A Simple Saturday Update

JerryLynn's Sencillo is up next, leaving on Mini Darcy left from the early group batch. 

JL ordered up a graying smutty buckskin overo and I, along with lots of you I'm sure, will agree this is a great color for Sencillo. He did very well at a local show she took him to the day after completion!

I'm thinking that my lighting was a bit off the night I took all these photos before I handed the horses off to their owners the next day at Springamathing. I'm really not happy with how any of these photos came out. It just seems like they're not as sharp as usual and don't seem to be picking up on the amount of depth and shading in these pieces. 

In the above photo, the interference gold and metallic gold dustings he has are really picking up the light, causing certain areas to get a yellow hue. He's really a lovely tawny color in person. 

It is apparent to me that my painting technique has now far transcended my photography skillz! I will have to work harder to take more flattering photos!

In the Storm

Since there's a storm going on all around us, I thought it befitting my next completed horse showcase be of the Stormwatch resin. This guy is a lot of people's favorite resin and it's not hard to see why. He has an enormous amount of presence! And frankly, his head is probably the finest in the hobby.

He was a long time coming for his owner! I just kept finding little spots I wanted to fix up. There comes a point when you just have to learn to call a model done or you will have it for the rest of your life though. I think I'm like that with just about all my grays. 

There is a lot of detail in this guy, though it's really hard to spot in the photos. Many individually painted hairs exist on this piece!

On come those fantabulous head shots. You can kinda sorta begin to see the little hairing detail this guy sports. I love the way his paint job came out on his face!

Is it even possible to put a bad paint job on this face? Probably not.

Stormy was a commission, but I do believe his owner is getting out of the hobby, so you may see him come up for sale shortly!

In the Works Wednesday

It's late, the light is bad, and I'm squinting because of it. It's a good place to stop before I can't see to go upstairs to bed! 

I've gotten my highlight/body color on a new face: Amelia's Eberl "Rose" as well as the first layer of dry-brushed shadow. This horse's reference is this amazing dark bay with these bright dapples. The lower shoulder/elbow area got a little sampling of it tonight, but I was starting to pull off that first dry-brushed layer. It's kind of a fluke that it wasn't dry enough to rub on it. Usually those thin layers dry pretty quickly. I'm thinking it's because I added some linseed oil to smooth the edges out more for a better blending zone. Something I'll have to keep in mind for next time. The much softer edges are well worth extra drying time though! 

Rose is one of those pieces that really changes when you put paint on her. This sculpture is extremely nice, but doesn't really come across that way being unpainted. I was shocked at how much I fell in love with her when she started to get her color! I'm excited to show you all how nice a "simple-colored horse" can look!

And, some more work done on JerryLynn's Sencillo. While the crappy lighting doesn't do anything for him, the main reason I posted this photo is the sections of different progress. From his head to his withers/elbow, his oil layers are finished. His tummy area shows the initial shadow layer. Lastly, that rump shows where I started with the highlight and body color oil base. You can see that the burnt umber adds a nice blanket of warmth to him. The raw umber gives him that "soot" look my customer wanted. 

JerryLynn also wants him graying and battle-scared on top of the overo markings. I found some great photos of old horses (mid 30's) that showed their gray gene only just starting to kick in. There was a high concentration of graying around the face, in the flanks, behind the elbows...the usual places that go first. I've laid down some white hairs in oil in the front section that has the final raw umber rub. That area will get lots more hairs added individually in pencil. Then comes the overo markings, and then those scars. Then I get to happily hand him off to his patient owner!

One last thing to share about Sencillo. While glazing a ceramic Darcy in linseed oil, I started trying the removal of color to reveal the dapples instead of just "outlining" them in dark tones. While it failed miserably on china (though a swap in mediums solved those issues), the same technique is fantastic on resin/cold-painting. I find it gives me a great irregular dapple, and by using a somewhat worse-for-wear brush I get this amazing soft hair look. It doesn't show in the photo near as well as in person (possibly because it's wet and very glarey) but the effect is much more realistic than the technique I was using before. I'll try to get a good closeup when he's finished so you can see what I'm talking about.

Now I hear my bed calling...

Domination of the Dapple Grays!

Yes! This August my studio is being dominated by all the dapple grays getting finished up and hopefully ready to go out the door by the end of the month. Another appropriate title would be "Death by Dapple Gray".

My poor white oil pencil keeps getting shorter and shorter. Pretty soon it will be just a little nub of a thing and I'll have to toss it. I hate tossing pencils. I will work with them until I cannot find a sharpener that will get the job done - usually leaving me drawing with a little 3/4" stub of a pencil, fingers protesting at working with such a small object.

Any artist will tell you that dapple grays are the hardest color to paint. They've definitely been my personal challenge for the last decade. However, something crazy happened while working on the Stormwatch. I had my airbrush base roughed on in there and was taking my white paint to try to tone some of the darkness down when my hands started to move of their own accord. Seriously. I remember thinking to myself, "That's odd..." while I watched them go. Within 30 min I had a section of blocked in dapples that looked fantastic. Now white painted on top of things tends to make a blue gray hue so I took some pigment and dry-brushed burnt umber and black into areas to warm it back up. Add another layer of finely painted white hairs on top of it, add cool contrasting flea-bites and bam! I had a dapple flea-bitten gray I could be proud of.

Of course I couldn't stop there. I got to thinking, "What if I did this?" and "What if I did that?" and had to grab the next commission order that had been neglected due to the complexity of it's color - a portrait gray on an Esperenza (the original) body. This order has been gnawing at me for a while, but I have learned from experience that when I struggle with a horse, just set it down and there will come a time when everything will fall oh-so-easily into place and the end result will be a million times better than if I were to have sat there and fought with it. Sure enough, this piece's time has finally come and I am moving on her! I feel I've matched the owner's mare perfectly! I've already painted over the other side of the piece and the areas already started to continue on with this new technique.

Here is the mare that she's a portrait of:

The last two pieces are sales pieces - the Rose Reiner and the Mini Ziryab. Mini Zyrab was another experimental piece and while I like the look of her, she's a different technique than the two above. I'm also working on a Rose Jezebel in dapple rose gray using the above technique and I'm finding out it doesn't lend itself as well to that small small scale. This is the reason I call them experimental pieces. I learn what works and what doesn't on what scale. I think I'll try a hybrid of the two techniques next time on a mini and see how it serves.

Mini Zyrab painted with wet on wet oils and then pencil detailing on top:

I'd like to see her dapples smaller and less uniform, but I'll continue onto her other side with the intent of matching this one. I'll know for next time to shrink them up.

And below is the Rose Reiner sales piece done in a more contrasty darker dapple gray with a lighter fore.



So I guess the story of this whole bit is that even if you have been painting forever, it's good to try new things out. The learning process is NEVER over and there is always room to achieve more. I for one am excited to start applying this technique over different base colors - I have a Gomez I am customizing for my own show string that I'll be painting dappled buckskin going gray. I'm eager to see if this technique will translate!