Peanut riding and painting

I think I've realized that I prefer solo riding.  The thought of being alone out in the great wide yonder on the back of a horse used to scare the boots off of me, but I'm ok now.  Taking my phone and shmancy Swiss Army knife as a security blankets, I have come to appreciate the rides as times when my horse and I can spend time together and just talk to each other.  It's amazing how much a horse has to say to a rider when the biped can just concentrate and listen.

In our last solo ride, the gunfire was a-going.  I've mentioned Peanut's PTSD relationship with gunfire before, so I really paid attention to his emotional state as we rode.  In fact, listening to the echoes as I tacked him up, I talked to him and asked that, if he got to the point where he was going to freak out, just give me a second to get off and I'd help him deal with it.

At one point a sudden, rapid volley of gunfire sounded startlingly close.  He planted and stiffened.  Looking at his face after I got off, I could see his huge, round eyes through his riding fly mask.  I talked to him, petted him, and got him to walk forward to the gun sounds.

Even though they continued (but no longer sounded as close), he managed to calm as we walked on.  I remounted, asked him to ride farther out, and when he was doing well we turned around and went home.  I was very proud of him!  He really is a good, amazing horse and I'm lucky to have him.

More poop on the Peanut painting progress:

My first in-progress shot, still being drawn in.  Are grids cheating?  Eh, it's the only way to make sure the drawing turns out proportionally as planned - both in relation to itself and the canvas edges.

After the in-progress that I shared in an earlier post, I realized I hated that rightmost foot and thus enlarged it.  Much happier.

Now cue a week or so where I was stuck on what to do with the background.  I really didn't want to mimic the one in the photo, with the gate, fence, and house in the distance.  I went through option after option in my head, and stared and stared at the canvas as it mocked me.  I would look up various options online, look to the canvas and visualize the background behind Peanut, and found that nothing made me happy.  I didn't want it blank, but at the same time I didn't want to throw in generic landscape #5.  As his shedding coat pins this definitely in Spring, I was thinking that I could have a cherry blossom branch come in from the upper right.  But, gads, that just seems cliche these days.

Nagging in the back of my head was the thought that the pose reminded me of odalisque paintings.  Am I trying to sexualize the horse?  No.  The comparison just amuses me in an art nerd way.

No matter what background I tried in my head, I kept going back to the odalisques.  Fabric drapes started to occupy the bit of brain that had been chugging away on this, so I started looking at drapery references online.  Then I would look at the composition and imagine how the fabric should sweep through the image.

And then they started to appear in the painting.

I am completely winging the drapery and folds - after all, this isn't exactly a common situation.  I thought about draping stuff around the house, but I know as soon as it goes down a cat will appear to paw it into a more pleasing configuration for feline sensibilities.  So, instead, I sit in front of it and stare at it, and stare, and think, and stare, and go back and fiddle a little here, fiddle a little there, and add to the pile of eraser shavings underneath the easel.

This is just about how it stands now (I have added a hint of a pull between the two back feet and a bit to the folds in front of the back legs).  Although I expect it to make no sense to anyone not inside my noggin at this point, I am planning to have the drapery represent a background - but abstractly.  Did I just use the A-word in reference to my work?  Someone take my temperature....

In the space between the drapes (it's there, my noggin knows which it is) I am thinking of a subdued lavender color - like far away mountains.  The rear drape will be blue - the sky.  The near drape will be green - grass and shrubbery.  Coming out from under the green will be more of the blue drape - a stream.  So I get to have my landscape and odalisque and eat it too.

Will I be able to pull it off?  Dunno.  It's rather stupid to do my first drapery painting without references, but I never claimed to be clever.