Winning Streak

Wolf Schneider

Colorado artist Karmel Timmons is winning awards aplenty with her equine drawings.

AT THE WATERING HOLE, PENCIL, 17 X 23

Her first award was in 2000, just a year after she started drawing, when she scooped up best of show at the local county fair. A few years later, she nabbed the people’s choice award at the Buffalo Bill Art Show. She has also won people’s choice—for the last four years in a row—at the Coors Western Art Exhibit in Denver. Karmel Timmons is on a roll with her equine drawings—and she’s working hard to seize the moment. Which is why she’s at her drawing table seven days a week in preparation for summer art festivals throughout Colorado.

While drawing is generally a preliminary step for most artists, it’s the end product for Timmons, who produces 20 to 30 highly detailed equine drawings in a year, with originals selling for $3,000 to $16,000 and giclée prints available in limited editions. Her originals sell out quickly—which was a disappointment to actor Kevin Costner, who expressed interest when he saw Timmons’ work at an art show in Aspen. “Oh no,” Timmons whispered to herself when Costner came browsing. “He wanted to know where the originals were, and I didn’t have any,” she recalls. “He wasn’t about to settle for a print.”

Purchasing a print wasn’t a problem for D. Wayne Lukas, one of the top trainers in Thoroughbred racing. “I was at an art show in Las Vegas,” Timmons remembers. “He came in and was wearing two of his four Kentucky Derby rings. I didn’t recognize him until I ran his charge card and then realized who he was.” Another collector is racehorse owner Bill Casner of WinStar Farm, who bought the original of HOPES AND DREAMS—a drawing of a young foal brimming with potential.

Timmons has hardly had time to adjust her lifestyle to her newfound success. Her studio is still in a corner of the bedroom—albeit a 600-square-foot bedroom on a six-acre ranch in Elbert, CO. She and her husband, Matt, plan to build her a studio, but there isn’t time right now. Each drawing takes about a month, requiring 150 to 200 hours of work. The detailed drawings range in size from 11 by 14 inches up to 21 by 28.

Timmons, who works from photos, says her drawings lean toward realism but are not photographic. “There’s a fine line and an artistic process,” she points out. “There’s so much more I’m able to add. I know most of the horses I draw, and their personalities come through,” says Timmons, whose drawings nearly always amplify the individual characteristics of her equine subjects.

She used to work in graphite, but now draws with charcoal-and-wax blend Nero pencils, using all five strengths the pencil comes in, from soft to hard. “You can get the real true black with the Nero. With graphite, when you go over it, it gets shiny and you don’t get the contrast,” she explains.

WILBUR, PENCIL, 15 X 12

A mere 10 years ago, Timmons was working as a bookkeeper, and her husband—who now runs the sales side of the business—was a satellite communications engineer. The couple bought their first quarter horses in 1999, and Timmons remembers saying to her husband: “I bet I could draw this horse.” When he saw the drawing she did, he said “‘That’s it! You’re quitting your job bookkeeping, and you’re going to do art,’” she recalls. “Matt’s really the one who saw what I could do.” Awards and gallery representation followed quickly.

As for the quarter horses that were the catalysts for her drawing, she and Matt no longer own them. “Once I started getting into the art, I realized there was so much more to being a horse owner than just feeding them at morning and night. It was one or the other—I was either going to devote myself to the art or the horses,” says Timmons. “It was a no-brainer, really, because one makes you money and the other costs you money.”

But Timmons does not lack for equine models. Elbert County, just about an hour southeast of Denver, is pastoral countryside. “It’s ranch country out here,” says Timmons. “There are a lot of horses grazing in pastures along the sides of the road, and many of my friends have horses. Plus I take my camera when I travel to horse events around the country.”

It was at a ranch in Kansas that Timmons took the photographs that inspired RANCH HANDS, a moody portrait of two horses observed from the side. “That was kind of a rare thing—to get them not looking at me. It’s hard to photograph horses and not have them look at you. They’re usually curious about what you’re doing, so they’ve got one eyeball on you and one eyeball on what’s going on somewhere else,” Timmons points out.