Virginia Area Dressage Association Lexington Show

A weekend Saturday spent with friends at the enormous Lexington VA equestrian show grounds. I've chronicled Bethany Wood and her horse Wickers, preparing here for the Intermediate II dressage test.

At this point everyone is just plain anxious, but fortunately Wickers was unperturbed. It was a gorgeous October day, with lots of competition and excited competitors. Here, Bethany in her "penquin tails" along with her mom Michelle bridle Wickers as the test slowly approaches.

Wickers The Warmblood Finished & Framed

Finally finished up the portrait of the lovely Wickers the Warmblood. Wicker's owner is very pleased with how the portrait turned out, which makes it all worthwhile. I've included the very early wash-in phase of the painting on the right. The basic elements of light and dark followed through to the finish.

It would have been very easy to take the detail too far. I primarily wanted to capture her beautiful, soft eye in the sun.

A Horse of a Difference Color

The portrait of Wickers is coming along. I'm starting to be satisfied with the masses that have been built up. On the right the labels show where I have concerns and more work to do.

I've grayed some of the areas away from Wicker's face, such as the mane area and lower shoulders and leg. I'm going to add more color into the face to draw more attention.
It's fun to look at the progress:
/catherinetwomeyart/2012/06/wickers-portrait-building-volume.html

Notice also that I've taken the liberty to reduce the size of Wicker's eyelashes. They really are long and beautiful, but cast in the sunlight they made her look like she was sleeping. Artistic license.

Learning By Comparing

Ok, don't jump to conclusions, I am NOT finished with the Wickers portrait on the left! It is, however, slowly getting there, so I thought I'd take a break and show some anatomical landmarks from an actual equine skull, and where they are showing up on the oil painting.

The skull on the right is not Wicker's skull!! She is still alive and happily sleeping since at this moment, here in Virginia it's pretty warm & humid, so the horses are outside grazing overnight and sleeping in their stalls during the day. 

You can see that the skull (right) does not line up perfectly with Wicker's head. For example, Wicker's eye is lower down on her face, whereas her infraorbital foramen is higher. Of course, different ages, sizes and breeds of horses can all influence where features turn up. In addition, there can be anatomic anomalies (see "biology") that get thrown into the mix. 

When you're aiming for accuracy and believability, it helps to identify major bony landmarks to make sure you've included them and to also judge whether or not you are seeing and placing them correctly.

Wicker's Portrait: Building Volume

Here's a link to the previous stages of the oil painting. The next steps are above.

These are still relatively thin oil layers. I'm trying to work all over the canvas so I don't get too bogged down in one place. The image on the left is made up of mixed flat colors, whereas on the right they've been blended together. Too much.

Painting is a very strange process, especially if you're in The Zone. Right now I'm in The Zone, but I'm not at all happy with the portrait (right). I do, however, have enough experience to know that if I just keep going and don't panic, there will suddenly be a lightbulb moment and I'll know I'm on to something good.

So as I keep working away, often I step BACK away from the painting or leave the room for a break. The new perspective really helps to see what areas need more work. For example, I wasn't happy with how warm the lower background was (left), and how it was competing with the portrait. On the right you can see it's been cooled down with blues, whites, greens, etc. However, doing that has also made the face appear too cool and too flat. That too will be adjusted.

Every painter has their own approach and habits. One of mine that I constantly fight against is over-smoothing edges. I'm pretty sure that habit comes from years of using an airbrush!

I'm over smoothing/blending now in the right image. I'm about to start getting pretty thick with the consistency of the paint, so I know I can go back and adjust. Since the sunlight on Wicker's face is bright, I can leave some of the edges hard, keep the strong color and still keep the volume.

One final thing: I'm going to have to play around more with color and depth to get the right side of Wicker's face to really stand out from the background. Oh, and I hate the hard edges in the trees at the top. They're next on the agenda!

Wickers Gets Oiled: The Final Thinner Layers

 

These are the final thin layers of oil before I get into the serious thicker paint. I've added more colors and deepened some areas of contrast. I'm not happy with the colors; they're not exactly what I wanted yet and they're too separate from each other. That, however, can be fixed in subsequent layers.

I'm going to need to go in and concentrate more on the area of focus - Wicker's eyes and face. Now, however, I have a decent foundation upon which to build. Note: there is some glare from the flash especially in the neck area, but that will be eliminated as more layers go on.

Oil Portrait: Wickers Gets Some Depth

Now that the color background layer is started, the painting is starting to have some atmosphere. In this image, I have begun to add a deeper, sharper layer of Burnt Sienna with a touch of Ivory Black. The large value masses begin to give depth to the portrait, but they have a cookie-cutter effect due to their hard edges. These will be softened where needed. Note how the lighter & whiter areas of the face are beginning to "pop" - becoming more contrasty and prominent.
Compare this to the first wash to see the transition from thin paint to slightly thicker.

The Painter As Visual Leader

Ok, finished with the 2nd background layer. I like the graduated tint from the cooler Cerulean Blue to the warmish Cad Yellow mixed with some Cerulean. I'm not ready yet to commit to anything definite in the background layer, but it will most certainly remain soft and without much detail. The focus will stay on Wickers.

Notice the areas where I went back and softened, such as along the neck top/mane, the ears, and down the shoulder. I used my fingers to blend the background layer into the horse and vice versa. These are areas I wanted to deemphasize, to bring the viewer back to Wicker's face.

My deciding to send the viewer to particular areas is a key difference between an oil painting and a photo. If I were outside in the pasture next door, talking to Wickers like I often do, I would be looking at her face and her entire body. However, being a human, in my focused field of vision I would have the most clarity looking right at one point on Wickers, such as her eyes and mid-face. Sure, I can see everything else, but not with the same level of clarity and detail. I could even paint the rest of her body without directly looking at it. It would, however, be softened value masses without detail, and probably somewhat distorted.

To test this, continue to stare at the screen you're reading now. Then, use your side/peripheral vision to see what's surrounding you. Don't turn your head or move your eyes! Now, imagine having to paint what you see peripherally, the way you see it.

If I were shooting a photo, however, unless I really knew what I was doing with apertures and exposures, most everything in the photo would have the same level of detail, lighting and focus. It's as if there is TOO much information at once. So when using photos as reference, use them with discretion. Think and plan what you're trying to accomplish in the end result so you don't slavishly mimic a camera's point of view. Make it your own!

I want to direct the viewer to what I think is the most interesting, intriguing place, then send them around the rest of the painting from there. When this is done successfully, it's much more like the real-time experience of being outside talking to Wickers & her big beautiful red self -with my eyes flowing from her eyes, face, neck, to her body, the grass, sun, sky, etc.

Wickers and mom Bethany, With Carrots

Expanding Palette! & Background Wash

Expanding my initial palette, adding Ultramarine Blue, Cerulean Blue, Alizarin Crimson and Viridian Green. Might not use all of them, but like to have them ready in case I decide to. 

Generally I start with thinner large puddle washes and add color to them as I move to other hues. This helps the colors relate to each other, as did the overall Burnt Sienna wash as a base layer. 


Below, using a large brush to add a thin layer of background color. This is mostly Cerulean Blue, with a touch of Cad Yellow Light.


FYI: I use the M. Graham oil paints. They do not pay me to do their advertising! I've just been very happy with the fact I can use walnut oil to thin the paint and clean my brushes.

Using a Value Comp to Mass Values

That is NOT an alien in the upper left. Just my thumb. It's hard to hold all this stuff and shoot the camera too!

This is a tool called a Value Comp (found at art stores online) that can be used to find the "lightest lights" and the "darkest darks" plus all the grays in between in order to plan the painting. If you follow the green lines from the left squares to the arrowheads, you'll see the grayscale values for various parts of the reference image. This is one method that helps you understand what value belongs where in order to give a subject volume and mass. It also helps to think in terms of areas of blacks, whites and grays, without getting distracted by the all the color and details.

Rarely is there a pure pure white in a subject, for example. The blaze on Miss Wickers is very close to white, but I would paint it using Titanium White and probably a touch of Payne's Gray or Burnt Umber/Burnt Sienna. If anything, I'm going to want to "push back" (decrease the value of and attention to) the white blaze and bring the viewer's focus to a highly contrasting area around her eye. Doing this makes me in charge of how the painting is viewed.

Massing Values: Twomey's Wickers Portrait

It's at this point of getting ready to seriously build volume that I take a moment to analyze which direction to go. It's too overwhelming for me to just throw paint on the canvas - at least for this kind of piece. I need a plan.


To start, I would take the reference photo of Wickers and bring it into a photo editing program. I use Photoshop. Along the top menu bar is a category named "Filters." Select this, and from the drop down menu choose Gaussian Blur. Up will come a window containing the image, and a handy sliding bar that can be adjusted from barely blurry to very very.


Above is an example of how to mass values to help plan and start a painting. This method may work for you - or not. I'll share several. I'm showing what's really helped me over the last lots of decades! Take a look, for example, at the areas outlined in the light green on the softened image. There are four of them.


The values within these areas combined are all closely related. Their hue, depth, amount of dark and light are very similar.

To make use of this knowledge, I would mix a large amount of this particular color and put it down on the canvas in these areas. Then I would continue on with the next group of related masses. This technique can also be accomplished using a program like Photoshop, using levels or Artistic Filters.

I will eventually go back into the large masses and add subtle nuances of value shifts and details, and soften the cookie-cutter effect left by the application of massed values.

Eventually, the more you practice and understand values, the easier and more automatic it becomes.


Extra help here; a link to Adobe products. And no, I don't work for them let alone get any kickbacks for linking:


http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshopfamily.html?promoid=JOLIW