Horse In Winter - Day Two

Exciting is the best way to describe today's work session! I love to begin the color stage of any painting, so after dispatching the obligatory daily household chores, I headed into the studio and squeezed out a nice assortment of colors on the palette.

Too bad that you can't see them yet. It's too early in the process, and today I was mostly playing around with the background, keeping the paint very thinned down. First I brushed a layer of Cadmium Yellow Light over the whole surface, but it was so diluted with Gamsol that it showed up as only a whisper. After that, I painted some sky and then did the initial layer of white (tinted with a hint of blue) snow.

Now I was ready to get really wild with color and brushed some pink and lavender into the snow to see how they would look. YOU can't see them, but they ARE there, and will probably be added again at a later stage. If you take photos of snow, you'll quickly notice that it's not pure white. On a sunny day, it reflects the blue of the sky and yellow tones from the sun's rays. Like white horses, you can work a lot of colors into snow and still have it be believable.

Most of the session was spent on painting the first layer of color on the horse and making adjustments to him. I adjusted his top line quite a bit, moving the withers back slightly, moving the croup back slightly and giving it less slope. I also added just a bit to the hindquarters, giving the horse much more balance and making him look much more like my Scottie. As the painting progresses, there will be other tweaks to make, such as to the left front and hind legs, but he is good for now.

It feels SO good to be giving more priority to the artwork each day, and so rewarding to have a new painting in progress. If this painting isn't dry enough to work on tomorrow, I just may start another new painting. Hmmm, what shall it be?