I painted a head and neck portrait of this beautiful bay stallion back in January. The painting was given as a gift to my client’s father. Q is this gorgeous horse’s stable name and he competed under the name ‘Only Browsing’. He is just so majestic and the photo of him included some other horses, but the client wanted to only include Q’s head and neck removing the background and adding some shades in instead.
I kept the shades simple and worked with the same tones found in Q’s coat to create some harmony in the painting.
Hi Ivana! That is amazing! I love it! Thanks so much!
Orlaith upon receiving a scanned image of the finished painting, Ardclough, county Kildare
The structure of the veins, reins and platted mane added some detail to the portrait I felt. I started with a line sketch with yellow ochre as I always do. I find it creates a warm undertone to the overall painting without overpowering the composition. I let it seep through in some spots of the painting where I didn’t add too many layers of paint.
I worked with acrylics on stretched fine grain canvas. I like to use Belle Arti fine grain canvas made in Italy. The fine grain allows me to create detailed paintings with some soft texture. I use Winsor Newton Artists and Galleria Acrylics together with a Venetian Red by Old Holland.
The canvas is 40 x 30 cm in size creating a medium sized painting. The client wished she had commissioned a larger sized portrait when she collected it. The larger the canvas, the bigger the impact.
