Polo Painting, "Girls Play Too"

"Girls Play Too" oil painting on canvas

Another one of my unfinished oil paintings was moved to the easel this week for a little more progress. Well, actually, I got in quite a bit of progress. 

This oil painting, as you may recall, is “Girls Play Too”, a polo painting. I decided to proceed with the painting by repainting the background to an almost finished state before working on the horse and rider. My goal was to lighten both the sky and the grassy area and to create the background trees. Since this is a late summer evening painting, the sky needed to be lightened and warmed up. The grass was looking too dark and very flat, so I lightened it, too, and gave it some depth. 

The painting looks rather odd at this point (sometimes we artists refer to this stage as “the uglies”) because the horse and rider are not finished to the same point as the background which makes the painting as a whole look off kilter. I’m hoping that once I start work on the horse that will change. 

Here is the version that I showed you last Fall with a single layer of paint over the whole thing. 

And here is the latest version. 

Now comes the really fun part; painting the horse and rider. At least I hope it’s the fun part. One never quite knows what part of a painting is going to give one the most grief. Having painted so little in the last several years, I’m feeling very rusty, but I’m also getting my groove back slowly but surely. 

At any rate, working on this oil painting will remind me of that summer evening almost three years ago when I experienced my first polo match since childhood. Meanwhile, outside the snow falls on a frozen landscape that is months away from warm temperatures. But inside the studio, summer will be present to warm both inside and out.