trolley rides

today we spent about 5 hours involved in giving horse drawn trolley rides at Bourdeau Brothers in Middlebury, Vt. We used Jake and Jerry, two five year olds we have been working for a year and a half. this year we were not the only ride providers as a pair of spotted minis were also hard at work! One rider asked me if I had been doing any paintings of Jake and Jerry and I realized that I haven't! Partly because I have had so many other projects and commissions but also because they are still quite dark grey, almost black. They will eventually turn white as they are percherons but right now they are still closer to black. Now if you work with colored pencils at all you realize how difficult it is to get a real, dense black. I usually start with a red, blue or purple wash depending on the light and overall tone of the horse. It is surprising how many colors there are in a black horse, or any animal. At first I had a lot of trouble because it would seem the paper was fully saturated before I reached what I was looking for. It takes a REALLY sharp pencil, and MANY layers to reach a vibrant black. I also learned to use a workable fixative just before the last one or two layers. I still keep experimenting, I can see progress, but I still think twice about doing black anything! One funny thing is how you have to pretend the horse is not "black" even though that is what it looks like and what the owner calls it. I look for all the reflections of color, shine, highlights, etc. As soon as I stop thinking "black" it suddenly starts to happen!