I Am An Artist
Hey Art fans! :)
I'm back with another step-by-step demonstration of my work. This time I used my day off EP to start work on a portrait of a horse.
I have been inspired by the work of one of my friends, and though this is nothing like the style that she does, it is, at least, a horse.
I didn't get far because I had a late start after being up far too late on yahoo, again. So there wasn't much daylight. Actually I should be out in the studio (garage!) getting a bit more done before it gets dark; but I thought I'd take a break for a few minutes to upload the photo's I've been taking of it onto photobucket.. well I ended-up staying and writing this. I'll probably do another few minutes work on the portrait tonight and then finish-off tomorrow.
I've taken a few more photo's than I did the last time, just to show a bit better how a portrait is done. ..Ok, so here goes:
Step 1: Construction lines. I started with the two ovals, and the lines down the top of the nose, then those from the eye area down to the nostril, then the lines that position the ears. Then I put in the eye and nostril, the ears and the brow of the hidden eye (his left) and the mouth.
Step 2. Sketching-in some d
eep shadows and highlights: I started to put in some contours on the face using burnt umber and white. This just starts to show the three-dimensional shape of the horse's face. I began drawing-in the eye, and the shape of the colour patches. I could have chosen a plain-coloured horse for this to make it simple, but I like this colouration. To me it just makes things more interesting... but harder.
Step 3. Starting the mid-tone and basic colouring-in: Well, this one's pretty self explanatory. I just started to sketch-in a few more tones to define the shape of his face. I think he looks a lot more horsey now.
O.k. Break over. I'd better get another half-hour in befor it's too dark. See ya tomorrow! 
Sorry it took a while to get back here. I wasn't having the best of times this week. Ok.. so it's till not finished, but here's what I did this afternoon.
Step 4. Mid-tone. Again it doesn't need a lot of explaination.
Step 5. Adding a little red ochre to see how he looks. This is more like the right colouration.
Step 6. Adding some burnt umber. I increased the shadows a bit with some burnt umber and an unnamed old pastel I found in my mum''s art stuff some years ago. I like that unnamed pastel: it's nice and soft, easy to blend.
I blended-in a bit to cover-up the paper properly. I know it's a bit early to do this but I wanted to see how it looked. I thionk it gave me a better idea of where I needed to go next.
Step 8. Warm grey highlights. I used a colour called "chocolate", lightest shade, to fill-in some highlights
on the brown patches, and the area between the brown and the white.
Lots of ochre all over the work I did before.. I know it looks like I just painted over everything.. but if I'd started with a big brown patch I'd have trouble getting all the contours looking right. I prefer to put lots of colour underneath first.
Step..umm. Started the nose and mouth now. Hopefully this looks a bit more like a horsie than it did at the start.
I hope you'll come back, as there will hopefully be more tomorrow!
OOPS! Sorry everyone for taking SO ridiculously long to get back to this. I have just been feeling a bit crappy lately.
I finally did some more work today, thanks to a good meal, a Steve Martin movie (Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid) and some inspiration from my wonderful friend and fellow artist, Luna121. thanks, Luna! :)
As you can see I'm almost finished now. I may need to darken certain areas to bring-out the contours a bit better, and put in some shadows under his mane. Also I think his mouth needs some work still. I'm happy with this for today. :) This photo shows why I was painting so small, I had to get a bit of neck and shoulder in and the paper is only about A3-ish.
I hope you all like it and forgive me for taking so infinitly long!
