How To Paint A Dead Horse (when using not quite adequate reference photos) In 5 Easy Steps
For those of you who are distressed by this
visual, please invert. Then he looks like he’s
running happily, um . . . at high speeds and
with his eyes closed.
This is not something I’ve ever done. Paint a dead horse that is.
And by “dead horse” I mean a horse that has passed from this life into the next not (see artist rendering right.)
So this is my first go dealing with the issues that arise from doing a portrait of a horse that has left this plain of existence some 20 odd years ago.
Seriously, I don’t know how you portrait artists do it.
Step 1. Acquire as many reference photos as possible. In my case this was 6. Six very old, yellowed and definition-less photos from various ages and angles.
Step 2. Vent. How can there only be 6. She had the horse for like 20 years? Yes the horse died over 20 years ago but still . . . 6?
Okay maybe this is totally normal. I sometimes forget that I am a bit of a photograph taking freak.
Of these, two of them are impossibly blurry. Two of them are photographically distorted (see my drawing of Cisco to understand what I mean) and then the Two usable photos were shown in a previous post.
Step 3.Play with them in Photoshop to maximize the information that you can get from them.
Step 4. Look through mountain of my reference photo stash for horse of similar build to provide the missing information not available from incredibly old photos.
I want to clarify that what I mean is, I found a similarly built horse that I like the lighting and features of, and I plan too use it to help fill out my Buddy portrait. All the the reference photos I have of Buddy were pretty much without any definition. Basically the white is all blown out and the dark is completely dark.
Step 5. Begin.
Dear Buddha,
Your artistic rendering of a dead horse is startlingly (is that a word?) realistic and very colorful. You are the cats meow! Belly rub coming soon.
Love, Aunt Linda
Hello Aunt Linda,
I’ll let the Budda know a tummy rub is in his future.
There are way more than just six photos in my possession. Your brother only gave me a short window to supply photos and did not tell me why he wanted to see my horse when he requested the photos. Ouch. Kinda hurt, your comment about only having six photos of such a big part of my life, I actually have tons. But thanks for the work. It is a gift from your brother, sure hope he is compensating you for your time. I do appreciate your effort.
Sorry Colleen, I tend to be a bit snarky for my own amusement. Frankly the whole post was kinda for my own amusement. Life is pretty dull out here in the boonies so I must make my fun where I am. BUT I would have loved to have more photos. I thought it kinda odd to have only 6 since Troy said you loved him dearly. I’m pretty sure Troy said thats all there was because my even doing the piece was contingent on adequate reference pics.
That being said I apologize for being an ass.
Well, I didn’t own my cat for 20 years, but I did love him, and I have no photo’s of him at all!
Although Colleen obviously had more photo’s of Buddy which you were unaware of, I think your post gives good tips on what to do when there isn’t many photo’s. And I’m sure the exercise was good for you too.
I remember when Angela was asked to do a portrait of two children and she only had one very old and very poor quality photo.
Sorry I misread about the 20 years…