This was a commission painting that I was asked to do by a
friend for a friend who had to give up a horse.
The friend ended up moving into town and had to give up her horse
because there wasn’t the room in town. I
imagine that was very hard. My wonderful
friend thought that it would be nice to have a painting to remember the beloved
horse.
I must admit that I had never painted a horse before and was
a bit uncomfortable with painting a horse that actually looked like a
horse. I know that may sound silly but
these things can sometimes be a challenge.
Also, the other part of the challenge was that I only had one photo to
go off of. The photo of the horse was
mostly in shadow and rather dark.
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| The Photo of Dot that I worked from. |
I started out doing a great deal of searching on line for
photos and paintings of horses to figure out how to best approach the subject
matter. I then did a fair amount of
sketching and drawing as a prelim to get a better feel for how to approach the
actual painting. I will tell you that
some of the drawings looked like oversized ant eaters! LOL!
After doing a fair amount of drawing and sketching, I did
some prelim sketches of various sizes.
My friend wasn’t sure which size painting would be best. So, in an attempt to give her a feel of the
different sizes, I sketched 5 different sized drawing. She decided that she liked the 12” x 12” size
best.
Another struggle for me was which way to go on the browns of
the horse. I played around for a week on
scratch sheets of watercolor paper blending different browns—from golden shades
to rusty shades to gray versions. Ok, I’ll
admit I may have been over analyzing but I wanted to get it to where I felt
right about the right colors. I ended up
using quite a few of the browns that I had “experimented” with.
Then, my wonderful friend waited patiently while I slowly
painted the actual painting. Another 3
weeks later and I was FINALLY done with it. My friend came over and I had her
take a look at it. She smiled and said
she liked it but as I looked at it with her I saw some fixes I needed to
do. They always say an artist is their
own worst critic and I find that it’s very true for me.
Another week later, and I made those changes and then I
signed it. I’ve made this rule with
myself that once I’ve signed it I step away from the painting. It’s done and I really do hope that my friend’s
friend enjoys the thoughtful gift. Here’s
the finished piece that I call “Dot, The Horse”….
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| "Dot, The Horse"; Watercolor on 13.5" x 13.5" Paper. |
Thanks for stopping by and I welcome any comments you may have!
