Painted Pony (small daily painting for sale)

Painted Pony
Mark Nesmith
Oil on canvas board
5"x7"
2012
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Living in a small, rural town can be a bit of an adjustment after living in a major metropolitan area like Dallas for more than a decade, but I'm loving the slower and easier pace of life down here. My brother has a few acres with a bit of woods and a little pond. One of my brothers' neighbors is the local veterinarian who has plenty of animals including horses and donkeys. I've spent lots of time sketching and taking pictures of the horses as they graze near the fence line. Before this summer I'd never really drawn horses, and had rarely painted or drawn any animals at all. In fact most of my sketches of animals were done more than a decade ago back in college. I used to take my sketchbook with me to the Houston Zoo and sketch the animals there. This small canvas was one of the first paintings I finished this summer after moving back down here. I'm really pretty happy with this painting. There's a lovely range of reddish brown hues that really pop against the bright green grass. I think I'll have to paint a few more horses soon.