How To Paint A Dead Horse (when using not quite adequate reference photos) In 5 Easy Steps
Post #430
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.
Caran D’ Ache Neocolor II: I love them
Here’s the latest.
Black horses are rarely black. (But then nor are they all that often purple.) About the only time a horse stays black is if it is kept in the barn, sometimes for the express purpose of doing so. (Which I have serious problems with. But perhaps if I were a breeder I’d think differently.) Otherwise they fade in the sun (just like everything else.)
I’m not sure this really needs a step by step but there are a few things I’ve learned that may be useful to someone. I perhaps should have waited to do this on something other than a black horse. But here we are.
Step 3: Wait until area is completely dry. (bottom right photo) Then you can begin working the area with either another layer of wash or the dry detail work. Since this is a black horse. I tried to keep my color mid-range so I could go lighter and darker with ease.
You see
I have no idea what these things are actually made for. (If anyone knows, please fill me in.) A watercolorist friend of mine says she uses them for scraping away still wet paint before it soaks in the paper. At any rate, I use them to blend out the edges that I don’t want my oil pastels to blend out. (okay, that’s not so very clear)
I thought I’d better post another work in progress shot, since apparently I gave the wrong impression when i said my last wip was at an “ugly stage.” (which it was)


I recently read an article about a couple of artists who work on suede mat board with colored pencils. I know several artists who use pastel on suede and I have always admired the effects they achieved. But I had not heard of colored pencils being used on suede. Apparently the artists used some turps to intensify the color of the pencils.
It is way too early for me to develop any concrete opinions about suede matboard and WC Pencils, But so far I am liking it.
Now the number of flower paintings that I have created in my lifetime, can probably (meaning that’s all I can remember) be counted on one hand. (Yup, that many.) But for some reason I can’t quite stop myself from taking lots and lots of pictures. Hmmm. The inner workings of a critter artist’s mind. Maybe it has something to do with my complete adoration of Georgia O’keefe.
The first photo (above) is just using the overhead light as well as the natural light from the window. It offers an okay amount of contrast. It would probably give me enough information to make a passably good painting. (If I were so inclined, and if I used loads of artistic juju to bump up the contrast while in the process of painting.) 



