Bill and Royal Delta

 

18"X24"pastel on PastelMat

Even though I have not been posting, I have been working... so I have a lot of work to share! This is the companion piece to "Royal Delta".  Bill Mott was Royal's trainer.  Bill is an amazing trainer and is in the racing hall of fame. He has trained MANY horses. But  Royal Delta was special… not only was she a phenomenal athlete, but she is a wonderful horse.  The reference photo was taken by a talented photographer (Pat Hammel) who works for Bill.  It was taken on the day she shipped out for retirement after a spectacular racing career.  A very emotional day.  The original shot is full body…. I opted to crop.  I wanted to capture the sentiment of the event and the full body shot just was more info than was necessary.

I decided to go with a blue back ground rather than the pinkish one on Royal's portrait… just did not think Bill would look that good in pink!!  

Tucker

O.K…… I have been a bad poster!!!  Between the holidays, work and Mom…. need I say more!  But on top of that I bit the bullet and added a new puppy to the family!  We have been a one dog family for over a year now… for the last 30 years we have always had 2 dogs.  I saw a really cute puppy that my dog rescue friends had online and thought I would take the leap!  My other dog is 9 and starting to have some arthritis issues and I think he is just kind of lonely.  If I had waited much longer, a puppy would have been too hard on him.  The puppy, Tucker, has been great and Remi loves him!!!  He is pretty smart and is already house broke!… mostly!  My first heinz 57 ever!  Grew up with Cocker Spaniels and as an adult we have had a  Weimaraner and 4 German Shorthaired Pointers.  Tucker's mom was a brown/tan sheltie/shepherd cross and the father is unknown. He is black and white and initially looked like he had some border collie in him…  now that he is here he looks more like a b&w Newfoundland but with shorter ears!!!  Anyway you look at him, he is cute!! There is a poll on how big he is going to be!! His mom was only about 25 lbs…  so I don't think we are going to be HUGE…. He is 18lbs now… at about 13 weeks!

This is a quickie gouache I did of him so I could make a thank you card for Danny and Ron's Rescue… here is what I came up with for the card.  Would still like to play around with the copy a bit… but for now, I am pleased!