This week has seen the schools closed for the holidays so, as is always the case when the kids are off, I've had a lazy week doing not a lot.
When I have picked up my pencils it's been to work on another horse, well pony to be exact. What you see here is where I am now - pre-background, with the horse more or less finished. This will be no.3 in my series, leaving 32 still to do by the end of the year. I can't help thinking I've bitten off more than I can chew with this goal, especially with the speed I work at. Thirty five was a bit ambitious and, if I'm being honest, don't think I've fully thought this one through - we can but see.
Away from the easel I have been playing with my blog. I still haven't found a way to add my banner without having to change templates but thanks to FeedBurner, there is now the option to subscribe to my blog and get updates via RSS feed or via e-mail direct to your inbox. I'm sure I've done everything right and all is in working order but do let me know if you experience any problems.
This is a horse I have had in my 'to-do' file for a while now - photo courtesy of Wetcanvas. My original intention was to do this in colour but changed my mind after enjoying working with pencil again when doing Duke, the Newfoundland.
I used pencil all the time before I discovered coloured pencils and they took over, so it was nice to re-acquaint myself with this medium. The downside - I have never been happy with how graphite scans, or photographs for that matter, and always think a lot of the detail is lost.
Note to self: don't play around with things I know nothing about! In this case it was Blogger when trying to update my blog template.
To cut a long stort short, I wanted to add my own header with pics along the top of my blog - others have done it so I knew it was possible. Experience now tells me only to those who know what they're doing. All I achieved was a new template that 'messed up' all my previous posts - the font was changed in some parts but not others, the spacing was all wrong so everything looked squashed and, to finish me off, some of my pics were deleted and replaced with a red cross.
Thankfully, after spending hours trawling bloggers help pages I found out there is a little button I could press to revert back to my old template - problem solved(ish). I still don't have my header. I'm not computer literate, far from it, but if there is anyone reading this who knows how to add a header/banner without having to change to a fancy template I would LOVE to know. You can leave a comment or email me.
It never ceases to amaze me just how dependant I am on the computer in this business. You would think being an artist that computer skills weren't a necessity. Instead I find myself relying on it more and more but at the same time feeling totally clueless. It's not that I haven't tried to get on with it because I do - all the time. I've lost count of the number of hours I've spent trying to master photoshop for example, but it just doesn't register. If only they'd taught me this at Art College.
