Painting the Clydesdales in Oils
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Because the small photo of the Clydesdales needed to be enlarged, it was carefully drafted to scale as a line drawing onto canvas, using a soft charcoal stick. The charcoal dusted away as I applied the paint. I only use this drawing technique if I need to enlarge a photo. When painting sight-size, I usually work without a preliminary drawing. |
I chose a relaxed, easy, non-stressful place to start with this painting and blocked in a medium blue-sky background.
I mixed ultramarine blue and titanium white with a small amount of orange-red to make the colour more muted. I didn't completely mix the colours on the pallet, preferring instead to mix as I painted this work. With a size-12-bristle round brush, I made the background slightly mottled in appearance; this was more interesting than a single-tone and single-colour sky would have been. |
I didn’t begin this painting at the traditional starting point, which would be to work from dark to light, as I show in the tonal painting lessons in the Kathy Shell, Studio 2, Rose Art eBook. Sometimes you might choose to apply the lightest-tone paint first, as was done with this work to ensure that there wasn’t any contamination of the lightest area of the painting with a small particle of a darker pigment accidentally picked up on the brush. Yes, even experienced painters can do that if they don’t take precautions.
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As soon as I applied the lightest tone to the horses’ noses, I could tell that the medium-tone background was not dark enough to make that light area appear as light as it needed to be. I rubbed away some of the medium-tone paint and then painted a medium-dark tone of the same colour in its place. That alteration made the lightest light area appear lighter than it had before.
Summary: To make something dark appear darker, place it beside something that is lighter. In this way, you are able to draw attention to your focal points in a painting. |
With the medium-dark blue colour on the brush, dip into a little medium-dark red-orange. Deepen the tone and mute the colour of the background area between the horses’ heads so there is a subtle blending of the edges in this area of the painting. This will ensure that the light on the horses’ faces and the contrast of tonal value (light and shade) emphasise their expressions and show their personalities. It is the expressions on these horses’ faces that ‘tell the story.’ These expressions (or stories) will be the first aspect of a painting that will be noticed.
It isn’t enough to paint the work well in brush-stroke technique; the painting has to ‘speak’ to the viewer. This needs to be carefully thought out in the planning phase and kept in mind through the painting block-in. Never lose track of your intended focal point for the story of your painting. |
No hard edges. No details. This is still the blocking-in stage, so keep everything as loose as possible for as long as possible. Painting this way for fifty years was excellent training for my transition from brush to pen. During the first draft, keep your inner editor out of the painting. This is not the time for fiddly little brushwork and detail.
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Then block-in the mid-tones of the painting, working from medium-dark through mid-tone. The medium-light tones are the last to be applied. The brush strokes should still be applied loosely with a large-size 12-bristle Chungking hog-bristle brush.
Chungking hog-bristle brushes are used because of their superior quality compared to regular hog bristles. They are naturally white and have not been damaged by bleaching, as have inferior hog bristles. |
With my dark, medium-dark, mid-tones, medium-lights and lights all blocked in, I am ready to begin the refining stage of the painting. If you have been painting en plein air (on location or in the open air), you might, at some stage, need to pick out the grass seed and dust that the wind blew into your work. Also, if you are using new or poor-quality brushes, you may need to lift out the loose brush hairs in the paint. These aspects of painting are definitely all a part of the ‘refinement stage.’
Hold a stretched canvas up to the light. By doing so, you will be able to see any areas of the canvas where there isn’t any paint. Unless there was a reason you did not apply paint to a particular area, turn the painting around again and cover the canvas where there isn’t any paint. Once you begin to refine, use a range of brush sizes, from size twelve down to a size two. Work from larger brushes to smaller and choose the size to suit the space you are painting—a large area requires a large brush; a small area requires a small brush. |
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