Spirit - Running Horse WIP

Thanks much guy - my wonderful support group, YOU ARE THE BEST, fact is I did a Jillian Michaels DVD (can you say ouch!) and then yesterday I over did cleaning and then walked 3 miles.  Since I am getting old by the time I got to paint time the body didn't have any energy for Mohave Point.  But back to it today and am starting this new painting, part of my Spirit series called Running Horse.

This painting has haunted me for more than 10 years.  Never could get it out of my head and certainly couldn't get it on paper.  My challenge here is to make the two key elements tie together for one cohesive image and not stand alone like two separate paintings.  Finally found a dynamic running horse, which I can convert to an indian war pony, running at an angle that I think I can connect it with my spirit Indian chief.  At least that is the game plan and we will see how it is going to come together.

Since the challenge any oils I have done I am working with a pretty limited palette of water mixable oil paints.  To continue to gain familiarity I made my brown charts and am going to try to incorporate all the different browns in this horses coat to help sculpt the body musculature.  Since this is my first horse I am hoping that my drawing is pretty anatomically correct.  (Once I get a little farther along I am going to ask someone who is a horse expert to take a look for obvious issues).   I have the regular photo reference for some of the color tones, but it is pretty dark, looks like lots of browns and black.  So I really lightened up the picture in Picasa, for two reasons: 1) so I could see into the shadows and 2) got it real pixilated so I could see where the tonal differences in the dark coat changed by pixal area.  So right now am getting in the base coat all over trying to incorporate color changes and then will go in and tweak by adding new color or glazing to get the final product.   One more experiment with this painting is the background is done with acrylic - which dried much faster, you can paint oil over acrylic so might do a final glaze over it all or a portion once the painting is in the finishing stages.

Thanks for stopping by and hope you are having a wonderful weekend.


Comments

Jane said…
Your preparation for a painting is very thorough ...opposite me , I just start and hope for the best :-) Great position of the body, feeling of strength and energy , will be a hit I'm sure.
March 2, 2015 at 2:54 AM
renate said…
Hello dear Nelvia) I think you've got the painters fever:) One after another wonderful work comes over. I have trouble getting it to keep track of. This new work by you is nice. I know that you paint Indians very nicely. You;ve got to show your old paintings to the world, the ones with the Indians. Enjoy the painting. I'm very curious about the end result! Love and a big hug:) xxx
March 2, 2015 at 12:47 PM
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