2022 Direct Watercolour Challenge - number 6

 

Number 6 - Horse Race

After the success of the last painting - my direct watercolour of Margam Castle, I decide to go for another where I paint the whole scene rather than just the main detail. In the last year's challenge I might well have just painted the lead horse and the jockey. The way that I did this was to pain the green field, and the blue sky first, covering the whole length of the paper. This has it's benefits and also its drawbacks as well. The benefits are that I really like the evenness of the texture of the sky. The drawback is that it means you're painting the details of the horses and jockeys on top of the blue sky. It's difficult to make the colours really pop. Nonetheless, I'm really pleased with the way it's come out. There's something about horse racing which I find very appealing as a subject to paint. I never watch horse racing, and don't even bet on the Grand National every year like I used to. But as a subject for painting, I love it. 

Acrylic on A4 paper Horse Racing Painting: 2

 Here's where I left the painting yesterday:-

I wasn't sure whether I was going to leave it until next Saturday, but after a good lunch this afternoon, I felt the urge to complete it.

The big job was painting in the stands, but that honestly didn't take a huge amount of time. The houses and the stands on the extreme right followed, and then the figure by the stands and his car. After that it was just filling in fiddly little bits, and finessing some of what I did yesterday.

Is it the best thing I've ever painted? No. On a subject like this, which has a lot of horses in it, I'd want a bigger canvas rather than a piece of A4 acrylic paper, which I've used for this. But it's quite nice, if I'm honest. This is the finished picture - see what you think yourself.

Acrylic on A4 paper project :1)

 Yes, you thought you'd got off lightly today, didn't you? Well, the thing is, I finished the large canvas board painting so quickly today, and the painting mood was still upon me. Being a little short on canvasses earlier today, I decided to do a smaller painting on paper. I have a couple of pads of acrylic paper I was either given or bought some time ago, and I've used it for watercolour before, but never for acrylics, so there was a challenge. I thoroughly enjoyed painting the horse race, so I decided to stick with the theme.

I began, of course, by sketching out the composition on the paper.

One of the thingd i like about this scene is that it is from this year, and all of the jockeys are wearing face masks - although at least one of them hasn't got his nose in it - naughty boy. Using acrylics always gives you the choice of using it thickly, like oil paint, or using it watered down, like watercolour. I started with the sky, in watercolour mode.

Now, I do like he dramatic sky here, but even though I'd stretched the paper and taped it down to the board prior to applying any paint, the paper looked awfully wrinkly . I crossed my fingers that it would smooth out as it dried. I went much thicker with the turf, but in all honesty it's very difficult guage how effective it will be at this stage of a painting.

Now, okay, by rights, if I was being disciplined about the painting, then I would have done the rest of the background before starting on the horses and jockeys. But look, this wee A4 painting is really just forfun, and for a challenge. If it sells when it's finished, whoop de do, but it won't bring a lot anyway. I wanted to paint the horsies and the jockeys next. . . so I did.

I was, at least, sensible enough to paint in the starting gates and the sky bet sign to the left of the nearest jockey and horse. My thoughts at this stage were - well, I know I always think my paintings are rubbish when I'm in the early stages like now. . . but this one really IS rubbish. Thankfully, I've learned to ignore that voice. I painted in the bodies of the other horses.

This was a nice stage in the process since you can see each of the 4 horses at a different stage of completion - the furthest left is complete and so is the jockey, with only the tack and the reins needing work. The second horse is finished bar the tack, but the jockey is unpainted. The third horse is in the stage of having layers of shading built up, and the 4th horse has only just had one layer of colour applied as yet. 

Having completely painted all 4 horses, and started work on the rest of the jockeys, I'd reached the stage where I started to really like the way that the painting was turning out. In a way, I was a bit sorry at this stage that I hadn't used a 20x16 canvas board for this scene, since bigger allows you to do more with the detail, But then, if this had been that much bigger I wouldn't have been able to come half this far in just the one session. Incidentally the sky was well dry by this point, and I was relieved to see that the paper had smoothed out nicely. 

So this is where I've finished for today. Horses and jockeys are done, and for a final flourish I painted in the trees to the right. 

Acrylic Painting Horse Racing Project:3

 So, if you were with me last week, you might remember that I really pushed on with my horsie painting and by the end of Saturday's session this is how far I'd got:-

Looking at the photograph, there's really two obvious areas which were unfinished - the turf and the crowd. I didn't do any work on the painting last Sunday, so it was only today that I took up my brushes again. The plan, which I stuck to, was to work on the turf from left to right, then paint in the shadows beneath the horses. To be honest, this sort of job is a bit of a monotonous task, but it's best to take your time, have patience, and plug away at it until it's done, telling yourself that although this is not the most enjoyable part of painting, it should make your picture look better. 

When I'd painted in the shadows on the grass, there was only really the crowd left to do. Experience from painting my commission of Frankel the wonder horse, and my Racing from Newmarket picture, I knew you can get good results from minimal detail with the crowd, so that's pretty much what I went for. 

All in all it took less than two hours to finish - and that's including the time it took to hang up a load of washing and put another load in the machine. I'm pleased with the finished painting, but then I usually am when I finish a painting, so I'll keep coming back to it to get a more objective appraisal over the next month or two