The second day at Happy Jack I rode Flambeau on his first 25 mile since his operation in February. Don't know where we placed but it doesn't matter. My objective was, as it should be, to get a completion on a sound horse. He did very well with all A's on his vet card. Yay!

Happy Jack Ride 2008

(Rode this one for Dad)
Dandy Fella and yours truly. We look like we really mean business don't we! Took 8th out of 26. NTB!
Dorothy Sue greating ready for a great day. See her here in the process of brushing her teeth.
How's this for a great shot by Gary Eugen. Michael on Mystral (the blonde) and Amy on Ginger (the super mule) not having any fun at all! Click to enlarge.
Pictures by Jarvis Images

The passing of Stanley

Stan the Man, our loving Dad died peacefully on Friday night at the ripe old age of 87. He will be remembered for what he did best; making people laugh. He loved icecream and hated garlic.He loved beer and hated work. He loved West end Draught and hated Coopers. He was an avid punter and what he didn't know about the Australian racing horse industry wasn't worth knowing. He was generous warm and caring and always treated his girls as if they were perfect angels (even when we were little devils!) He maintained his sharp wit right to the end. Even when he lost a tremendous amount of weight and was rapidly fading away, he told Julie he "always wanted to be a Jockey!"
Well he's now made it down the home straight and has crossed the finish line for last time. I just hope Mum wont give him a hard time for taking so long. He still had and few more yarns to spin and people to cheer up. And the yarns about him will go on and on.

Here is a Banjo Paterson poem I recited once at Mum's grave with Dad listening. I think it's apt right now.

Over the Range
By Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson





ittle bush maiden, wondering-eyed,
Playing alone in the creek-bed dry,
In the small green flat on every side
Walled in by the Moonbi ranges high;
Tell us the tale of your lonely life,
'Mid the great grey forests that know no change.
'I never have left my home,' she said,
'I have never been over the Moonbi Range.


'Father and mother are both long dead,
And I live with granny in yon wee place.'
'Where are your father and mother?' we said.
She puzzled awhile with thoughtful face,
Then a light came into the shy brown eye,
And she smiled, for she thought the question strange
On a thing so certain -- 'When people die
They go to the country over the range.'


'And what is this country like, my lass?'
'There are blossoming trees and pretty flowers,
And shining creeks where the golden grass
Is fresh and sweet from the summer showers.
They never need work, nor want, nor weep;
No troubles can come their hearts to estrange.
Some summer night I shall fall asleep,
And wake in the country over the range.'


Child, you are wise in your simple trust,
For the wisest man knows no more than you
Ashes to ashes, and dust to dust:
Our views by a range are bounded too;
But we know that God hath this gift in store,
That when we come to the final change,
We shall meet with our loved ones gone before
To the beautiful country over the range.




Above is my contribution to the funeral eulogy but I think my sister summed it up much better with her comment.....
" He was a silly ole bugger and I'm going to miss him."

big horn 100

Dave, Dorothy-Sue and Tim; Endurance riders at the Big horn 100 2008.
Dandy Fella and yours truly on our way to completing the 55mile of the Big Horn 100. Lovely horse.Belongs to Dorothy Sue Phillips from Montana.
Fellow Aussie and super endurance rider Cris Jones holding up a copy of the Aussie OUTBACK magazine. We came in together 4th and 6th! Apparently there was an invisible rider between us who came in 5th!
Annie, one of the terrific crew members taking care of Danny Fella while i went looking for the loo. It was coming up the road on the bacK of a trailer and I wanted to be first there when it arrived!
Bob Atherton crew member extraordinaire and manager of the Happy Jack ride here in Laramie.


I completed the 55 mile ride of the Big Horn 100 in Beautiful Shell Wyoming. This horse is Danny Fella own by a wonderful endurance rider Dorothy Sue Phillips who rode Montana Flyer in the big 100. She is such an inspiration and a lovely lady t' boot!See her pictured here between two of her endurance buddies Dave and Tim.

Strawberry Fields Forver Ride in Utah.

Strawberry Fields Forever near Heber City in Utah.Our first endurance ride for the season and a disappointment as Michael's horse's horses both came up lame. Not to worry, we had a great time in a gorgeous place.See below Imix and i at the rear of Bruce and Chris with whom I had a fantastic first leg before Imix was pulled. Chris (red shirt) is an Aussie living in San Fran and originally from Cairns, Queensland. Sure hope I hit the trails with these guys again.

Latest version of The Foot Foot Song

Scroll down for the whole story.

Listen to the Foot Foot Story!!!

Here is the Foot Foot story without the song spliced in.Click the arrow in the post above straight after the story to hear the song. Love it!


Click here to hear first version of the song.

new art

New art. It's difficult to get into my studio with the demands of the ranch and the sunshine peeking through the clouds beckoning me to 'ride ride ride'. But somehow I manage an hour or two in the afternoon sometimes producing and other times falling asleep at the easel. I have four new pieces that will possibly find their way into restaurants around town at the hands of my artist friend and publisher of the Northern Front, Terry Reid. The new style is actually a further extreme of the old emphasizing fast line, abstract color layering and humor giving rise to energy and gesture. Oh, and of there's always a horse of course of course!

Rabbits playing in Photo Shop

Here are the Three Brothers Foot playing in the brier, or is it 'bramble patch'. In actual fact it is a patch of all kinds of grasses growing wild along a creek in Callington Australia. Anyway i thought it looked like a place where rabbits would love to play and sing their rabbit song so i stuck them there. Photo shop is great but i still have a lot to learn.
R

Foot Brothers in Color

First Colored Illustration for the Foot brothers Three.

...and hand in paw the hunters and the rabbits dance 'round and 'round singing....Theres' one Foot, and Foot-Foot, and a brother they called Foot-Foot-Foot.......

The Foot Brothers Three

Foot was his name....not an ordinary name and most of all not an ordinary rabbit. He had lots of friends with ordinary names. Fluffy, Carrot Top, Big Ears Ernie, Bunny O'Hare, and all the rest. But his best and dearest friends were his two extraordinary brothers.........
Foot-Foot and.......
Foot-Foot-Foot.
The three of them would play every rabbit game together.
HOP!
FLOP!
SKIP!
and THUMP!
Their favorite place to play was a brier patch because that's where rabbits like to play. Thorns, stickers, nasty chiggers nothing bothered them because...........they were singers. Harmonies, melodies so many similarities...the notes rolled off there fuzzy whiskers like busy bees humming. And they would hold each other's lucky rabbit feet, and rub their floppy ears together....'round and 'round, and 'round and 'round, they would sing this happy song..........

THERE'S ONE FOOT; AND FOOT-FOOT;
AND A BROTHER THEY CALLED FOOT-FOOT-FOOT
THREE RABBITS THEY PLAYED GAMES
THEY HAD PECULIAR NAMES
THE FIRST'S CALLED ONE FOOT
THE SECOND'S CALLED FOOT-FOOT
AND THE THIRD'S CALLED FOOT-FOOT-FOOT
AHHHHHHHHHHHH-MMMMMMMMMMMMM
One day something happened in the brier patch.Something no rabbit had experienced before. Three...count 'em...One, two, three hunters with the biggest guns a rabbit had ever seen! And raised three guns to make a gigantic sound.
But when they heard the rabbits sing their magic song those guns fell silently to the ground.
Then hand in paw, the rabbits and the hunters began to dance 'round and 'round and 'round and 'round singing................................There's............Chorus.

Notes
This is the first rough draft of The Foot Brothers Three or The Foot Foot Song (or what ever) written by Stephen Cormey, (see blog address to the right) Illustrated by Yours Truly.There are more pictures but i wasn't sure how many blogger would handle and it's sort of tricky because you have to load them up and write the story from the last page to the first. Hard work for a bear of little brain!It can be edited but i'm not sure how to edit the pictures without getting everything out of whack! So I'm learning as i go. I also left out one line,"They would play all day long under the bluest sky a rabbit could ever imagine", because, so far, the pics are only in black and white. What I'd really like to do is the color part in photo shop or illustrator. I'm working on those programs now. Meanwhile I'll probably use layered colored pencil and ink. So stay tuned. I welcome any comments and /or constructive criticism.We have a ways to go!
Cheers for now, Ronnie Roo.

The Foot Foot Story by Steve Cormey

Here is the Foot Foot story by Steve Cormey. It might be a while until I get the story plus pics up and running but bare with me. Corm is also working on the accompanying music. Click on the writing to make larger.

Roughs/introducing the other characters

FOOT FOOT

I love doing the roughs for my illustrations. They seem to have a lot of energy in them. Maybe it's because I'm not so concerned about getting everything in the right place and can be more free and have fun with the placement of lines. These will probably keep changing as the picture book evolves but will give you an idea of how the characters might look. eg I'm thinking of giving them little ball caps.

FOOT FOOT FOOT

The rabbits with ordinary names. FLUFFY

CARROT TOP

BUNNY 'OHARE

BIG EARS ERNIE

THE HUNTERS!

Portfolio continued/Foot Foot Song

Here is my very first rough sketch for the main character of a story written by my good friend Steve Cormey http://stevecormey.blogspot.com He has fashioned the story after a song called the Foot Foot song written a long long time ago by Ray Bolger.The song also features in the story and the whole thing is really cute. I would use this song when i was a storyteller years ago.Cormey had three really dilapidated rabbit puppets with button eyes that didn't match. I used these as props and still have them here in my studio closet. The kids loved them. When my stories just weren't working and things were not going well on stage I'd just pull out the rabbits and sing the Foot Foot song. Anyway, the story, the song and more illustrations will come later. Stay tuned.

Portfolio/Silly Magic

SILLY MAGIC written and illustrated by Ronda Eden Willy and Waly Wombat lived in far away Australia. They were happy little fellows and had good reason to be. Australia is a really BIG place so they had lots of room to run around and play. And when they weren't playing they were napping. All day they could play, take a nap then play some more. When they weren't playing or napping they would do what they loved best of all...........ride their bikes!
One day they discovered a mysterious trail that lead them into an even more mysterious forest. After a while they became a little pooped and decided to take a break and have a snack on some sandwiches they had swashed in their pockets.
As they relaxed under gigantic mysterious trees they didn't notice the magic stuff falling onto them from the branches above.They gobbled down their sandwiches and still didn't notice the magic stuff. They couldn't have possibly know this was 'silly magic', the kind that makes you do the strangest things.


SUDDENLY they felt really dizzy and the world started spinning around them. Willy's skin began to tingle and and the hairs on his neck stood straight up on end.


Then he leap t to his feet and ran full speed through the trees.Wally ran after him and they ran and the ran and they laughed and they laugh. They were being really silyl and having so much fun that they didn't notice it was getting dark..............until.......IT WAS.
Willy and Wally were lost! And they weren't feeling very silly any more! They couldn't possible find their way back home in the dark, so they used their 'wombat sense'. They dug a shallow hole, covered themselves with leaves to keep warm and went to sleep.
In the morning when the sun came up they could easily find their tracks. They followed them around and around and around and around and around until they finally found..... their bikes.
They jumped on and peddled out of that mysterious place as fast as their little wombat legs could carry leaving all of that silly magic behind them.Well almost all of it!


To be edited etc