February 2020 – The Ravens Landing

tall ship tattoo design

Posted on February 26, 2020February 5, 2020 by abigailcossetteryan in artist, ink, sailboat, sailing, sketches, tall ships, Uncategorized, watercolors

I have been playing with coasters recently. Yes, that’s the big secret behind most of the circles you will ever see on this blog. It’s probably a coaster or a plate.

I actually own a couple compass tools, but they both live (sensibly) in my studio, and (insensibly) I’m almost never actually creating art in my studio. Sometimes I do. But often I paint at the end of the day, in the evening, sometimes while watching a show or listening to a book, and the light in my studio is not great at night. It takes a special mood.

Or it takes the mood for acrylics. Because those aren’t portable. Not nearly so portable as watercolors.

Anyway. I was messing with circles, and more graphic design-like images because it is stretching for me. I greatly admire those who can make that type of art.

I feel like this piece is really close to how I wanted it to look, but it doesn’t actually look how I wanted. Things got skrewy with the flourishes. Flourishes are hard , you guys.

This makes me think of tattoos, but I think you’d have to be quite clever about placement, given the circle and flourish–or make it smaller. I don’t think I would get it as a tattoo, though.

Maybe if I were a sailor.

For all my appreciation of tall ships, I am not a sailor. I’ve only been out on teeny tiny boats on ponds, and never on a tall ships when it was, you know, actually moving. Though exploring the ships in harbor has always been a lot of fun to me.

I haven’t put this piece on Redbubble, frankly I’m a bit daunted by the thought of the digital clean up process on it 😛 Maybe someday. But you could get an art print if you wanted one, just message me.

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Nice Things

Posted on February 20, 2020February 20, 2020 by abigailcossetteryan in Animals, Draft Cross, foxhunting, horse, horse crazy, horse training, horsemanship, Pleasure Riding, Uncategorized

There is a new boarder at Midas’s barn, a pretty gray Percheron type mare named Evie.

Midas has literally paid no attention to her in the month she’s been living on the property–she was in a paddock by herself, and all the geldings were turned out in a field that didn’t share a fence–but they could see each other clearly.

They’ve met over the fence in hand.

This week, she was turned out with one of the geldings, Wellie, and the others were all put in other paddocks in pairs.

This time, about halfway through our ride, Midas suddenly seemed to realize that he’d left Wellie and Evie unchaperoned. And he was distressed. He wanted to go back. He wanted to stare at them.

It took a good bit of gentle insistence to prevail upon him to pay attention, so of course I teased him mercilessly for his jealous behavior.

The real question is: Would he react this way if Evie had been turned out with anyone else? Is he jealous because Wellie was turned out with her, or because anyone was? He doesn’t care about Wellie being with him or alone, or with one of the other geldings. So is he getting studly in his old age, or does he just really not like Wellie to have nice things???

I want to know.

For science.

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clothes

Posted on February 18, 2020January 24, 2020 by abigailcossetteryan in artist, brush pen, character art, colorwheel, DND, geek, ink, pathfinder, RPG, sketches, style, watercolors

I really love clothes.

They are SO HARD TO DRAW.

The eyes of an owl? Easy. The drape of…well…anything? Not so much.

Pinterest is my friend and tutor. I scroll through pictures and collect images and cobble together outfts off a selection of reference photos. Most of them aren’t really practical, but I like to imagine the one above is actually quite feasible and also flattering. Imagine linen, a thick elastic fabric, and leather.

I’m finding that often less is more, when putting paint on paper. Which is sort of disappointing sometimes because the very act of putting paint on paper is fun.

This is Zare, the heroine of the stories I write over on ZareCaspian.com. I paint her often. Sometimes it comes out great. Other times it REALLY doesn’t. But it’s all educational.

I used to fashion blog a little, part of me misses it. But not really enough to get back into it. Taking pictures is time consuming. And not looking like a doofus–regardless of what you’re wearing–is also an art form. I am out of practice 😛 But I still like clothes. I like to play around with make up some days–I refer to it as war paint. Because that’s what it is, in many ways.

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Knight with a Red Plume

Posted on February 11, 2020January 24, 2020 by abigailcossetteryan in Animals, Arabian, artist, brush pen, character art, Equine Artist, Etsy, Eventing, Gifts, home, home decor, horse, horse crazy, horse training, horsemanship, ink, Redbubble, RPG, watercolors, writing

I just really like red plumes.

I painted this when I first got masking fluid. I’m still trying to learn how to use it. And putting riders on horses is startlingly difficult. Perhaps because I think I know what it looks like, but the eye and the brain don’t actually communicate as well as I think.

I am trying to push myself to explore composition more and think creatively.

What? Think creatively? In a painting? I know.

i did really enjoy manipulating the masking fluid and brush flicks for the flagging tail. I think there must be Arabian lines in this horse 😉

I’ve always liked Arabians–not just because they are spectacularly gorgeous, but also the legends around them, their endurance, and of course their loyalty. Marguerite Henry’s King of the Wind was also, definitely, instrumental.

Actually, I learned a lot from that book. I read it repeatedly, and the details of how Agaba treated Sham, the care he took to groom and saddle for the comfort of the horse, has definitely influenced how I treat horses. I try to always be kind and respectful when handling a horse. When you do that, they take it much better when you correct them for not being kind and respectful.

This is actually a character from my novel. If you read The River Rebellion on zarecaspian.com you’d know him, Trinh Kegan. His armor should be golden, but artistic liberty dictated bloodstone for this piece.

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Adventurers

Posted on February 4, 2020January 24, 2020 by abigailcossetteryan in acrylics, artist, brush pen, character art, colorwheel, Commissions, DND, Etsy, geek, Gifts, ink, inktense, pathfinder, RPG, sketches, watercolors

If you don’t know what you’re looking at, this is probably a weird picture. I was commissioned to paint an adventuring party portrait for a friend–it is VERY difficult to fit 7 people in a single portrait! There is a fighter/barbarian, a wizard, a sorcerer, a druid, a ranger, a paladin and a bard. So, basically everything 😉 if you’re familiar with tabletop roleplaying games.

I made this with inktense, brushpens, watercolors, and masking fluid. Oh, paint pen and metallic pens by kuretake, also. Layer upon layer upon layer. It easily took me 8 hours.

I don’t know why wordpress isn’t letting me rotate these pictures, so, sorry you’ll have to crane your head. But you can get a feel for the layers of detail easily enough.

Also raspberry pie.

This was done in August, but it was a Christmas gift so I couldn’t say anything about it till now 😛

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