Here he is...

A very dappled & spotty hunter pony- "Gatherer"! Colors sure look different after they are fired, and have glaze on, don't they? Yes, this is the same horse pictured below in my previous blog. Anyhow, this guy is a claybodied Jitterbug, and he's headed to My Auction Barn on Friday, with the auction ending Tuesday, the 24th. You can see more pictures of him here, and there will be a link to the auction there, after it goes up. Hope you like him!

Coming Soon...

Something dappled this way comes!!! And spotty goodness too... :)

Playing with Paper

From my website you will notice that I've been having fun playing with various papers and mixed media. I started doing this last year when I was in St. Louis, and away from most of my horse stuff. I couldn't not do art! I'm still experimenting largely with what I'm doing here... I don't even know quite what to call it... collage? Assemblage? (I vaguely recall that as an art term from college!) But whatever it is, it is a nice creative break from my purely ceramic stuff, and it is helping to keep me energized, to some degree. Lately I've been doing works that help to explore my more spiritual leanings- the piece above is an example of that. Squeezed it in last week in the evenings after my regular work day, it depicts St. Thomas More & his daughter. I did it as an auction donation to a church I used to belong to when I was living in the San Diego area. I felt drawn to show the beauty a father-daughter relationship can have... I guess because I am blessed to have a wonderful relationship with my dad. A larger image can be seen here. And I still have more canvas boards calling to me (yay Art Store!), and more ideas to explore, so I don't think this is going to stop any time soon. I'm feeling a bit avian for my next one, so I think the next one is going to have to feature a bird... perhaps a zebra finch...?

Bzzzt! Crack! Boom!

So last year when I was living in St. Louis, I experienced I don't know how many thunderstorms. They were as common as colds. Here in suburban So. Cal... not so common. That is why a sudden summer storm (which was forecasted for tomorrow, of course!), complete with pea-sized hail (hey- that's pretty big to us! Hail is also a rarity), and the requisite thunder and lightning... And it was some serious lightning. Midwestern lightning. You would think, all that time in the actual midwest, I would have seen lightning hit something. Nope; unless you count other clouds, and maybe the horizon. So I was absolutely shocked when I peeked out the bay window to see my neighbor's tree get directly zapped by a bolt! I must have looked at exactly the right time to see it shoot down the middle of the trunk and split the tree as it went. Took a good quarter of the large pine off- at least most of it landed in the street, though my neighbor's roof had some serious branches on it. Anyhow, that was my excitement for the day. Thought I'd share :)

Our "really big" hail:

Seeing Spots...

Yay! My Brigand -gone- Knabstrup is finished and ready to go up on My Auction Barn today. I have never used the service, but I've heard good things, and seeing how there had been some model horse trouble on ebay recently, I thought I'd give this a go. This Brig sure has been though a lot to get him to be his spotty self that you see! It would have been much easier to use a different technique to make him a Leopard App, but I wanted to capture the rich and gradated bay tones I saw in my head, and I'm happy to say that it worked! Anyhow, you can see the last bits of his transformation here- his lovely last masking stage, and the point right before I sprayed his glaze on. I should soon have more pictures of him up on my website with links to the auction when it is ready. Please check it all out! Until then, I leave you with a picture of him all shiny and finished- enjoy!

I think it's done!

My website, that is. I sat down last night & for a bit this morning, and I think I finally finished it! I added in a few missing pictures, revised the (long-winded!) artist's statement, and finally put in the "Spiritual Art" section. You can see it all at VelasquezArtistry.com. And please let me know if you find any links not working, or pictures not loading! I would much appreciate it. Cheers!

Security

Hi folks- just wanted to let you know I've added some security features, as there was spam posted in the comment section today. Besides signing in to Google, you will now have to fill in one of those little word boxes (so we knows you're not a computer!), and comments will be approved by me. Stupid spammers creating more work for all of us!

-A