Would You Like A Portrait Of Your Horse?

I think of most us would answer yes to that question!  But when I decided to draw one for my friend as a christmas present, I wasn’t sure how it would turn out.

Growing up, rarely a day passed when I wasn’t drawing horses with swirling hair & prancing legs (although I didn’t figure out how to draw joints until adolescence, so lots of Gumby-impersonators) in school notebooks, event bulletins, margins of coloring books, anything with a blank space.
 
The Not-Riding Lessons

When I was 13, mom started dropping me off at evening art lessons once a week.  My teacher, Anneliese, fascinated me:  a German artist, perhaps in her 60s, she had exquisite murals of horses & forests painted on entire walls of her tiny house in a tiny town.  A small room in the back, crammed with 3 rows of easels, her rolltop desk, & a large drawing table, was her classroom/studio – you’d never have guessed she had works hanging in the Library of Congress.

First drawing from class, 1991, "Football Geese," hee

She was a whole kingdom to a kid with an already over-active imagination, complete with royal commandments.  Her master brush was her sceptre as she enforced her edicts:

• Thou shalt begin with the Strathmore Drawing pad, one Castell 4B pencil for base sketching (made in Germany…so also permissible for dressage), & two extra-sharp Eberhard Faber Ebony charcoal pencils.
• Thou shalt complete the following subjects:
• Landscape
• Still life with fruit
• Flowers
• Birds
• Linear perspective
• If satisfactory, you may then choose your own subjects (asking “can I do a horse now?” every week will not speed up the process).

It may seem strict, but it was all mixed in fun with her big glass jar of German hard candies, a ridiculous little Maltese who made everyone giggle, her own easy laugh, & the class (nearly all adults, I was the youngest) who all helped each other.

Yes, Hello Kitty sharpener!

Anneliese passed away around my freshman year of high school.  I kept drawing here & there, took a few art courses in college, but life piled up.  So as I dug through boxes, unearthing the Strathmore, now old enough to vote AND drink in the US, it had been a decade since I’d done anything more than doodle on conference programs & meeting minutes at work.

Like Riding A Bike?

Art does have its own muscle memory, same as riding.  My hand & eye still knew equine curves & shadows, but I’d never attempted a portrait before.  Because they’re hard!

You’re not just replicating a horse, you’re trying to capture one unique horse.  Pencil had always been my wheelhouse & animals the subject I understood best, but infusing a drawing with a huge equine personality was a leap I hadn’t successfully made.  I did have a very helpful ingredient on my side:  love for the subject & his owner.

Gotta start somewhere...

Only one way to find out, though.  And worst case scenario, I could make a pact of silence with Mr. Shredder & no one need be the wiser.

So I took a deep breath & laid down some landmarks with the 4B.  Time for the moment (er, hours) of truth.

The heady mix of challenge, excitement, & even catharsis stirred up memories that smelled of graphite, turpentine, the wood-paneled studio walls, heavy archival paper.  You know how you can hear your trainer’s mantras in your head in the warm-up ring?  I could still hear Anneliese’s heavily accent in my pencil strokes:

• “You can always make ze shadows darker, but never sacrifice your highlights, nein.”
• “Pencils, they must never be allowed to get dull!  Sharpen!”
• “The eye, it is everything.  You finish the eye last.”

I’m pretty happy with how it came together – the hardest part was keeping the secret until I could finally pin down friend for the handoff.  I wish I could have framed it properly for her, alas, that always seems to require money!  But I at least found a mat & frame to hold it temporarily, to avoid smudging & so I wasn’t just giving someone a piece of paper.

Here you are then:  Texas Pete, compatriot & favourite riding buddy of Solo’s, a mischievous Polish Arab whom we suspect is actually a monkey with hooves.  Sorry that sucky people who steal things for money cause giant watermarks & low-res photos.

Forgot to take photo before under glass

Le Finale

Categories: art