Saturday, 20 June 2026

30x30 Direct Watercolour Challenge 2022 *22 Yee Haw! (with process photos)

 I thought it might be nice to take some process photos with this 22nd painting of this year’s 30x30 challenge. The subject is a rodeo horse and rider. Here’s the finished picture:-

So the first stage in making this A4 sized painting was to paint just the big shapes in the lightest colour of them.

I know it’s very light but you can just about make out that I have painted in blocks of colour the shapes of horse, rider and the signpost behind. This helps me establish whether the composition looks right on the page.The next stage was to start to apply the different tones to the horse, to use different tones to give light and shade, muscle definition etc.

At this stage I’ve applied four different tones of brown, the darkest of which has a tinge of purple.The horse really pops now. The next step was to do the same for the rider.

By this stage with most of the work on the horse and the rider done it did begin to feel as if I was on the home straight.The next thing to do was the sign, and to begin on the background. I didn’t want to paint too much into the background behind the horse.

I didn’t want to paint the sky so bright that the rider’s shirt would merge with it, so I opted for a very light blue with a touch of purple to give an almost lilac colour.

Just the sandy red ground beneath the horse left, and a few shadowy details. There we are – the finished picture again


#30x30DirectWatercolor

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