Yesterday I trailered up to Huntington Farm in Strafford, VT for a lesson with my trainer, Deb Dean Smith. It was a great lesson and Kate was wonderful, but the highlight of the trip was riding in such a beautiful place with yearlings galloping out in the nearby fields! Like a distracted kindergartener, I was having trouble staying focused on the work at hand, while so much color, play and scenery was going on around me. (I wasn’t the only one. Kate wanted to go play with the babies too!)
This morning I tried to capture this moment on one of my tiny (3″x3″) canvases. Here’s the sketch with my pencil to give you a sense of the scale of this thing. I do these because I can complete them quickly, study the important parts of the image (shading, composition and tone) and stay away from getting bogged down in details. It’s a wonderful exercise to start my day.