Loose Ends: Horse Race

Okay - the story so far:-
I've been painting a Lisbon Street Scene for consideration for the competition. I put in several hours on it yesterday, and there's not a massive amount to do, and I decided that I want to leave it to do tomorrow evening at Artists' Group.

I decided to put the finishing touches on a tram painting that I've had hanging round for a few months. That took about half an hour.

Now, bearing in mind how much I've enjoyed doing the competition painting, I decided I wanted to do another big canvas. Well - I say big - 16x12 inches. We're not talking gigantic here, but it's big for me. I decided on a completely different subject, and sketched out a horse and jockey. I took a few photos during the day, to keep a check on the process. Here's the first: -

You can see that the horse is literally just an outline. I painted in the head: -

Pleased with myself, the task then was to paint in the rest of the horse: -

Can't help saying that I was delighted with what I'd achieved in just a couple of hours on this painting. Next was to start sketching in and painting in the background:-

Strictly speaking it would have made more sense to paint the background in first before the horse and jockey, but in all honesty I was just messing around and having fun when I started it. I continued work on the background: -

I'd been several hours on the painting by this stage, and I knew that I was going to want to stop soon. However, being as this is the painting of a horse race and not just a horse I did want to paint in one of the trailing horses before I packed up for the day. So this last photo shows how far I am with the painting now.