Cowgirl Up!

I love all things Cowgirl!  I have owned horses, rabbits, ferrets, dogs and, currently, cats.  Not that this in anyway makes me a cowgirl, but I have always been a country girl at heart.  I have envied ranch life and have always wanted to live on a horse ranch. My favorite family outing was the National Stock Show and Rodeo in Denver and Ft. Worth.  Every year spending time watching the Equestrian events and the smell of horses, still my favorite smell in the world.  I miss cleaning my horse's stall, brushing him down, conditioning his hooves and turning him loose to run.  The best feeling in the world is turning a horse loose and watching him rid himself of his pent-up energy.  I could sit and watch him for hours.  In fact I did.  Then I would work with him on his manners and ring training.  I spent everyday at the barn and still miss it all.  That is probably what makes me  a country girl at heart. I love the smell of horses and all aspects of ranch life.


Okay, okay, yes I have never actually lived on ranch and now unable to physically work with horses or certain parts of ranch life, but a girl can dream.  This brings me to the first challenge on artjournaling.ning.com.  Leslie (aka comfortableshoes) has the first turn to present a challenge (to see the schedule, click on the artjournaling.ning.com link above).  Her challenge was to create a cowboy page, colors of sepia, yellow and denim, in our art journals.  So, I took the challenge and created a Cowgirl page.  I really loved this challenge.  So here is my page.....

"One girl who would rather wear boots than high heels."

On the right side of my page, this was my first attempt at drawing a person.  I am in no way a portrait artist and have lots of problems with faces, henceforth the hat.  But it's drawn and shaded in pencil.  Then I added color with colored pencils.  I stamped the saying in Black Stazon using two alphabet stamp sets (Stamping Up! and The Paper Studio), on brown packing paper. The background paper is a vintage newsprint gift bag that I cut open and glued down.  I then sprayed the background with the Tsukineko Cornflower Walnut Stain Spray Ink (it's a blue color).  Which I think it gave silent blue worn look.

On to the left side of my page, I have drawn a boot in pencil then went over with my sepia Prismacolor pen.  Then I added the floral design and colored the background with a purple copic marker.  Note to self copic markers and Prisma pens do not mix well, well they mix, altogether that is.  But I think it turned out okay.

The picture in the middle is of my Rafferty.  Full blood registered Quarter horse, Rafter Figment West.  He was my beautiful guy.  He loved apples and cookies, which I spoiled him with.  He learned the sound of my car and would talk to me as I was approaching the barn, knowing I had treats and he was going to get to run. He is truly missed.

I finished the page with some stamped images in White Stazon.  I am not a fan of White Stazon, but the small white flowers with the blue around them is a really cool technique.  I am hoping to do a video tutorial next week on this.  I discovered it while playing with my inks and stamps this week.  I have not seen a video for it, so hopefully it will be a new technique for some.  I also have drawn barbed wire around the pictures and through out the page, which was really fun.

I hope you have enjoyed this post and if you have ever wanted to get involved with art journaling, the artjournaling.ning.com site is a wonderful group of people. Every two weeks another challenge will be posted.  The next challenge will be posted on Sunday March 18th.

Until next post.......Enjoy!