Getting Started

I'm so excited to be starting this blog and wish I'd thought of it years ago. I have another blog called paintersgarden that I had meant to be all about my garden and the way the things that I grow lead to the things I draw and paint.

 More and more in recent years it had become about learning to carve and paint Dala Horses.

I felt that they had become so important to me that they deserved a forum of their own and I've taken the opportunity to do that here.

As you can see getting started was difficult for me because I couldn't find much information anywhere on how to carve or paint them so a lot of it was guesses on my part.

I'd always been drawn to horses and remember as a child getting in trouble because whenever I found a horse in a coloring book I colored it red. 

I didn't know why but somehow I just felt they should be that way.

 Decades later the answer came when I was given a baby picture of myself playing with a dala horse. I hadn't remembered it but it must have made quite an impression on me. 

 This is the first Dala Horse that I painted. It was a gift for my Father who'd always been very proud of his Swedish heritage.