There I was, faced with the necessity to draw the north end of a mule headed south, and no reference material!

What’s a Central California artist to do?

Call in Cowboy Bert, of course.

That would be Cowboy Bert, Equine Photographer, who graciously set up one of his mules and positioned him for numerous photos. I was able to print out 3 for reference, but because it took a couple of hours for them to load on my computer, I didn’t save the photos to show you.

Then, I commenced drawing. When I can see what I need to see and know what I am seeing, I can draw very quickly. When I am drawing the north end of a mule headed south and the photos are all just a tad bit different and various pieces of information are obscured behind a tail or in shadow. I take my time. Here are a few of the stages that the drawing went through:

Nope, not drawing anything I can’t see. Waiting for photos. . .

Okay, let’s try this thing.

Hard to see the difference from the previous one. Maybe it is time to get an expert opinion.

At this point, I emailed it to The Captain, who is the prettier partner of Cowboy Bert. She has also taken drawing lessons from me, so I knew she’d observe every detail and prevent me from exposing my ignorance of a mule’s back side.

We laid tissue paper over a printout of the drawing, and the Captain showed me what she saw while explaining it. I repeated it back to her to be sure I understood, and then wrote notes so I could fix things later. (This all happened while setting up for her father’s memorial service – shows you what a thoughtful generous person she is, and possibly what a jerk I am for asking such a thing at such a time.)

Stay tuned for the final drawing. (At the time of this post, it isn’t yet finished.)