Two Horses Portrait Detail
Every now and then I receive a commission, where I wish I had all the time in the world to tweak and tweak until I am left sitting in front of the easel unable to find anything else I could possibly do. Alas, this is commission had a deadline attached to it and I had no choice but to do the best I could within a very limited time.
Equine Portraits from Reference Photos
This time I had two different reference photos that needed to be combined in one painting. Of course the angles were all difference and for the longest time I kept overlaying the two horses trying to figure out why both their heads were the same size, yet one was much shorter than the other. Using rules of perspective I figured I place the smaller horse higher up in the landscape with a slight tilt forward towards the other horse. Then there was the issue of brown on brown and thats were I had to figure out what color to compliment the browns with to get some definition going.
Dark Brown Horse Head Detail
I found the answer in the darker horse. There were glimmers of pink and mauve which I wanted to use to play up the facial features. Of course things have to repeat in a picture plane so thats how the blossoming cherry trees came about. The mauve does the job of light grays and make the blossoms recede in the picture plane. Although I could not resist adding tons of color dabs all over the place.
Light Brown Horse Detail
Where one horse got mauves and darker tones of pink the other received high chroma pinks. This was a 16x20in canvas and it had a lot of detail work. The addition of the final varnish gave the entire painting the illusion of a sun drenched afternoon in a landscape.
Two Horses and Cherry Blossom Trees
I truly hope that the recipient will love this painting as much as I did creating it.
