Suffering With Joy

Adventures in Art II

July 20, 2010

My painting time is one way I connect with God and deal with my fibromyalgia.  When we must suffer, it is always better to do it with joy rather than with frustration and anger. Painting is a way for me to be joyfully with God and find ways of conveying His beauty to others through the images I create.

This past week I was learning how to use various oil brushes and some special effects  in Corel Painter 11.  The photo that was the basis for this image is a close-up of a horse my friend owns.  I cropped the photo so viewers would be drawn to the eye and then went to town.

It took a lot of hand work to paint out whiskers and long hairs, which were distracting elements in the original photo I took.  This is the first time I used a border as part of the image. One thing I’m learning is that no one medium is right for all images.  You have to let the image and idea dictate the medium.  With digital painting, you can experiment to your heart’s content until you get what you want, and you can use many media.  I’m an eclectic sort of person so the flexibility of using many and mixed media really appeals to me.  It’s also very fair to say that if digital art had not been invented, I would not be able to try to be an artist.

I love this horse.  She is gorgeous and powerful and I hope this image conveys that to viewers.  Her eye really is blue, in case you are wondering about it.  Some quarterhorses will have a blue eye, something I learned when visiting my friend. The original image is a little bigger than 11 x 12 inches.

If you would like to use this image, it is signed in the lower right corner.  All I ask is that you:

1. Credit me as painter,
2. Leave a small donation by clicking on the donate button and,
   
3. If you are using it at a web site, link to this post.

If you know people who would like this, please direct them to this post. I am trying to get an idea of what different people look for in art so I can create things that others will like.  Thank you.

Tags: art