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| "Tribute To Glory" 12"x12" palomino horse oil painting |
This past week I moved the painting of Glory, the Quarter Horse mare, to the easel and resumed work on her.
Quite a while ago I got her to a certain point, realized that she had a problem, was stumped how to proceed and set her aside. After months of staring at the painting on the sudio wall, I had an epiphany regarding how to fix her problems. The solution came to me out of the blue, so to speak, and then I couldn’t wait to get started on her again.
The main problem with Glory’s painting was that I had drawn the muzzle too small. It needed to be corrected before anything else. My original intent was to do this oil painting in thin layers in order to achieve the luminous light in the shadow areas that I saw in the photograph. But in order to correct the muzzle, it was necessary to proceed with a heavier application of paint.
I’ll spare you all the step by step details of Glory’s “facelift” and just hit a few of the major issues from which the painting was suffering. In addition to the too small muzzle, the far eye orbit needed to be lowered and her hind end reduced and resculptured. I’ve also been refining and correcting the highlights and shadows in her face; pretty much all of it except her ample cheek.
One of the things that I liked about Glory was that she had a slight dish face that wasn’t evident in the painting. I corrected that, too.
Here is how Glory looked before I began the corrections.
And here is the progress so far.
Below is a photo of my usual working method at the easel. Just next to the painting is the photo of Glory that I took over 20 years ago. I liked it immediately and wanted to paint it some day. Hanging to the left is a larger version of it which I had scanned into the computer and lightened in Photoshop to give more light and detail in the shadow areas. The small photo has more accurate color which is why it’s next to the painting.
That’s all for today. Time to get back into the studio and work on another painting.
2 comments:
Beautiful equine work, and though I could probably not have spotted the problems of equine anatomy, I agree she looks better after her facelift. It's good to hear other artists sometimes set a piece aside until the answer comes to them, too.
Thank you, Cindy.
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