Horse painting - speed painting

I love painting portraits. It can be portraits of humans or animals- I simply enjoy it better than landscape, still life or abstract.

Horses are one of my most favourite subjects. In fact my whole venture in art started with horses - as far as I remember- I have been drawing horses :)

Here is my latest painting and time lapse. I hope you enjoy it.

Horse & human portrait

I am happy to announce that another of my paintings is making his owner happy. This was commissioned by Daiga as a birthday gift for a friend. Since then I have received a email from the birthday girl with loads of happy emotions:)

Oil on canvas board, 12x16 inch

Horse painting for CANSA donations

I have to say the biggest THANK YOU to Alicia, who bought "Cancer horse" and enabled me to donate funds to CANSA - The Cancer Association of South Africa (http://www.cansa.org.za/). The donation has been made through GivenGain (http://www.givengain.com/cause/1056/) and was half of the amount of paintings selling price. The other half of the money was used to support the painting give away project .

This is what Alicia wrote:

Dear Ritma,

I have looked at this painting so often. I dream of it. Your talent comes from your heart. God put it there.

I come from a very large family. I am 67 years old now. We all came together at one of the family homes over weekends, and sang songs and danced. We were a very happy lot. There were about 79 of us when I was born.

There are now 4 cousins left. Everyone, barring my Own Mother, and Father and my Grandfather died of cancer. I give to all Cancer Fighting Causes....as much as I can. I have added Hospice too, as my father died recently, and without hospice’s help my poor mother would and could not care for him alone at home. He died of Sepsis, after he fell off the bed at the hospital...went for one night for tests. Was left on the floor for 3 hours with only his night shorts on. He had the bell in his hand, but it did not work. He had a heart attack, a stroke and eventually fell into a coma. He died in agony. And the day before he went to hospital we all went out for lunch as so many times before. He made us laugh all afternoon.

My shop Malaika, is opposite the Builders Warehouse. This painting is going to hang above my bed....till the day I die.

Alicia

What a sad story:(. I don't know Alicias' family, but that must be an awesome family, to make Alicia in a wonderful person she is today!:)

Here are some more links from Alicia, if You feel like donating:
http://www.pinkdrive.co.za/
http://www.mrc.ac.za/cancer/cancer.htm
http://www.cancerbuddies.org.za/donations
http://childrenshospitaltrust.org.za/red-cross-war-memorial-childrens-hospital-2/
http://www.stlukes.co.za/

YAY!

All 3 give-away-paintings have found their homes! I'm so EXCITED!!! Well, I still have to paint them :) More info will follow on the blog.

But for now- my latest painting:

oil on canvas, A3

Away from home

Do You ever miss your parents home?

I have been living out of my home country for about 5 years now and in those years the outlook has changed quite a bit...

This is the painting I call Latvia. the girl in it is wearing a traditional clothing (one of them to be exact), the monument at the background is the Freedom monument in Riga, the horse symbolizes the elegance and strength and the field and forest in the background is that shows the strong bond to nature.

A painting for the cancer support

Today I had to take my mother-in-law to the hospital for her cancer treatment. It is not a happy place... So, I was thinking- how can I help. I also attended a great conference past weekend where it was said that we should give more! So adding this all together, I have decided to donate half of the proceeds from this painting to Cancer Association. I do also hope to get at least the cost of material back, so I can continue with painting...

Painting for SALE
Cancer support Horse
Acrylic, 76x91cm

Let's see How it goes!

The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away!
- Pablo Picasso

SOLD!!! 

Thank You Alicia! More info in this site:

http://ritmart.blogspot.com/2014/04/horse-painting-for-cansa-donations.html

Horse painting - large

Ok, it is not a secret that I LOVE horses:) Horses are the most amazing, elegant, strong and gentle (in most cases) animals. I have always wanted to paint a large horse painting. IT'S DONE!

Finding the right horse/ photo took the most effort!

Enjoy the painting!

Horse painting by R Grizane

Large painting - horse

One day I will own a horse and he/she will look just like this one!:)

R

Horses in Oil

Hi Dear Friends!

Felt like playing around with the paint a bit, as had a difficulty finishing one of my commissions. Do You ever get that urge of side tracking??? You know- when You should be doing something, but just feel like doing something totally different??? Anyway, that was the feeling that got me painting horses again!:)))

Here is the result:

Have a fantastic day!!!

Painting landscape

It's been a while since the last post and I have been busy, but not painting wise... However I have done a few portraits with landscape at the background. Although landscape does not require a precise representation (as oppose to portrait, where a minimal change can determine if the portrait will actually look like the person portrayed) it still takes a lot of effort and time to paint. The tricky part is to make landscape look 3-dimensional, where the lightest color and darkest color meet at the horizon.

All of these paintings are done with acrylic paint on canvas fabric.  In various sizes. 

www.portraitartist.co.za

Painting horses

Horses are so amazing- huge, but gentle!!! They have so much power, but they would trust us to direct them. Well, most of the time:).

Ever since I remember myself, I have been bewitched by horses. I should thank the horses for getting me into sketching.  There are quite a few horse sketches that I still have at my parents place. Unfortunately I cant not put pictures of those sketches here, because my parents live in Latvia (Europe), but I'm in South Africa, but maybe I will do just that one day:)

Logically, when I started painting in April, 2010, I soon moved to painting horses. It was Bles in acrylic. the painting is owned by my friend Suz and Bleses owner. From there on, I have painted a few horses and each painting came out better then the previous:)

Condos Goliath (Mr Spots) is the last painting I painted - it is still drying on top of my fridge. This painting is for Goliath owner and my friend Alaine, who kindly allows me to ride this stunning horse!:) It came out so nice, that I might keep away from painting horses for a while, as I'm afraid I would not be able to do a painting better than this... hmmm, lets see how long is that fear going to keep me away from painting another horse:D.

Thank You for reading and have a great day everyone!