Hello, Chico

Earlier this summer, I created a commissioned watercolor painting of a beautiful Arabian/Pinto mare, Khat for her owner Sue. And just recently I did another painting of Chico, who is owned by Sue's daughter. This is the first commissioned watercolor painting I've created since the birth of my baby girl, and boy was it great to get back into painting!

Chico is a big mustang with a bold personality. I had a lot of fun painting this guy with his colors: red, white, and blue.

​When I sent the approval of the finished painting to Chico's owner, I've never seen so many exclamations marks in an email before ... she just loved it so much and couldn't wait to have him in her home, but it was a small journey to get him just right.

When I first sketched out Chico, I thought I was correcting lens distortion by drawing his head smaller than the original photo. But that's when I learned that he had an unusually large head, so large that it was a difficulty with finding fly masks large enough for him. He is a mustang, and they come in all shapes and sizes and sometimes some parts aren't the most proportionate to the rest of them.

But that's why I create the drawing and have it approved before I transfer it over to the watercolor paper. Once something is drawn on watercolor paper, I don't want to erase it and start over again because the during the process of erasing, part of the paper fibers are destroyed and the final painting won't look as good. I take great pride in creating professional quality paintings and part of that is due to my process.

One of my favorite things to do as an artist is to create custom paintings because they mean so much for the person I'm creating them for and that was truly the case with the painting of Chico.