I painted a head and shoulders portrait of this beautiful grey mare a few months ago for a client in county Kildare. Buttons was her companion for 24 years and my client, Jasmine, competed in showjumping with this lovely horse since Buttons was four years old. She sadly passed away before Christmas 2023 and my client wanted to have a keepsake memory of her in a form of a painting in her home. She commissioned me to create a portrait of her head and shoulders with simple grey and green shaded background.
The portrait was painted with acrylics on canvas at a size of 60 x 40 cm. Jasmine collected the painting and tears were shed on the day. She was very close to Buttons, she was not only competing with her, but loved her as a pet and companion.
She was delighted when she saw the scanned image of the painting:
Hi Ivana! Wow it really looks like Buttons, you really captured her likeness – thanks so much! No worries at all regarding the timeline either!…A million thank yous for taking this commission – looking forward to having her at home 🙂
Jasmine, on receiving a scanned image of the painting of her mare, county Kildare, Ireland
Jasmine provided me with a lot of reference material for the painting, including a couple of videos of her mare moving around. It was very helpful. She had one photo in mind for the actual painting, but I could use the others to create an image of Buttons in my mind and capture her entirely on canvas.
I took my time painting this portrait as I knew how important the portrait was to my client. I put it away a few times and returned to it to complete it.
I worked in a few stages, starting with a line sketch in yellow ochre:
The second stage was adding some basic colours to the horse’s head and shoulders and the background before moving onto more layers of paint. The horse’s head and mane had the most paint and detail to bring them to life.
I really enjoyed painting this gorgeous grey mare. I really wanted to capture not only her likeness, but her spirit and Jasmine, my client, thought I was successful. This makes my work so rewarding and I am always so excited to start on a new project… There are lots of interesting ones in the pipeline…