Mustering to Wean (part 1)

My horse Menthol

Art took a back step this week with helping Clint who has his cattle here on agistment. For thoes who don't know what agistment is, it means that cattle belonging to someone else are grazed on our property and we charge the owner money per head per week.
Clint then pays us to help him muster and work his cattle. This week he weaned is calves, which consisted of mustering all the cows and calves into the yards, drafting the calves off their mothers.

....see any cows?

When mustering we have to make sure that we get every cow and calve in the paddock this is referred to as getting a paddock clean. Lucky that St Clair is very hilly as this is handy to get a bit of a birds eye view of the paddock and see where the cattle are. As you can see in the above photo Menthol and I are using this to our advantage.

Found the stragglers 

We mustered and then counted them and found that we were about 20 odd short so had to go back around and find the stragglers. I haven't been on a horse for a few months and the first day in the saddle after a long spell is always hard as I get a hell of a sore bum and a second trip is a for want of a better expression , a pain in the a..se.... but at least this time I am being payed, a very rare thing when you work for your self on the land.

Closing the gate

It was quite late in the day by the time we found the last of the cattle as they were nicely planted at the very back of the paddock and they took a bit of finding. Then it was a walk of about 5k's back to the yards. The photo below shows the cattle crossing the creek on their way to the yards and sun has gone down.
It was just light enough to yard then. But the high light of the day was walking the cattle into the yards with the most perfect full moon rising out of the gap between two hills right in front of the cattle. What a site!! (sorry no photo as camera not good enough.)

Going towards the yards at dusk

To be continued....

Back into it at last

This is the image that I decided to do I liked the way the horse was really getting along and the legs will look good in a drawing but I didn't like the composition so I had a little fiddle and cut the picture and joined the together more so that the horse and beast were connected and there for made a more pleasing overall picture 

You have to agree that that looks better

This is what I started with a full sheet watercolor paper 640gsm good heavy paper it is a little on the expensive side but it is wonderful to work with

I then cut it in half and then in half again then  I drew in some lines and sketched the horse and rider and the beast

     

I then started to add the red ink I started off using a new very fine nib that I have just bought but found at about this stage that it was too fine for the paper and was picking up little bits of the paper and this was making the line too think and was wrecking the drawing so I reverted back to my tired and true old one. I will try the new nib on some smooth paper and it will be fine I think, the idea when I bought it was to see if I could get a really really fine mark....we will see.

You can see my nib pen in this image that's the one I pretty much use all the time 

I have got the horse finished now and things are going along well

This is the finished Campdrafter Drawing I will probably come back to it in a couple of days and do a couple more little things to it but all in all it is ok for what it is.  I think I have managed to capture the movement and rush of the horse and the beast, this will go to Roma Campdraft as a trophy

A little bit a about me

I welcome you to view my paintings and drawings of Outback Australian bushmen, Outback Australian Aboriginals, Outback Australian Horseman and many other Outback Australian inspired work. Some pieces are hanging at the Eagles Nest Bar and Grill in Eagle Street Longreach, if your passing through please have a look. Feel free to contact me if you need any information on the pieces. 

I was born in Longreach in 1957 where my 3 sister’s and myself spent a wonderful childhood riding our ponies and swimming in the local pool. I attended school in Longreach and then later spent 4 years at boarding school in Brisbane. I then jillarooed on property’s in the Blackall district in Western Queensland, until I married and settled on a sheep property south west of Longreach where we had 2 of our 3 children. 

In the early 1990’s our family moved to another property at Augathella, where my last child was born. It was here that I started to paint again something I hadn’t done since leaving school. This time at Augathella was overshadowed by a fall in wool prices and one of the biggest droughts ever to hit that part of Queensland. Surprisingly it took these trying times to make me really use my talents as an artist, I went round the area drawing the impressive homesteads in pen and ink and reproduced them into a calendar. 

They were very successful selling thousands around Australia and overseas. I also donated $1.00 from each calendar to Drought Relief to help other farming families in the same situation. Towards the end of the ‘90’s our family moved again this time to a property in the Bollon district in South Western Queensland. Again my art took a back step to work on the place. After 8 years we moved to a cattle property north of Rockhampton and in the past 2 years I have bitten the bullet and spend about 80% of my time shut away in my art room doing what I love best.