Today I tried painting a horse plein air. The herd of about 14 horses are used to pull wagons for the tourists. They are constantly moving and even though I was painting as fast as I could I ended up mostly depending on my memory. The view of the river off in the distant is another element I hope to incorporate into my painting. I think that was worth plein air painting this scene.
Theses are the photo references for a studio painting. I liked the pose on the left but the light and shadow from the horse on the right.
Painting and drawing horses was a lot of my early art education. I got the book Album of Horses by Marguerite Henry for Christmas and sketched every horse in the book. That is also how I decided that these might be Percherons, although there looked to be some Belgians in the herd. The action sketches were so dynamic. This made painting the simple horses grazing so much easier. I often wonder where she got her training, copying Sir Alfred Munnings. or maybe Frederick Remington.
Beautiful...this is fun because Carol Marine is blogging horse images right now too. I love seeing the different takes, especially how much or how little environment to put them in. I think the river at back is a plus.
ReplyDeleteThanks, I saw Carol Marine's horse and for someone who has little experience with the subject, I am really impressed. I will paint from one of my photos and hopefully turn out something better.
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