Riderless horse sketch

Its just a sketch, have a notion to do a piece on dressage, and I keep coming back to a sketch on a lunch break I doodled a month or two ago, which in turn prompted me to start on this. I was in half a mind just to add a rider, but didn't as the horses head would then be too far tucked in. Its a starting place for now, so I'll just see where this starts to go over the coming weeks....time for a bit of research, I think.

watercolour sketch of riderless horse
copyright  retained www.equineartportraits.com

As ever if any of you have photos of you and your horses doing dressage that you would allow me to paint from, send a link.  I got a lovely great photo to work from Red Hot Ruby's blog a few months back, always on the hunt for something that sparks off an idea....

Horse sketched on a lunchbreak, and inspiration at Trongate 103

A horse sketch, copyright http://www.equineatrportraits.com/

I had a little wander on yesterday morning to Trongate 103, which is a collaborative arts venue in Glasgow which houses gallery space, artists studios and the Glasgow Print Studio for a little creative distraction from life in general,which quite frankly had been more than a little confusing that morning.

While there stumbled across some things that caught my eye. They are a very random lot, some horse related and others, I don't know, just things that caught my eye which I like track of somewhere as I know they are somehow important, but don't yet know why, if that makes any sense at all.

The first item was a sketch in the Project Ability gallery, which is a visual arts organisation based at Trongate 103 which enables and encourages those with disabilites to use artistic expression and practice to achieve their creative potential. I don't know anything about the artist, other than they were clearly prolific as there was a great big folder of their loose, fluid line art for sale in the shop which raises funds to support the work they do. It was a portrait 2 horses titled 'Mother and Son' and apart from the sketch itself, I warmed to the simplicity of the title.

Mother & Son, H.W.B Davis A.B
on show in the Project Ability shop at Trongate 103
http://www.project-ability.co.uk/

On my mind while there was the fact that I think I would like to work with the people in this organisation, I like what it is about. A few years ago considered postgraduate study in Art Therapy although I wasn't sure if it might get a little too deep, I suspected that undergoing therapy yourself might be a prerequisite and I wasn't at all sure that what I wanted to do. Added to this the only institution I found in Scotland where you could do the course was in Edinburgh which with a young family living in Glasgow is more than a bit of an inconvenience, and so I parked it for the time being. It is still in me somewhere, as one of those 'what if' questions.....I might enquire with this group about volunteering to see if I can answer it. 

I had a look in the Glasgow Print Studio Gallery, where some canvases by caught my eye, a lot of intensity and depth to them, organic and quite breathtaking, artist Sam Ainsley.

Then to the Print Studio shop where I leafed through the work, pausing over a few, but today it was Rachel Duckhouse, whose work you can see here, but somehow the website images don't do these visual feasts any justice, but you light like them anyhow.

After all that browsing I returned to my desk with a 20 minutes to spare and so sketched a horse  on some tracing paper before returning to a more to returning just a little altered, to the day in hand.