An Epic Journey, Well Rewarded

Last week I embarked upon a rather epic adventure*.

*by British standards that is - I appreciate that in the US these distances are considered a little less insane!

I had to go for a drive to pick up some art materials I had bought on eBay.  The auction had caught my intrigue, it was written as this:

"I am selling all my art materials in One Job Lot  due to house move.
 9 sheets of 28" x 20"   (70cm x 50cm) 170LB Clairefontaine Pastelmat
 --Pastel pencils---
Soft and Hard pastels--Mounts of different sizes--
Watercolour Paper and Brushes--
Watercolour Pencils
Art Books and DVD's
There are a lot of  New Pastel pencils and Pastels (see Photos)
There are too many items to count and photograph
Due to impending house move all must go together.
Collect Only"

There were a few photos in the auction but not enough to show exactly what was included.  I did see a rather nice set of pastel pencils and a few other bits that made me feel it was worth a bid, so put a rather conservative bid, on the off-chance I might get very lucky, and then watched the final few minutes of the auction to see how much they would ultimately sell for.  To my surprise, although the bids did go up, my maximum bid was the final selling price - I got them!

It was at this point that I thought I should check where she is, as it was specified "Collection Only".  Now, Northampton is a pretty central place in the the UK, nowhere is all that far away... or so I thought!

Turns out it's quite a long way to Carmarthen, which is in the South West of Wales!!  Now I realised why I'd got such a good price - getting all the way over there was no small feat!

Luckily, the lady selling the materials was very accommodating and gave me a few weeks to plan the trip and get organised.  I had to book a day off work, I also arranged to pop in at Animal Artistry (in Hereford) on the way back, killing two birds with one stone*, so to speak.

*I really don't like that phrase, hows-about "grow two trees from one seed" - that's much better!

So, after much planning and conspiring, I got all my ducks in a row* and the day arrived.  I was excited about my "Road Trip" and me and Jack (Black-Jack, my Smart Car) set off West-wards.

*I quite like that one, I've used it a few times recently 

I noticed that the one thing there are a LOT of as you enter Wales, is bridges, lots and lots of bridges.  Must be all those hills and valleys!  They are quite pretty, most of them and usually just after the bridge you get a wonderful view across the Welsh landscape.

The M50 is the main road into South Wales, and I realised that this unusual building is becoming quite a landmark to me, I recognise it whenever I pass.  Not that I go to South Wales often, but sometimes these things just stick in your mind.

The weather was not kind.  After the drizzle came the rain, after the rain came the downpours, the typically Welsh weather welcomed me with all it had to offer!

I arrived at my destination at lunchtime, to a lovely small yet slightly soggy village made up mostly of bungalows.  The lady came and met me outside so the only photo I took was as I left, with a very full car!

She made me a nice warming cuppa and we had a chat, where I discovered that the lady had been a watercolourist for many years, specialising in floral images (not botanical studies, much more impressionistic).  The only image I can find is this one, it is typical of her work, they were all quite large (around 16x24") and they were all beautiful! 

She had sold her work through London galleries for a long time, and then more recently had been producing dog drawings for a local animal charity to sell to raise funds.  She must have produced hundreds, she showed me some but as she stopped a while ago, none are featured online sadly.  I saw a few and they were extremely good!

So, after a wonderful hour or so discussing her artistic history, and her critiquing some of my work (gotta love smart phones and Dropbox!) and sharing some handy tips with me, she showed me to the items that were included in the eBay listing.  When I saw six large boxes full of stuff, she casually said "Oh, I didn't have the energy to photograph it all for the listing, so I left a lot out and just thought that whoever buys it will be very pleased".  Well, I can honestly say I am VERY pleased!!  She also kept adding things to the lot while I was there, but I'll expand on that in a moment...

I didn't get to properly look through the boxes until later on.  I had to pack up the car (in the rain which was tricky - pastels, pencils and paper do not like rain, and hot-foot over to Donna at Animal Artistry to pick up two china models she had for me.  The route took me along the edge of the Brecon Beacons, the views were wonderful (especially given the weather) but dusk was drawing in and so I didn't get many clear photographs.

At one point, at mid-dusk when I was struggling to see with the low light and heavy rain, something caught my eye, I didn't realise what it was at first but it turned out to be a heron - nothing amazingly shocking about that... until he tried to swoop between my Smart car and a van in front, he realised a bit late that it was a tight manoeuvre and just about managed to squeeze past, swooping right in front of my car.  I got to see the full nine feet of his wingspan, which, once I'd composed myself again, I realised was pretty awesome!  Obviously I didn't get that in a photo (it would have been an amazing picture!), so here's another image from the Brecons.

I got to Donna's house after dark, much later than I'd hoped to.  Even though I'd left Wales, the weather had followed me and it was cold, dark, wet and a windy when I arrived at her farmhouse and studios.  Donna obligingly gave me a studio tour (even though I've been a few times before, I always love to see the models she has in progress).  I didn't get any photos but as I know you're curious, here's a few I took during a previous visit :)

Donna packed up my china models, again, sadly I've not had enough daylight since to take more shots of them, but this is what I picked up (both will be offered for sale shortly so if you like either of them please let me know).  Both are gorgeous examples of the models, the UJ has one blue eye and the Dancing Daisy is the first glazed copy to be offered for sale and sports a brand new colour design from Donna's team:

Now, Donna suffers from a similar affliction to me, it's called "lovesowningartmaterialstheywillneveruse-itis", and involves a wonderful fascination with owning art materials, even though they may not ever be used.  When I arranged to meet up with Donna I told her about my new-to-me art materials and how much there was, and asked her if she would like to see what I had and maybe take some for her collection future use.  So, the car was unloaded and we spent a wonderful hour or two going through every item in those six boxes!

Are you ready to see what I bought?  Here we go:

Large paper items: Posh watercolour paper, plastic sleeves for artwork and large, hard-backed postage envelopes.

THAT pastel pencil set - this is what I was after from the original listing, isn't it lovely!

A huge array of hard and soft pastels, some had been taken from the sets and put into colour-sets in that clear plastic box to the right.

Card photo mounts, lots and lots and lots of them!  Probably around 80 of them all-in!

Glassine - dozens of very large sheets - I tried to buy some of this recently and it was £1 a sheet!  Glassine is used (by me) as a protective sheet that lies directly on the pastel painted surface during transport, it is very low-friction and so protects the finished artwork without rubbing it.

Clairefontane paper, I've not closely looked at this yet (any damp/oily fingermarks will show so I will look more when I'm calmer and have more space and time to carefully look at them. According to the listing there are nine sheets of 28" x 20" Clairefontane Pastelmat paper.  I've not used this paper before and now look forward to being able to try it out more.

Various china palettes:

A small selection of wood/glass frames:

Then a big box full of loose pastel pencils.  My heart skipped a beat when I saw they included such good brands - I've never been able to justify buying any Caran d'Ache pastel pencils, but now I have some I'm thrilled!

The box also contained lots of paper tortillons and even some colourshapers (which I normally use for sculpting)

Another box with sharpening and erasing doodads and wotsits:

More pastel pencils:

Even MORE pastel pencils:

Even MORE.... yeah, you get the idea:

There were also a selection of books on animal portraiture, artwork, and these:

...and even a few DVDs!

There was quite a lot of stuff that I am unlikely to use.  I don't usually use watercolours, but these were included.  There was a selection of sponges (natural and synthetic):

A box of small watercolours, high quality and unused:

A plethora or brushes!

And another wooden box with some larger, equally high quality but part-used watercolour tubes:

Then there was a bunch of other items including tracing papers, watercolour papers etc:

Thsi curious device, which I am looking forward to putting to use:

And finally this, it wasn't part of the original auction but the lady added it, saying that if I worked with pastels I should have an extractor of some sort.  It is labelled as an air purifier but I think it draws fine dust particles out of the air.  This could be very useful as I am an asthma sufferer and will benefit from a reduction in fine dust in the air.

Donna and I had a grand old time going through all the items, even involving her family as everyone had a good mooch in amongst the new items.  Sadly I had to leave for home, so it all had to be boxed back up and put back into the car ready for the long drive home.  I left at... 6:51pm (apparently) and arrived home at 9:30pm.  Me and Jack covered over 450 miles, it wasn't an easy drive either so when I got home, I was too tired to unpack!

The following day I was back at work, but I had a bit of a problem - I had to take Bruno to the in-laws as they look after him during the day for us.  It's only a very short drive but I couldn't walk him there, so we had to make-do.  I wouldn't recommend this as a way to transport your dog, but when you drive a Smart car and it is full of boxes of art materials, you just have to make-do!

The Spanish Riding School of Vienna

Hi guys!  I wanted to share with you a very special event that happened over the weekend.  My friends and I attended the Spanish Riding School of Vienna's show in Sheffield (they're also at Wembley next weekend).  These are the famous Spanish Lipizzaner horses, trained and exhibited by the Riding School of Vienna, in Austria.

This has been arranged for over a year and I was so excited, I've been planning a series of sculptures based on these horses and knew I would come away enthused and inspired, I wasn't wrong!

My friend bought the tickets, so when we were shown to our seat I couldn't believe it - we had the best seats in the house!!  She had hinted she'd got us good seats but I wasn't expected to be sat within 8ft of the edge of the ménage!

The show began and a familiar face appears, Nicki Chapman (presenter of Pop Stars, Escape to the Country and the RHS Chelsea Flower Show) came out to introduce the event.  It was lovely as she was obviously delighted to be involved in it, and even though she read from scripted cards, her enthusiasm really shone.

Now, a lot of this information I am sure many of you will already be familiar with, but to illustrate what we are seeing I have tried to explain in lay-man's terms, I hope that's ok.

The first stars to come out were 10-time Paralympic dressage gold medallist Lee Pearson and his horse, Zion.  They performed a lovely routine, I've never watched dressage live before and the concentration in both Lee's and Zion's eyes was intense.  At the end Lee dismounted and did an interview with Nicki.  It wasn't until he dismounted that you could tell he even had a disability, it is quite severe and showed just how incredible it is that he can ride so beautifully, though he did admit that Zion had chosen to add in a few "unexpected" moves during their routine, we didn't notice though!

This photo was taken without zoom, we could almost touch the horses!  We could hear them breathing and the sound of their hooves on the soft sand/sawdust floor, even the riders as they spoke to them, I kept thinking I needed to pinch myself to believe it!

I tried taking some photos, flash photography wasn't allowed but you could take photos without flash, I tried but they just blurred so from then on I mostly took little video clips so I had something I could use for sculpting reference.  I'm including those on this blog post and hopefully they'll come through to you guys, fingers crossed!  If you're reading this on a mobile using 3G be careful about your download allowance, all these videos might add up to a lot of megabytes!

Next up, another Olympic superstar and his rider appeared, this is "Dances with Wolves" (stable name "Golly"), as I recall; a huge, 17.3hh Oldenburg horse, he is a Grand Prix dressage horse (ie the very top level), he is liver chestnut and under the bright lights he positively gleamed!  Carl and Dances with Wolves performed another beautiful routine, here they are performing "tempi changes" - where the horse changes its lead leg on every stride (in a series of "flying changes").  This is a move that only Grand Prix level horses can do!

Then, Carl started talking us through some of the moves in dressage, explaining the most difficult ones in preparation for the Lipizzaners.  This move is called a "Piaffe" - it's where the horse basically trots on-the-spot, it is an example of how the horse can collect itself into a very flexible, springy position, which became important later on...  If the horse moves forward during this move, it is called the "Passage", which is a beautiful way to view a horse in motion.

Carl then brought on another dressage horse and rider, I think the horse is Uthopia (stable name Uti) but not 100% sure, the rider was Rebecca Hughes.  Carl got Rebecca and Uthopia to perform some dressage moves, explaining the difference between high-level moves and Grand Prix moves, including the canter pirouette - performed with an 8m diameter in high level dressage but "on a dinner plate" at Grand Prix level.  I was concentrating so hard during this part that I didn't capture the moment I'm afraid!  He got pretty out of breathe talking while riding, but I'm really glad they did this as it gave us a much better appreciation for what we were about to see!  To finish, Carl and Rebecca performed together before leaving the arena.

Then it was time for the stars of the show.  Nicki gave a little history about the Spanish horses and then introduced some of them to us.  There was one bay horse (there is always one) and the rest were gleaming shades of white.  Did you know that you can only call a Lipizzan horse white - all other "white" horses are called gray?

The horses performed a beautiful routine to music which set the scene for things to come!  After they had left the arena, Nicki introduced the next section - the Schools Above the Ground!  We sat there a little puzzled saying "the Schools Above the Ground - doesn't she mean the Airs Above the Ground?..." but it turns out that to start with, they perform the moves without riders, their handlers standing to the side. These are called the Schools Above the Ground.  Later, when they perform with their riders in the saddle, the moves are called the Airs Above the Ground.

Both the School and the Airs above the Ground were originally military moves (though I don't know how many horses could have been so well trained to perform then during battle!), these horses are trained in order to preserve the tradition, keeping it alive.  We enjoy it for entertainment now, I am so pleased that the tradition is continued (without the war bit!).

The first move is called the Levade - this is where the horse lifts its front legs and holds its body at an angle of thirty degrees.  Before I knew all this stuff I'd say "he's just rearing isn't he?", but no, this is an extremely difficult position for a horse to get into and to hold it only the strongest stallions are capable.

The next move is called a Courbette - this is where the horse rears up to as vertical a position as possible, and then hops along on its back legs.  It amazes me that any horse has the strength to perform this move! (terrible photo but please keep reading, there is better to come!)

The most incredible move the horses perform is called the Capriole - this is where the horse leaps up into the air, all four hooves off the ground and then kicks out with the back legs.  This is the showcase manoeuvre, the highlight of the event and the most breath-taking sight (though not in this photo sadly!).

As you can see, taking photos was very disappointing, so after trying my best and failing to get any good shots, I moved on to taking movie clips instead so keep scrolling, there's better stuff below, starting with this clip showing the Capriole:

After the interval, the horses returned to perform the Airs Above the Ground.  The riders must have performed these many times before and felt they needed a bigger challenge - so they performed them all without stirrups!!!

So, here we have the Levade performed, ridden.  You can see that the horse enters each move doing the Passage and Piaffe which gathers them up to the ideal position to be able to move on to perform the move.

Then more of the Courbette, I am still astonished at the power the horse needs to get both itself and its rider into the air like this!

And finally, the incredible Capriole!  You can see the whips that the riders use - these are actually pieces of birch-wood which the riders find in the forests near the stud and whittle down to use.  I don't like whips, but I was satisfied that their use wasn't extreme or excessive.  We were quite impressed throughout at how well the horses were handled, with the occasional strong use of the bits only when the horses were playing up -they are stallions after all and they are chosen because of their cheeky attitudes, so I had no worries that these horses are spoilt rotten and live very well while they are working and then retire in luxury too.  As explained during the event and substantiated online, the Lipizzaner breed is know for its fast learning and long life, the training is designed to build the horses athleticism and many horses work well into their twenties and still enjoy a long retirement.  I appreciate there are many differing attitudes to this way of life for the animals and their riders, but this post isn't designed to provoke any sort of debate on the matter, I am viewing purely from an artistic point of view and am satisfied with their training and living conditions.

And finally, the horses performed the most beautiful act - the "Quadrille" - where eight horses perform in complete harmony in a ballet of elegance and power.  I won't talk too much about this, just turn up the sound, sit back and enjoy :)

(if you look closely, you'll see a bit of a near miss on this one - the second from last horse nearly bumped into the one in front as they crossed over!)

It all ended with an encore from the horses and their mounts, parading around the ring performing a move called the "passage" (spoken in an accent, a bit like pass-arsh), which is basically the Piaffe, but moving along.  It's a lovely way to see the horses doing this as they move along slowly enough to take in their amazing gold-embellished tack (which only the very best horses can wear!) and appreciate the power and grace of each one.

Now I'm home, I have some incredible memories to carry with me for life, some great reference material to use on the upcoming sculptures that I just knew I'd be wanting to make after the event, and also, a lovely keyring which I shall hang proudly in the Making Room to keep the memories alive of a great event, and a great weekend with my buddies :)