Telescopic Viewer

My painting "Telescopic Viewer" is now finished. It is 24x48 inches and painted in acrylic.

 This is a painting that I have been wanting to create since moving from Madison to Austin. Moving across the country has been a thrilling, bittersweet, and sometimes lonely adventure. The landscape of Austin is dry and starved for water. It is hot, the roads are congested, and public transportation is minimal. It is vastly different from the land of one thousand lakes that I grew up in. Despite the differences, I am learning to love the arid landscape and noisy city of Austin with its thriving community of creators and entrepreneurs.

Here is a walk through my process of making this painting:

 It always starts with the blank canvas

 Then the drawing, followed by painting the most distant background details

 When the weather cooled down for a few days I painted outside on my back porch and added hills, trees, and elk to the foreground.

Elk in the forest, a fallen tree, fish, and lily pads in the water

The water has all different kinds of creatures and objects in it.

 

Sharks, stingrays, chairs, tires, stoves, and barrels

 

 Schools of fish, rooftops, and floating jellyfish

  

Across the water is a city

  

And farthest away are the rolling hills of farmlands

 

 Coffee to keep me going

And Maddie to keep me company

 A telescopic viewer at the end of the dock

  and a White Heron perched on the boat

To create this full panoramic

The Story of a Piece of Paper

In 2004 I acquired a large, high-quality sheet of Arches Watercolor paper through very unusual circumstances. I had recently become good friends with my drawing professor, who also happened to be a horse lover. She was very supportive of my equine artistic pursuits and we would often talk about our riding adventures. One day I told her my family was looking for a home for one of our horses. We were giving him away because he had a lameness condition that made him unable to be ridden. This horse was beautiful. His coat was a dark chestnut color with a white blaze running down his face and four white legs. He stood at 16.3 hands tall. He was the sort of horse that looked like he should be pulling a chariot across the sky. Simply breathtaking to view. My professor came out to look at him to see if he would be a good pasture mate for her horses and at first glance she said she would take him. We delivered him to his new home at the top of a green grassy hill in Mt. Horeb, Wisconsin a week later. The next day in drawing class, I was given an enormous sheet of Arches  watercolor paper, crafted in France and shipped to the United states, in thanks for the beautiful horse that our family had given her. 

That piece of paper has followed me around for 10 years, blankly waiting for the right project to come along and bring it to life. 

One year ago I moved away from Madison, Wisconsin to Austin, Texas. I left behind a great community of horse lovers, friends, and family. It was hard to leave. Before leaving I was asked by my friend to paint an image of her two horses grazing in a field at the farm that I had taught lessons at for over 10 years. 

"How big do you want it and

would you like watercolor or acrylic?" I asked.

"Big. Super big." She replied. "I like your watercolor painting style. Lets make it a watercolor." 

And with that, I knew that I had finally found the right use for my dauntingly large sheet of watercolor paper.

I finally arrived at a suitable layout after sifting through many potential compositions of the two horses together from the dozens of photographs I was given to work from. I began to lay down the first of many layers of paint.

 

And more layers...

 and more layers...

And many hours and layers later..

Getting there...

 Here is a reference for the size.

 At last, I applied the last few layers to darken the woods along the fence line, add some depth to the coats of the horses, and add some more texture to the field.

 After traveling around the world for 10 years this sheet-of-paper-turned-painting will be shipped out for delivery to its new and final home (although you never know where life will take you!) in South Carolina. 

Godspeed little painting!