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.
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