Experiments in painting horses.

As I stated in my last blog post, I was not very good at painting horse; in fact, I HATED painting horses!

As a result of my outburst, I have received all sorts of advice, and I therefore decided to experiment with several methods so that I see which produced the best results with the least efforts. I used some spare casting that I had to hand, and after priming them with my usual grey primer, I tried painting them. On three of them I used Burnt Umber from the Windsor & Newton Artisan Water Mixable Oil Colour range, and on two I used Nut Brown Windsor & Newton Ink. The results looked like this:

From left to right (1 to 4):

• This horse (1) was painted using just the Burnt Umber paint.

• This horse (2) was painted with the Burnt Umber paint, which was then wiped off with a pieces of toilet tissue.

• This horse (3) was washed with just the Nut Brown ink.

• This horse (4) was painted with the Burnt Umber paint, and whilst it was still wet, washed with the Nut Brown ink.

These methods were all very quick and easy to use, and of the four, I prefer the results on horses 2 and 4.

Once the paint on the horses was dry, I painted the manes and hooves black, and added white blazes and socks to some of them. The figure and shabraque were painted blue, just to emphasis the results of the horse painting technique.

I am extremely pleased with the results and wish to thank everyone who gave me advice. I intend to use methods 2 or 4 to paint my horses in future ... and I no longer hate the idea of painting horses!