Big George

Just finished the larger than life scale Cob half face, I'm calling it Big George...

Busy busy

I've been busy since the kids have gone back to school.

Here's the Year of the horse painting, ready for his tack. I'm thinking about using a little bit of gold leaf to highlight the gold parts of the bridle.

 

Another painting I have nearly completed is a bigger than life size half face of a cob, the linen is 30cmsx120cms so an unusual size. Here's the sketch....looks like an Exmoor in the dark!

 

 Here's what I have completed so far....and a close up.

 I also managed to do a bit more to Carrick, hopefully he should be complete in a week or so.

Just a quick shot of my hand mid-painting....made me laugh.

Chinese Year of the Horse

I thought I would do a painting based on the Chinese year of the horse, I wanted to include some of the styling from old Chinese paintings so I did some research and came up with some ideas....

 

The stance from Chinese horse sculpture is very often quite close together legs with a slightly turned head so I went for that, they were also useful for studying the saddle and bridle.

 

My original photo was a very poor one from a dressage event years ago but it did have the right sort of pose, I also went with a vertical mane and an old parchment type background...

 

 

The Chinese letters say year of the horse, as does the stamp at the bottom. The three stamps, (well, painted to look like stamps) are good luck wishes for the year of the horse, old Chinese paintings had a lot of stamps like this on them...

 

 

They were actually made by the art dealers the painting had passed through over the years to authenticate it! I'm glad they don't do that now.

 

I also added some Chinese text to the bottom of the painting, these are sayings about the horse:

"A horse brings victory"

"The spirit of the horse and dragon"

and

"Be the first and take the lead"

 

Just finished the under painting.............

 

Carrick

Thankfully the holidays are over so back to work on Carrick, finished his eye and got the general tones down, now for the detail...

 

 

Fairy Door, (Mouse hole) in You Magazine!

 

Not one of my paintings unfortunately.....however one of my Fairy doors, (something I do on the side) was featured in The Mail on Sunday's "You" magazine last Sunday, they called it a mouse hole :)

 

 

Top Right, the little door in the stairs, shame it's not a bigger picture as it's a carved ledge and brace door with a little keyhole, door handle and working hinges....

Piglets!

Not very equestrian but I took a photo of some Piglets at the Heathfield Show last year and have wanted to paint them ever since...

Starting sketch....

Getting the base layer down.

Time to add detail.

All done...I've called it Siblings!

Dreyfus the German Shepherd





Just finished a portrait of a German Shepherd called Dreyfus.

 

The only remaining photo of him was pretty old and not very flattering so I used another couple of photos as reference to open his eyes and bring his ears forward.

 



 

Reference material...

 

 Rough sketch,

 

 

 Nearly finished...

 

The end result, his owner was very pleased with him.