Busy busy!

I've been bad at blogging lately as I've been rather busy, so here come's an update!

• They've released the mandatory art pieces for uni admissions, and since I plan to apply to more than one school this means I have A LOT of work to do! It's exciting but of course very time consuming.

• A week ago I was selling paintings, mugs, jewelry and more at a local Christmas market, together with the blacksmith Wulfar Smide. We also did a collaboration, in which I designed and burned the pattern for a viking-inspired axe he made!

• I cleaned up my DeviantArt account!
I haven't been active at all there for the past two years, so now I've made a few changes in the gallery by deleting some older works that I'm no longer very fond of (I've of course spared a few that you guys especially liked). I've updated some works, and just replaced the file with never versions. On those I have updated I've also written that in the caption below them. 

• I've also finally let myself draw horses for fun again (this mostly to stop myself from getting stuck in an artblock). Years ago horses were the only things I wanted to draw, and my galleries were filled with them! However on my journey to become an illustrator I've had to put it aside more and more, and now I usually only draw horses when I get comissions of horse portraits.

Here's the newest piece, Snowblind:

I decided to not make it "too easy" for myself (as horses is my "safest" thing to draw) by picking a trickier pose, from an angle I'm not used to, and not allowing myself to use much contrast or color as I usually do!

I also re-drew one of my most popular drawings "Phantom"/"Horse of the opera". Those of you who've been following me on DeviantArt etc have possibly seen this paining years ago, and you can see the old version HERE.

See more of my recent equine drawings here; https://www.artstation.com/artwork/aE0V8

• I've been accepted to three different courses in graphic design this spring, but I can probably not take all of them so I'm currently having a difficult time choosing!

So to sum it all up, I'll probably be blogging slower than usual for the time being as I'm focusing on the University admissions, but the blog is still alive! :)

Moon and Sun

"Sun and Moon, brothers of the world.
With horns proud as Kings, they gave all creatures of this world a chance to rise."

I often re-draw or finish up older works, as a way to see how much I've improved my drawing skills. My painting "Moon and Sun" originally showed two plain green unicorns on a green background. Today with more shadows, better colouring, a lot more details and markings it looks like this;

Working with horses

Today I had a job interview, quite far from here so it almost took all day. The job was related to Icelandic horses, and they seemed really nice and so on. However.. I've always thought it would be best to work with something else, and keep horses as a hobby only. Or, more like a goal. This both because I'm afraid that I would loose interest in riding and horses a bit if I begin to see it as work. And as a "goal" I mean that the reward will be greater if I've really worked for it. I believe that the day I can manage to have a horse on my own, it will be worth more to me, than it would have if horses were a part of my job.

I believe I've made the right choice. Studying to become an Illustrator and Graphic designer, good enough to one day afford to live as I dream to, with a horse of my own, and more.  

My boyfriend gets along so well with the horses -especially old Smári- that he too wants to spend more and more time with them, and even study to become a farrier. So I don't think it will be a problem to keep horses close in my life, regardless of how much time I spend studying/working.

Horse photography

I took the camera with me to the stable this week, and tried to shoot some cozy autumn pictures. All three horses were great models (even though they were very curious of my camera so most pictures turned out as, well, a little too close-up photos of their mules).

Eldgrimur (the grey) is 7 years old. Eldur (the palomino coloured) is 16 years old, and Smári (the chestnut) is 33 years old. I think Eldgrimur was the hardest one to photograph, as his colours doesn't blend as well with the orange autumn leaves in the background as the others.. but I think I managed to capture the autumn mood in most of them. Here are only some of the MANY photos, and you'll eventually get to see more later! :) 

Icelandics

After watching the competitors at "SM for icelandic horses" i started to digitally sketch some horses in movement. I especially wanted to capture the extra gaits of the icelandic horse; Tölt and Flying pace. In the end it turned into a series of four different paintings.

 
Top left; Skimmel, top right; Silver, bottom left; Fux and bottom right; Mörkfux

You can buy the printed paintings HERE.

Or prints on pillows, clocks, mugs etc HERE.