Fur In The Paint

As yesterday was Sunday and we finally got enough of the Christmas blizzard snow moved, I went into the gallery and finally began some preliminary drawings for the next horse portrait.

I Initially did a full body shot and while I liked my composition well enough, the angle I drew made him look too quarter horsey. I really like the concept of the body shot, but I am pretty sure I’d wind up with a horse with Buddy’s markings. Not Buddy’s portrait. Not to mention I drew an angle that was slightly different than any of my reference photos. And with a pinto type that adds an extra degree of difficulty. So I scrapped that drawing and began again.

I have only 6 reference photos to work with and of those, these were the two most usable. In the one he looks quite pony sized (see photo left) and in others he looks horse sized. (photo below) I’m assuming this is due to his young self and his 20 year old self. I know Chicory’s 2yr old photos make him look a completely different horse than he is now at 14.

I contacted Troy to get his thoughts. He said they were both “awesome” so not really any help there though definitely gives me the breathing room I need to move forward however I so choose.

The easy (but less interesting for me to do artistically) will be the head shot. Plus I’m pretty sure I can make it look like Buddy. I will probably alter the cropping on my drawing a little. I choose to crop it at an unflattering place where I made his neck look huge at the the base. But for all intents and purposes this is what I’ll be working on.

Note: Both photos have been heavily doctored in Photoshop to pull out as much information as possible.

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