Here is another update :)

I have been erasing and adding and finding all sorts of issues, and i am getting to the stage which i often do with large pieces where i felt i need to move on, so i am trying to get this one done :)

I had originally thought that the brown horse would be easier than the white horse to do but the opposite has proven to be true. I found that i had gotten many of the values and highlights completely wrong in my underpainting and i was very heavy handed which meant that alot of my underpainting was working against me :( I erased tho many areas and that seemed to help. In the future if i use white in my underpainting for highlights and if i erase more i think that will make a bit of difference. Also i think i included too many lines in my initial copying so if i draw things in more as i go i feel i work better this way. I also need to sort my colour palette better, because i am stopping and starting so many times i tend to loose track and concentrate on small areas which has always been my problem. So WORK the WHOLE area again i have to keep remembering.

So i still have a fair bit to do on the front of the white horse and i need to play with the background more but we are making progress, a few things i wont be able to fix until i do a spray as the paper has just taken too much, but using the blender and felt for blending has been great.

Some Colour!

Ok i have added some colour to the blue horse and getting in the final colours on the grey horse. I found that i really didnt roadmap the blue horse very well in terms of values and shadows etc with my underpainting i found i got lots of bits wrong. I also found that i went perhaps a little too dark on the colour, but its working out ok so its not too bad. I seem to be able to correct most things which is fine next time i think i would go for more of a lighter aqua blue for the midtones as the horse is quite organgey and use a lighter touch. i think also i do better to do very basic contour lines in my road map and then get them in better in the underpainting, i think i relied too much on the tracing without "seeing" it. But all in all i am happy with the way its coming out.

More Horses

Ok i am over the ugly stage and onto the polishing stage ... more or less .. yay !!! So i have started with the grey horse and i am happy with the way the colours are coming out. I was told by Dan today that i am not allowed to start anymore paintings until i finish some of the projects i have going ! which is fair enough really .. i do have a few things going atm i still never finished my latest mirrors... Nevertheless, i was shopping for fruit and vegies and spotted some of these wonderful artichokes which would look great, so i am now inspired to do some of those maybe as a mixed media or as one of the smaller pieces i normally do. So took a few rough ref pictures that might be something we see sometime soon :)

Here is the lastest update, i have been told that the front leg on the grey horse needs some adjusting as well as the front shadow on the blue horse .... so i need to revisit these as something was bothering me about these two areas also :) i am at the stage now where i need to get cracking on this one or i will put it aside and never get back to it.

Watercolour Flowers

This is one i did a few years ago as a spare of the moment thing one weekend which i ended up finishing and giving to Theresa as a mothers day pressie, its now hanging in willowgate hall (hence the scewed photo). Apparently its a pic that all the guests always comment on and love and i keep being told that more of these would sell. I think its definately something that i think people would tend to put on their walls.
So, i have been thinking for a while that i might do a few of these, its alot looser than my usual cp work and wont take as long so it might be good for some light inbetween work :) It does include some cpencils but the base is made up of watercolour and i think i had some guache in there as well.
I feel like the horses are tying me down a bit atm as its so detailed and large so i might do a few of these to get into the groove again.

Horses Update

Here is an update, we have had such a crazy past 3 weeks with sickness so doing any work on this has really been just too hard but hopefully we are on the mend (i said that last week) and i will have a bit more energy for this.

I am not entirely sure i have made the right choice on the underpainting of this other horse but i am going to just go with it and see how it works out. I did next to no contour lines on the tracing of this one so i am defining the shading and the muscles etc as i go.

After getting a bit more of these horses in i think the background is working pretty well which was my plan all along. lets see how it progresses :)

horses started

Here is an update of what i started last week with the underpainting of the horses.
I am doing a complementary underpainting. After 10days of gastro i havent really done much since this one.