Animals
Wordless Wednesday: Sleigh Bells
Categories: Animals, Artwork, Christmas, Horses, Weather, Winter, Wordless Wednesday
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This Is Why Most Artists Are Starving.
When I first started using my Wacom drawing tablet, I was positively delirious with the joy and sense of unlimited creativity it inspired. I immediately embarked on an elaborate Christmas card project that was going to be the most splendid image I’d ever produced.
In retrospect, I wish I’d given myself a bit more time to learn about the software before I started a large-scale project. By the time I realized that there were some things I should have done differently, it was too late to change them without having to scrap the whole image and start over.
Also? It turns out that drawing and painting digitally rather than with actual pencils and brushes does not magically make you a better drawer and painter. Quite the opposite, actually. In other words, if you have never drawn or painted a stone bridge before, and you’ve never been much good at drawing people, you may not want to start off your digital career with a “painting” of a couple sleighing merrily over a stone bridge. Ahem.
My personal forté is drawing horses, so that was the easy part. Look at my pretty horse!
I just wish the rest of the card were coming together so effortlessly.
A few weeks ago a friend from church asked me if I’d draw a tattoo design for him: a lion laying down with two lambs, a sort of metaphor for himself and his two sons. That was a fun little break from trying to learn how to paint stone bridges, and when it was finished I asked him if I could use the basic lion-and-lamb design for my own purposes. He said I was welcome to use it for anything except another tattoo, so that became my second digital Christmas card, and the first one I’ve actually completed:
Alas, creative drive is a fickle thing. The new Star Trek movie has just come out on dvd, and I have this awesome idea for creating a music video with some clips from the film. Learning how to draw people has suddenly been unceremoniously shoved to the back burner of my creative mind, even though the Christmas card has the potential to earn money and the video is just me goofing around for free. That’s the trouble with the artistic brain — it’s so freaking undisciplined. You don’t even get to choose what it’s going to get all worked up about.
So…my goal is to have both cards finished and printed up on high-quality cardstock by Thanksgiving, to give away and to offer for sale, but this cursed video thing has taken over my head and I may or may not get the sleigh pic done in time. Which would be a shame, because it really is going to be quite lovely when it’s finished.
At times like this I really sympathize with all those great artists who died broke and alone in rat-infested garrets. I think creativity must be a form of insanity, the way it skews your priorities and hijacks your brain for its own passing whims.
But I can pretty much promise that at some point I’ll be posting a Star Trek music video to YouTube. It’s gonna be sweet.
Searching For A Style
Last November (holy timewarp Batman, was that almost a year ago??) I posted a retrospective of my artistic styles and mentioned that right before I had kids I was making a little money painting portraits of peoples’ horses. I thought maybe now with the Wacom tablet I could get back into doing that, but in a digital medium.
But I’ve realized modern technology has made that too easy to be profitable. Thanks to the magic of Photoshop, no painting skills are needed to turn a plain old photo…
…into greeting-card-worthy art…
…in just a few minutes. Why would folks pay for something they could do so easily themselves?
No, if I’m going to make a living at this I’ll need to create my own unique style, something that can’t be duplicated just by adding a few filters in some art program.
Right now my artistic hero is Hayao Miyazaki of Studio Ghibli — his breezy, joyful animation first caught my attention in “Kiki’s Delivery Service” and absolutely won my heart in “My Neighbor Totoro.” I watch his movies with a kind of wistful admiration, studying his images, trying to figure out exactly what makes them so appealing, hoping someday I can be even half the artist that guy is. BUT, his style is his own, and I need to find mine. I have a basic idea for a Christmas card I’d like to create this year; it’s the sort of design concept that will allow for lots of playing around with different looks. I’m hoping by the time it’s finished I’ll have a better idea of where I want to go with my art. Also, handing out Christmas cards with your own artwork on them is practically like handing out business cards and free samples, right? That’s the theory, anyway.
Have I mentioned how unbelievably good it feels to be back in the artistic saddle? Even the dreams I have at night are tossing me ideas!
It is good.
Categories: Animals, Artwork, Life
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Exit The Mighty Herd
After giving the matter a lot of hard thought, I finally decided that without access to the Trinity pasture I don’t really belong in the cow business. I mean, I could probably make it work one way or another if I put a ton of effort into it, but…it just isn’t important enough to me to put a ton of effort into. Plus I would be dependent upon the resources and goodwill of others for the foreseeable future, and frankly that makes me a little twitchy.
So Saturday a bunch of us got together and rounded them up.
For some reason three of the cows were BEYOND RESISTANT, and we spent a ridiculous amount of time getting them into the corral with the rest. They turned actively mean as the morning progressed, charging at riders and generally creating as much trouble as they could for us. We ended up having to rope those three and drag them in, while they did their best to take down every horse within reach. I have no idea what caused the change in attitude; they were never aggressive before. Possibly there has been more harassment going on here than I’ve been aware of.
Once we finally got them all penned up, we had another hassle getting them loaded them into Doc’s stock trailer. Some of the cows loaded right up and watched the brouhaha from the relative peace and quiet of the trailer…
…while others fought us for every inch of ground.
Once the the herd was finally loaded up, we put the horses in the other trailer and took them to Doc’s place, then hauled the cows out to Garner Ranch.
Garner Ranch is a big historical cattle spread up in Garner Valley, the kind of operation people don’t even build anymore. It has the sort of facilities us small-time ranchers can only dream of. The Mighty Herd was going there to be ear-tagged, vaccinated, wormed, tested for brucelosis, for that youngest calf to be castrated and for two of the cows to be preg-checked. The quickest way to accomplish all this was to run them assembly-line style through the squeeze chute at Garner Ranch.
When we got there we had to wait our turn for the alley: a rodeo bull supplier guy was using it to train a few troublesome bulls to enter chutes. They all had cool rodeo bull names like City Lights and Mr. Moody.
He ran them through the chute over and over for a while before finally shunting them into a side corral. We unloaded The Mighty Herd into a different corral and then took a lunch break. Doc’s wife Anita had brought a wonderful spread of goodies for us, and we all kicked back in a shady spot and gave it the attention it deserved.
While we were eating I grinned over at Doc. “I’m totally going to blog about how you were late getting to Trinity this morning because you got distracted and filled up your diesel truck with regular gasoline and then had to go trade it for a truck that would still run.”
He winced. “Fine, but if you blog about that then you have to include the part where that black cow charged your horse and you shrieked like a girl.”
I laughed. “Fair enough.”
“AND the part when Veronica had that heifer on her rope and she let it charge right over the top of me.”
“I seriously thought you were dead for a second there.”
Good times.
After lunch we started running the Herd through the alley.
One at a time they were locked into the squeeze chute and processed. When Doc poured a dose of vile-looking purple deworming liquid along the spine of the first one I yelped, “Dude! These are ORGANIC cows!”
“Not anymore,” he chuckled.
Sigh.
I had to leave in the middle of all this because I was John’s ride home and he had to be back by 3:00. But the Herd all made it safely back to Doc’s place that afternoon, and that’s where they’ll be for the next week or two. Doc brought Mahogany home Sunday afternoon.
All of the local folks who want to buy calves can come and pick out the ones they want while they’re in Doc’s arena, and then the rest will be sold together and moved to a pasture on the Res. Right now beef is going for about 88¢ a pound on the hoof, which should add up to a nice chunk of cash for the twelve of them.
In all honesty, I’m not too terribly sad to see them go. It would have been nice to fence that second pasture and enlarge the herd to a more lucrative size, but without that additional space it never would have been more than a very modestly profitable hobby. And I would have relied so heavily on the help of others that I never would have felt completely comfortable about it. AND, since I’m friends with the new owners of The Mighty Herd, I’ll still be able to keep track of how they’re doing and buy half a steer now and then to keep my freezer full of grass-fed beef. All things considered, it’s been a pretty painless transition for me so far. (I won’t be able to completely relax until all the cows and calves are in their new homes and the money is in my savings account, but that’s just me.)
I feel like all of the strands tying me to my old life are being snipped one by one, and I’m being freed up for whatever’s waiting in my new life. There are still a few strands left to snip, but I’m content to be patient and leave those in God’s hands.
Farewell, Mighty Herd! May all your pastures be green, all your water be sweet, and all your bulls be Prince Charmings. I’ll miss you guys.
An Invincible Summer 