I really need to get my laptops sorted out properly so I am not jumping between the two all the time, it’s super confusing. I want to start this blog now, but I can’t upload all the photos I want to, so that will have to wait. At least I can get it started.
It has been a while since I have completed a horse portrait. Unusually I think I have painted more cats than horses in the last 18 months. It is lovely for our feline friends to get a decent look in though.
Anyway, this gorgeous coloured horse is called Digby, and will be gifted so I can’t show on my facebook page yet. Below you can see the reference for his portrait. My client wanted the bridle removed and his mane down, not plaited. She supplied some great photos to help with these changes. It is always important to have good references as I always say, and if you do want things tweaked, photos to help me with this.
I didn’t have a huge amount of time to dedicate to writing up much detail for Digby’s pastel portrait, but really the process is very much the same as many of my other pet portraits. His colouring luckily wasn’t too tricky and I knew pretty much straight away which pencils I would use for his portrait and I didn’t really need to add any others I hadn’t thought of. I guess after years a lot of it becomes second nature, but of course there are always the ones that catch you out or prove trickier than you initially thought. Over the years I have added many other colours to my palette to use for certain fur tones etc. Perhaps I ought to do a more detailed blog post on this at some point. It is one that will need to be worked on over time.
Anyway below you can see the stages of Digby’s pet painting coming together, so hopefully this will give you an idea of how it built up.
I think they show fairly well how I built up the layers and Digby starting to come to life from a simple line drawing to a realistic pastel pet portrait.
I decided again to reach for the blue background and I think it works really well. It tends to work with most pet paintings to be honest. I added a hint of green to places and I am really pleased with how he turned out.