Paint a Horse in Acrylics

I felt a need to break free inside of me, and this reminded me of the power of a horse running free and unbridled through the open fields. I decided that capturing the spirit of that horse on canvas, might fulfill the yearning in my own spirit as well. I show you I went about painting this horse in today's blog.

I started this painting on one of the canvasses I had retrieved from the art department at school's waste pile, where it was thrown away.

Two coats of gesso covered up the discarded painting.

I blotched some paint on the four corners of the canvas.

A lighter shade was blotched inside the first blotches.

I then made blotches on the four sides with black.

Two lighter blotches was made with Buff Titanium.

I then used a large brush to mix the colours on the canvas and to cover the whole canvas in the shades of the blotches and mixes created.

I then used a stencil brush to pick up a little bit of white.

I laid the stencil down in the corner of the canvas.

I stenciled only part of the design in white.

I then repeated these steps in the opposite corner.

This is what the painting looked like at this stage.

I then used charcoal to draw a partial horse on the canvas.

I started by putting in the shaded areas first.

I then added some warm reds.

Dark brown was added.

The light was added with yellow ochre.

Then I added a surprise colour in a very red purple.

I added white.

Then I added dark colours to the mane.

Brown was added to the mane.

Yellow was added to the mane.

Purple was repeated in the mane.

I added white to the mane.

This is what the horse looked like at this stage, yet I was unhappy with the mouth of the horse.

I covered the mouth in white to start over.

I started reshaping the mouth.

I continued the process.

After working the mouth over a bit more, this is what it looked like.

The completed picture.

You can watch a compilation video of these steps on YouTube:
https://youtu.be/8Zgt9e6Y8W4

Marietjie Uys (Miekie) is a published author. You can buy my books here:
You can purchase Designs By Miekie 1 here.
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