Letters to Myself

Painting Horses

I was pleased when I walked into art class this morning and found a copy of the photo I want
to paint next clipped to the canvas board I’ve already got started. I took a look at the
near-finished painting I’m doing of Jim Craig and Denny and decided I wasn’t going to work
out the details still remaining on the horse and rider until some other day.

Instead, I immediately I sat down and started drawing from Nora’s photo. I didn’t get the
proportions exactly right, so I had to erase everything and start again. With eraser
frantically rubbing off the painstakingly placed manes, tails, hooves, and hocks, there’s
Terry, sitting in the corner, trying not to laugh. He knew I wasn’t going to be able to
copy the photo satisfactorily and he was just waiting for this moment so he could tell me
so.

Then he got up and pulled off a long sheet of butcher’s paper from a roll he had hidden
somewhere in the corner of his workshop and told me to cut it down to fit the canvas. Now
draw the horses, he said.

Okay. You might think I had wasted my time on the first draft, but to tell you the truth, I
learned a few things from my mistakes. Besides, I was drawing on butcher paper this time.
I had nothing to lose; there was no reason to get every line perfect now.

Wouldn’t you know I came up with a beautiful rendition of the photo! So what good is it,
you ask? Well, now I have a drawing of the actual size of the painting I’m going to do! If
that doesn’t sound like much, I’ll tell you it helps a lot to be working off a subject
that’s scaled to fit the canvas.

I was elated with the results, to be perfectly honest, and am looking forward to redrawing
the horses onto the canvas once again. I brought it home so I can work on the project
during the week. I’ve inserted a copy of the photo to this email so you can see why I was
so excited when I came across it. Keep in mind, the photo is a copy of a copy of the
original, so I wasn’t able to get a good quality scan from it. Also, don’t expect to see
color; the photo was taken in black and white.