My oil painting “Mares and Foals” shown below, will be auctioned in aid of the BHS’s responsible breeding campaign, “Drawing the Line on Indiscriminate Breeding”. The auction takes place at Cheffins, Cambridge in October.
Mares and Foals - oil painting
There’s lots of other great lots to bid for including celebrity contributions. Check out the list of donations here. Or on their facebook page here.
Last portrait class of the term yesterday and we had one of the other class members posing in his sailor’s gear – complete with steering wheel (no boat though)….
It was a great pose but a bit difficult to cope with the red puffy jacket and everything else within the two hour slot! Photo of my effort below:
Portrait Class - Sailor Pose
More wildlife paintings – as have just heard that I’ve had work accepted for Obsidian Art’s “Out of Africa” exhibition. The exhibition at Obsidian Art, Layby Farm, Old Risborough Road, Stoke Mandeville, Bucks runs from 15th July to 22nd Aug. The two paintings below will be there as well as “Showing Off for the Girls” which I posted previously. Do try to get to the show it’s a lovely gallery (which looks much better inside than out) and always has a great variety of work.
 Fellow Travellers |
 Sable Antelope |
The wildlife painting of a male Red Lechwe below is a medium sized watercolour just completed called ’showing off for the girls’.
Showing off for the Girls
I’ve been taking a short break from painting horses after panicking to try and get paintings ready for the Society of Equestrian Artists’ Exhibition, so have completed a couple of wildlife paintings instead.
The Red Lechwe were seen in Botswana on safari a couple of years ago, they’re great fun to watch if a little difficult to photograph or draw. They prefer to stay in knee deep water and marshy areas where their speed through water gives them an advantage over predators (and photographers / artists).
They are most spectacular when they all take off together if startled, they move very fast splashing through the water in a series of leaps and bounds.
I have now completed the oil version of the London scene painting project I started working on here.
Wellington Arch
The oil painting isn’t quite as loose as I was first aiming at, but I’m quite pleased with it. I’ve invented a viewpoint that’s much closer to the cavalry horses than could easily be achieved with photography. And have concentrated attention on the quadriga at the top of the triumphal arch.
Essex Art Club’s London exhibition at Gallery 54, Shepherds Market, Mayfair, is now on, the show continues until Sunday 20th. It’s a lovely little gallery and a nice selected show, with works from the Cardews, John Tookey and Derek Chambers amongst others. Opening times are 11am to 7pm, except Sunday when show closes at 4pm.
My contribution includes this small painting of a point to point at Horseheath.
Horseheath Point to Point
Essex Art Club is a small club but with a very fine tradition, the current president is Prof Ken Howard RA. Past presidents have included Sir Alfred Munnings PRA and lots of other RA’s. Visit their website here for more details about the art club.
Shown below a few of my attempts at portraits… it’s not something I’m tempted to do commercially but have been to various classes to attempt to improve my portrayal of faces. Please click thumbnail to view in correct proportion!
 Portrait Oil Sketch One |
 Portrait Oil Sketch Two |
 Portrait Oil Sketch Three |
The male models shown above are from classes arranged by my friend Susan Keeble, she provides various portrait, life, and general art classes in Essex. Please see her tuition page for details.
Having decided the earlier watercolour was fine as watercolour, but that the painting idea was worth exploring in other media, have started a much more close focus version in Alkyd Oils:
Wellington Arch, Preliminary Oil
The perspective and lighting is obviously not meant to represent a naturalistic view… but I’m quite happy with it so far, just need to be able to preserve the dynamic effects when I do next stage and add a little more detail…! ….erm, somewhat easier said than done 
This small painting is called “Ready for Home”, it depicts packing up at the end of a day’s point-to-point race at High Easter, near Chelmsford in Essex.
Ready for Home
I liked the blue and white striped horse box, and the blue on the jockey’s jacket and the leg wrappings… Didn’t realise until the horse box left without the horse that it wasn’t actually that horse and jockey’s truck! (She was actually in blue and yellow stripes, but I’ve adapted that slightly for the pic)
Well this one is in progress and it’s probably also going to be the title of the piece:
Work In Progress
I wanted to try out a sort of trompe l’oeil effect with obviously painted bit of horse racing painting, and aim at more realistic effect for the surrounding backing board, hand and brush. Soon discovered that trying to paint the hand you’re actually painting with is a seriously annoying bit of ‘life drawing’ to attempt.
Perversely the part I really like about this painting is the way the deckle edges on the ‘paper’ work. My hand and arm don’t look too bad at this scale but definitely need some more work… I was getting depressed making decisions about how many wrinkles to include, which is main reason this one has been back in the pending drawer for a while!
Katy Sodeau is a professional artist living in the UK. Please visit www.equinepainting.co.uk to view more of her work
email katy@equinepainting.co.uk
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