial requests. If you want a tutorial made, please leave a request in my comments, e-mail me at customcommissionsms@gmail.com, or send me a pigeon or something. Really I'm open to any form of communication. I will post the tutorials on my website and publish videos on YouTube.

That being said, check out my YouTube channel! I have plenty of cool videos and stuff on there, like this one!


I guess that was three things. Haha gotcha? Hmm.

Everyone have an awesome day!

A couple of new commissions and a show announcement

Three things today! First of all, I just want to toss out a couple of new commissions that I've been working on. The first is another colored pencil dog. It's a little lacking in detail as it WAS from a cell phone picture, but it turned out quite nicely! The second is a photo of a new cutting horse commission that I have yet to scan. There was another couple of commissions in the time since I last posted, but one is a surprise and the other the owner has requested that I not post it. 

So here we are! 

Here's a closeup of the horse and rider in the last one. I really love how it turned out! 

And I have a show announcement for you guys!

I will be participating in the EGSC Equine Show and Tack Sale at the Edmonton Garrison on Saturday, November 17th as an equine artist. I will have part of my showjumper series on display and will have a bunch of new equine art done up in these next two weeks in preparation for that. I will also announce my holiday fees and whatnot on that day AND I will open up a few new booking slots for rush clients. 

If you want to come and check out my work, it will be in North Edmonton all day on Saturday, and I will be there to answer any questions about fine arts, book orders, and sell originals! 

Another thing is that this account is currently attached to my personal e-mail, and I don't want to start a new blog because of everything else I've done on here, so I will be adding my company e-mail address to this account. If you see someone else posting, no worries - it's actually still me! 

I just want to leave you with a reminder that if you ARE considering some portraits from CCMS as holiday gifts this year, you need to book a ways in advance because slots are filling up and might even be full when I open new ones at the art show, which very well might fill up right away.