Acrylic Project: Horse Racing Painting:2

 Here's where I was at the end of last week's first session on this painting.

You know, I’ve been looking forward to getting back to this painting all week. At the start of the day I was desperate to start painting the horses, but for once I managed to curb by natural impulse to go at it like a bull at a gate. The plan all along has been to paint in the advertising boards below the rails, and you can see this in this first of today's photos.

There’s still a little bit of work to do on the Vauxhall lettering, which need just a few dark shadows, but that will have to wait until my next session.

This meant I could start on the nearer of the two horses. The photo demonstrates the way I went about this. I started with a very light, watery layer, which I gradually darkened to build in areas of shadow, which gave the horse’s muscles their definition. The yellow ochre on the left foreleg was only meant to lie underneath the darker colour I was going to apply on top of it, however, as I built up the other layers on the parts of the horse surrounding it, the more it occurred to me that the ochre itself could well do the job.

The next photo shows exactly where it was I reached Deception Point 2. 

With apologies to Dan Brown, from whom I nicked the name, Deception Point 1 is the point in the painting process where you start to think that what you are producing is rubbish and should be thrown away. Deception Point 2 is the point where you start to think you’re producing an amazing piece of work. Both feelings are of course very deceptive, hence the name. Still, with the horse’s head painted, I could for the first time start to get a feel of what the finished painting might look like. Which was as good a point as any to break for lunch.

After lunch the temptation was to crack straight on with the second horse. Yet I made myself wait so that I could apply finishing touches to the horse, and in particular paint in the reins and tackle. 

Be honest, don’t those few small details, like the orange reins, the blue and red bands beneath the saddle, make a difference?

So now I could concentrate on the second horse.

This photo demonstrates the method I was using. I painted the legs and head with a thin layer of yellow ochre, while the body and neck were painted a darker brown mixed with crimson, and watered down. I’d already built up quite a lot of the shadows by the time I took this, and the darker shadows saw me mixing the dark brown with some pthalo blue. By this stage I’d spent maybe 4 and a half hours today, but I could see me easily achieving my target of painting boards and both horses today.

This is where I finished for the day after about 6 hours’ work all told. Not only are both horses painted in, but so are parts of the crowd, done a little remedial ork on the sky by the horse's head on the right and I’ve also started working on the grass. One more good session of anything between three and four hours should see a finish.