Nova Scotia

Nova Scotia coast line
Watercolor 7x11"

Shenandoah Valley, Virginia

Watercolor 11x7"

Montecello's garden early spring

The garden at Jefferson's Montecello Watercolor 11x7"

Monterey - Virginia

Monterey, Virginia in the early morning.

Watercolor 11x15"

sold

River and Rocks

A pretty little scene from Nova Scotia.
Water color 11x15"

Trees with white trunks

Watercolor 11x7"

sold

Sketching at the Art Institute of Chicago

Quick sketch at the AIC, in the McCormic Sculpture court.

Rock on river's edge Mountain View Arkanasas

Watercolor 11x15"

Sketching at the Art Institute of Chicago

Sketching in the Art Institute of Chicago

Sketches from the dog show

Trees and road

Trees and road in Nova Scotia, Watercolor 15x7"
sold

Keep the Top on the Carrot: Slowing down your Hands

Richard Shrake’s Resistance Free Teaching Picture

Many times I will have a student in my Resistance Free graduate courses that has hands that are just too fast. Especially at the point of contact to the horse’s mouth, causing the horse to over react. This may be caused by fear of losing control of their horse or just plain never developing a feel to their horses’ mouth.

The teaching picture that has really helped me is to tell a student to just imagine that when you’re picking up your reins to feel your horse’s mouth, first imagine that you are pulling a carrot out of the ground. If you pull too quickly, the top pops off and the carrot stays in the ground.

Always exhale, make your pull slower and your hose will say thanks by becoming softer and learning to trust your hands.

Richard Shrake is an internationally known horseman from Sun River, Oregon. He holds Resistance Free riding seminars on an international level. 

Illustrations by Suzanne Gysin, a Swiss born illustrator with a strong background in eventing and dressage. You can contact her at: http://suzannegysin.blogspot.com/

Use Your Periscope

Richard Shrake’s Resistance Free Teaching Picture

Use Your Periscope

One of the major Resistance Free riding pre-signals is when the student asks the horse to change direction and make a turn.

We teach our students to send a pre-signal for a turn using their upper body, head, and eyes like a periscope on a submarine. Keeping the lower body stable and secure is much like the submarine going through the water. During a turn in either direction the rider slowly twists the upper body in the direction he wants the horse to go. Imagine the periscope on a submarine above the water.

When this is done slowly just before you have a directional turn on your horse this will give your horse the leadership and direction that he needs. When the rider’s jaw line stays even, your horse will respond in a balanced resistance free way.

Richard Shrake is an internationally known horseman from Sun River, Oregon. He holds Resistance Free riding seminars on an international level. 

Illustrations by Suzanne Gysin, a Swiss born illustrator with a strong background in eventing and dressage. You can contact her at: http://suzannegysin.blogspot.com/

Dancing in the Rain

Richard Shrake’s Resistance Free Teaching Picture

Dance in the Rain

This is one of the resistance free teaching pictures I have always used when a student becomes very discouraged after their hors acts up. I tell them to realize that “Life is NOT about waiting for the storm to pass. It is about learning to DANCE IN THE RAIN”.

One of the absolutes we teach in our resistance free courses is that for every action there is a reaction. For example, if we take our horse out for a ride and our horse react to a loud noise; right there we teach that your reaction is your choice.

You can react in a negative way by jerking his mouth, or you can react in a positive way be loosening the rain and rubbing his neck saying to him “You’re OK, it scared me too.”

Richard Shrake is an internationally known horseman from Sun River, Oregon. He holds Resistance Free riding seminars on an international level. 

Illustrations by Suzanne Gysin, a Swiss born illustrator with a strong background in eventing and dressage. You can contact her at: http://suzannegysin.blogspot.com/

Your Eyes are your Balancing Computer

Richard Shrake’s Resistance Free Teaching Picture

Your Eyes are your Balancing Computer

One of the major problems with riders of all disciplines is to get them to use their eyes properly. They seem to always want to look down instead of up and ahead.

The Resistance Fee teaching picture I use is to have them imagine their eyes being a computer camera. When the camera computer is operating at 100% efficiency, giving their body needed information of what is ahead. When they look down the camera computer shuts off, stopping the flow of information to their hands, legs, body, and seat, causing them to loose their balance and coordination of aids.

It is the same thing that happens when you are driving your car and you are looking at the hood ornament instead of looking ahead of where you are going. You crash.

Keep the camera computer turned on and give your horse the Resistance Free leadership he needs to perform at his best.

Richard Shrake is an internationally known horseman from Sun River, Oregon. He holds Resistance Free riding seminars on an international level.

Illustrations by Suzanne Gysin, a Swiss born illustrator with a strong background in eventing and dressage. You can contact her at: http://suzannegysin.blogspot.com/

Raw Energy from your Shock Absorbers

Richard Shrake’s Resistance Free Teaching Picture

Raw Energy from your Shock Absorbers

Many of my students have a difficult time connecting to their horse’s energy flow. Without this energy, the rider becomes a simple passenger and not a Resistance Free rider giving their horse the needed leadership.

The teaching picture I use is to have the student imagine the joints in their body are shock absorbers, taking in and letting go the energy in a rhythmic way with their horse’s beat until it becomes a muscle memory. Without the shock absorbers the student’s body becomes stiff and rigid, stopping all softness and feel.

This illustration is to show how the rider's joints (ankly, knee, and hip) act as a shock aborbers.

Richard Shrake is an internationally known horseman from Sun River, Oregon. He holds Resistance Free riding seminars on an international level. 

Illustrations by Suzanne Gysin, a Swiss born illustrator with a strong background in eventing and dressage. You can contact her at: http://suzannegysin.blogspot.com/

Feel the Golf Ball

Richard Shrake’s Resistance Free Teaching Picture

Feel the Golf Ball

Many of the riders I work with at my Resistance Free seminars have really a hard time learning to ride off the ball of their foot when placed in the stirrup.

When you have ridden most of your life with your foot all the way home, jammed in the stirrup, it is truly hard to change. Because many of my students are older, they have been taught in the past to jam their foot all the way into the stirrup.

Because there are so many advantages of riding off the ball of your foot that is a very important part of Resistance Free riding.

Image yourself balancing a golf ball between your stirrup and your foot.

This is an illustration for the rider's foot placement in the stirup. The rider should have the feeling to balance a golf ball between the foot and the stirrup. If the rider puts the foot deep into the stirrup, the golf ball will slip out.

Richard Shrake is an internationally known horseman from Sun River, Oregon. He holds Resistance Free riding seminars on an international level.

Illustrations by Suzanne Gysin, a Swiss born illustrator with a strong background in eventing and dressage. You can contact her at: http://suzannegysin.blogspot.com/

The Seventh Chair

 Bakul Banerjee works in the office next to me. She is a poet and one day  gave me her book of poems to read. The poems are very visual and immediately I thought of  illustrating them. This poem is called the "Seventh Chair".
You can contact her at www.bakulbanerjee.com.

Saxophone

Stabilizing the Tent

Richard Shrake’s Resistance Free Teaching Picture

Stabilizing the Tent

One of the ways we help our students at the intermediate and advanced level of riding is to help them organize and stabilize their upper body. Until this happens, the rider is either ahead or behind their horse’s movement causing confusion and frustration to their horse.

The best way I have found to help the student is to put a little weight into their legs and stirrups. The Resistance Free teaching picture I use to help them understand why putting weight into their stirrups works to stead their upper body is to imagine their legs and stirrup are like a rope attached to the eyelet of a tent and then connected to the ground with a tent stake. With the stake securely in the ground and then a little pressure on the rope, the tent will stay stable even through some strong winds and storms. And when the stake and the rope are loosened the tent will flop and sometimes fall over, like a beginning rider falling forward in a fetal position.

Stabilize your upper body like a tent for whatever lies ahead.

This is an illustration for Richard Shrake. In this image we visualize putting weight into the stirup as if anchoring a tent with a stake. This will keep us stable even in a bad storm.

Concept by Richard Shrake is an internationally known horseman from Sun River, Oregon. He holds Resistance Free riding seminars on an international level. For a schedule of seminars go to: http://www.richardshrake.com

Illustrations by Suzanne Gysin, a Swiss born illustrator with a strong background in eventing and dressage. You contact her at: http://suzannegysin.blogspot.com

Horses

Illustration Friday - Phenomenon

Secretariat won the Belmont stakes by 31 lengths and ran the fastest 1½ miles on dirt in history, 2:24 flat, which broke the stakes record by more than 2 seconds. This works out to a speed of 37.5 mph for his entire performance. Secretariat's world record still stands.

A necropsy revealed that his heart was significantly larger than that of an ordinary horse. An extremely large heart is a trait that occasionally occurs in Thoroughbreds, linked to a genetic condition passed down via the dam line, known as the "x-factor." The x-factor can be traced to the historic racehorse Eclipse, who was necropsied after his death in 1789. Because Eclipse's heart appeared to be much larger than other horses, it was weighed, and found to be 14 pounds (6.4 kg), over twice the normal weight. It is believed Eclipse passed the trait on via his daughters, and pedigree research verified that Secretariat traces in his dam line to a daughter of Eclipse. In the 20th century, the heart of Phar Lap was weighed and also documented to be 6.35 kilograms (14.0 lb), or essentially the same size as that of Eclipse.

At the time of Secretariat's death, the veterinarian who performed the necropsy, Dr. Thomas Swerczek, head pathologist at the University of Kentucky, did not weigh Secretariat's heart, but stated, "We just stood there in stunned silence. We couldn’t believe it. The heart was perfect. There were no problems with it. It was just this huge engine." Later, Swerczek also performed a necropsy on Sham, who died in 1993. Swerczek did weigh Sham's heart, and it was 18 pounds (8.2 kg). Based on Sham's measurement, and having necropsied both horses, he estimated that Secretariat's heart probably weighed 22 pounds (10.0 kg), or about two-and-a-half times as large as that of the average horse.

http://www.illustrationfriday.com/

Illustration Friday - Prehistoric

http://www.illustrationfriday.com/

Red light green light

This is a sample illustration for Richard Shrake's book on Reistance Free Training.

George Bellows - page 8

This is the last page of the George Bellows Bio. He became a successful artitst, happy living with his wife and two daughters.
At 42 years old, big, strong, hearty, sturdy, dauntless, and indefatigable, George Bellows died of a ruptured appendix.
He left 600 paintings to us.

George Bellows - American Painter

This is the first page of the George Bellows Bio.

He's a boy in Columbus Ohio, determined to be an artist.

Illustration Friday - Savour

"Without her love, life has lost its savour for me."


http://www.illustrationfriday.com/














The reference photo for this image is at http://www.corbisimages.com/Enlargement/BE034872.html

George Bellows - American Painter

This is page 2 and 3 of the biography on George Bellows.

This boy from Columbus Ohio, decided to become a painter. He was a very talented baseball player and athlete in general, but he decided to paint. Throughout his life he played in minor league sports, but he always followed his hart and became a great American painter.

George Bellows - American Painter

George Bellows

What you see below are two pages from a biography of George Bellows that I am illustrating. He was an American artist who made it on his own terms. He lived at the turn of the century (1882-1925) when it was fashionable for American artists to go to Europe to study, since the Impressionists were at that time very popular. George, never saw the need for this. He painted New York City and its' surroundings. He painted the street people with humor and guts, and he became famous in the United States. He is not well known in Europe, it is their loss.

This is page 6 and 7 of my book. Bellow painted the fight and called it "Stag at Sharkeys".

 Here is more information on this painting: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/sisterwendy/works/sta.html.

Illustration Friday - Burning

Illustration Friday - Afterwards

This week's Illustration Friday is "Afterwards"

Illustration Friday - Spent

For Illustration Friday - the word of the week is "spent"

http://www.illustrationfriday.com/

Christmas card for North Star

This is a Christmas card proposal for Suzanne Beaupre's farm "North Star Quarter Horses". We're going to add some horses.

Second iteration, with horses, porch and Peace to All

     

Walworth Wisconsin Farmhouse

Still painting plein aire. It is getting chilli sitting out there.

This is a farmhouse in Walworth Wisconsin.

Watercolor 11x15"

sold

McGill University

McGill University Hall is in Montreal Canada.

This is Watercolor, 11x15 190 lb cold press.

Yerkes Observatory

Yerkes Observatory is a facility of the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics of the University of Chicago. It was established in 1897 on Geneva Lake in Williams Bay, Wisconsin. Until the mid-1960's, Yerkes Observatory housed all of the Department's activities. Today the 77-acre, park-like site in southeast Wisconsin provides laboratory space and access to telescopes for research and instruction.

watercolor on paper