‘Triple headers’ (three animal heads in one painting) are often a real challenge – this horse commission being no exception.
Receiving a picture of all three horses together just doesn’t happen mainly because it’s too difficult for the owner to get them all together and looking at the camera. So I tend to get three separate images taken at different times in different light and often different sizes.
This was also a big commission (20 x 12 inches) and with such a large painting there’s no room for error. Apart from resizing the heads from the images to make them work together in one triple header horse portrait I had to cross refer to several pictures of each to ensure I matched their individual colours exactly. And it had to appear that all three horses were painted in the same light.
Anyway this client has just left happy with his horse portrait commission – a surprise birthday gift for his wife next month – and I like challenges.
