Get off My Lawn!

April Faime of the Year Show entry for Cartagia EDIT: Received honorable mention placing


EDIT2 Yoohoo everybody! I repainted one of the mountains here in my Tutorial on How To Paint Mountains! See it here: artisandwarf.deviantart.com/ar…



Yeah so guys...two things to say. 1. No ref for the goose and I don't know how to paint geese, I'm dead. 2. I may have gone crazy with the hair. 3. I LOVE MY BOY SO MUCH!!!!
I can't count



FOY April Entry:
Nadya stood speechless at the edge of the pasture where Carty had been released for the Liberty class.  So much had gone wrong and now...just...now this.  Perhaps they shouldn't have entered, everything was messed up from the start.
     Firstly they hadn't known about the show until two days before the competition.  They'd left that night and just a little ways before their camping ground that had a nice set up for horses, one of the trailer tires blew.  They pulled off to discover that not one, but TWO had blown, and that the trailer wasn't going anywhere that night; it'd have to be towed in.  Nadia had to ride Cartagia to the campground through the wind and the starting rain, so that they arrived cold and wet and tired.  She'd have walked him but with the storm starting she didn't trust that he wouldn't spook at something and break away from her hold on his lead rope, at least when she was on him she was pretty much guaranteed to go where he did.
     That delay caused them to arrive late the night before the competition morning, but at least Carty got a nice clean stall to sleep in.  In the morning Nadia didn't have the time to fix his hair up like she'd planned, because he'd turned overnight into a biting, spooking, devilish brat (ok so more than usual), and for one of the first times in his life it was actually a struggle to get him bathed and cleaned up.  A little voice whispered in her head...her arrogant stud wasn't actually intimidated by the scope of the competition...was he?  And so his hair had to be left down and just sort of...flopping half-dried around him.  Instead of being straight and silky it looked like it was just going to start frizzing up in the summer heat...great.
     And now this.  Cartagia had been released into the pasture, when a mama goose decided that she was going to leave the little pond where she'd been sitting with her gosling flock and duck under the pasture fence as well.  A large trotting bear of a horse was definitely NOT in her plans, and he had to go.  She arrayed her goslings behind her like a battle line, and then flapping her wings and hissing and honking she chased after him.
     Carty was as surprised as the spectators and jumped madly away from the flapping, belligerent demon that was assaulting him.  Nadia's heart sank...until she noticed a wide grin on one of the faces near her.  Looking around she watched as the crowd began laughing, and calling "Look at him go!".  And she began to see the humor in the situation, at the very least the judges were going to remember her boy.  She turned back to watch and she realized that she should be thanking the riotous mama goose, as instead of puttering around and posing Carty was actually running towards the other side of the field with his hair flowing and streaming around him.  Just then the sun finished breaking through the clouds hitting them with full sunlight, and Carty's gold markings shone out with all their brilliance.  There were some 'Oohs' and 'Lovely!' from the crowd.
     A few minutes later, after he'd returned and pranced defiantly around as if to dispel any question as to his bravery, Nadia led him back out of the pasture as the geese were herded away so as not to bother the next contestants.  
     She pulled his head down to her level and whispered in his ear, "Good job, Imp." In response he rubbed his head against her fondly, smearing some eye goup on the front of her dress shirt.  She chuckled and smoothed out his forelock, noticing that instead of frizzing his hair had actually curled up in nice little waves.  Well what do you know, perhaps things weren't so bad after all.



Horse ref*: bluebird-stock.deviantart.com/…
_{*Did a basic trace of the pose and muscling then adjusted it to fit the body type/pose I wanted}
Bg ref: burtn.deviantart.com/art/Gegen…
Sky ref: burtn.deviantart.com/art/Trump…


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