FREE, Step by Step Art lesson: Painting the Clydesdale pair, in oils.

FREE, Step by Step Art lesson: Painting the Clydesdale pair, in oils. 10/01/2009

I began with this wonderful, photo of two Clydesdales, showing amazing personality in their expressions. The secret of a good paining is not in the artist's skill but in an amazing subject. Every painting should tell a story and the subject lent itself imagining what this pair of horses might have been saying to each other. My friends and I had fun choosing captions for the art work prints.
I am working with Maimari Puro Artists Oil Paint, and an archival quality stretched canvas and using artist quality, round, Chungking, hog hair brushes, size 2 8 and 12, one synthetic, rigger brush, size 1 and one 000 sable signature brush/ I use a disposable palette..

Because I am needing to enlarge the image from a small photo, I very carefully draft it as a line drawing on to my canvas using a soft charcoal stick which will dust away as I work. I only use this technique if I am enlarging, I normally work without a preliminary drawing when painting sight size.

I planned every aspect of the painting, before I began, especially the colour harmony, I chose a split opposite colour harmony of red orange, yellow orange and the opposite colour to orange a blue. I put out on my pallet, low and high chroma (colour intensity)versions of these colours and light and dark tonal values (light and shade, versions of them plus Titanium white. I did not use black from a tube but achieved a tone as dark as black by mixing a dark orange (Burnt Sienna) and a dark blue (Ultramarine dark), together so they muted out each others colour, leaving only a dark no colour as dark as black. You are only able to achieve tones as dark as black when you work with the worlds best oil artist quality oil paints with high concentration of pigments and little or no bulking fillers. Student grade oil paints contain a lot of filler and oils and little pigment (colour) density, if using these you would have to resort to the rather flat, bland, black where you need intense dark and expect the dark to eventually fade, if using student grade paint, as the oils eventually yellow and alter the pigment colour.

Preliminary painting step:
I didn't begin this painting at the traditional beginning, I chose a relaxed, easy, non stressful place to start, with a medium blue sky coloured background produced by mixing Ultramarine Blue with Titanium white with a tad of orange red occasionally added to the mixture to make the colour more muted. I didn't completely mix the colours on the pallet, preferring to mix as i paint with the size 12 bristle round brush, making the background slightly mottled in appearance and more interesting that a flat solid one tone and colour sky would have been.

Step two of the block in of the horse painting.
I painted the lightest light now. I do not always work in this order; the lightest light is often left until last. The reason i jumped ahead and painted it second is because the light shining on the horse's light hair needed to sparkling pure and light and it was important that the brush did not touch and pick up any darker tone that might have made this light paint appear muted or muddied. Any time you need clean bright colour or tone, apply that area of paint BEFORE you paint the surrounding areas even if this contradicts the normal, paint from dark to light method of tonal painting. Sometimes rules are there to be broken.
Don't follow anyone's method of painting dogmatically and lol, don't follow a dogmatic painters method. There is more than one way to paint, don't believe anyone who thinks, 'their way is the only way'.

As soon as I had applied the lightest tone to the painting, I could see that my medium tone background was not dark enough to make my light area appear as light as I needed it to be, so I rubbed away some of the medium tone paint and painted a medium dark tone of the same colour, in its place, making my lightest light area, appear lighter than it had before.

Remember to make something appear lighter place it along side something darker.
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.

Thinking 'composition', while I have the medium dark background blue colour on my brush, I dip into the a little of my medium dark tone red orange and I both 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 also helps make the light on the horses face and the contrast of tonal value (light and shade), that will emphasis the expression of the horses faces, showing their personality, telling 'the story', to be the first thing that will be noticed about the work.
It isn't enough to paint the work well, in brush stroke technique, the painting has to 'speak' to the viewer and this needs to be carefully thought out, planned, and the focal point kept in mind all the time the painting is being developed.
Big brush, big areas covered.
No hard edges, No details, this is still block in stage; keep everything as loose as possible for as long as possible.

With my darkest and lightest tones blocked in, I begin to mix all my medium dark, medium and medium light tones

Then I block n the mid tones of the painting, working from medium dark, through mid tone to the medium light tones as the last I apply.
The brush strokes are still applied loose and with a large size 12 bristle Chungking hog bristle brush.
The painting should look 'crude' at this stage as this is still only the block in phase of the work

With my dark, medium dark, mid tones, medium lights and lights all blocked in, I am ready to begin the refining stage of the paining.

I hold the stretched canvas up to the light. This shows me any areas of the canvas where I have not applied any pain and unless there was a reason why I should not apply paint to that area, I turn the painting back to face me and I correct this now using a range of brush sizes, from size 12, 6 to to a size 2, to suit the size of the space i am painting in. Large area, large brush, small area, small brush.

With the first three stages of the painting completed.
1/ The planning stage = preliminary sketch, colour harmony and compositional plan.
2/Bold confident large brush work, loose block in of the dark, medium dark, medium, medium light and lightest tones.
3/Refine the pain of any obvious detrimental to the finished effect, blemishes, smooth any area where texture is detracting from the image and fill in any obviously missed areas. Do not over fiddle at this stage.

I was now ready for the final, fourth stage, the detailing if the art work.

I now go back over areas already loosely painted, developing the contrast of the light and the shade in the focal point areas of my painting and I add the smaller details, firstly working in size 6 brushes for medium sized areas of work and then I work with my size 2 round Chungking hog bristle brushes for the small details.

Notice how I have lightened the background behind the darkest area of my focal point horse head, in the same way i had previously darkened the background behind the light area of the foreground horses head, to increase the contrast, make the dark appear darker and the lights appear lighter, and make my horse heads come into sharper focus, being the focal point of my painting.

Thinking of composition once more, I darken and mute the colour of a section of sky, blurring the edge of the horses neck on the right hand side. I want all the focus to go to the amazingly cheeky expression on the horses faces and then for the eye to comfortably wander around within the painting with no lines drawing the eye out.

have used a new brush for every tone and colour of that tone that I have used in this painting. I don't stop to clean brushes and I do not allow thinners to be used inside my studio. Once I have finished work for the day I might put my day's brushes into canola oil to stop the paint in them drying out. You can also use baby oil only this is a little more costly. I of course would not paint again with these brushes until all that oil and paint has been removed carefully from the brushes.

I do more detailing and subtly draw the viewer's eye to the focal point and strive using good composition and reduced contrast of light and shade on the outer corners, to stop the viewers eye going out of the painting. Can you see how I have blurred the fence post on the lower left hand side of the painting? It merges with the background, visible, but not hard edged, It is viewable but it does not draw the eye away from the main focal points which is not the horses themselves but the interaction in expression and pose of the horses. I feel as if they are in conversation and it’s somewhat a cheeky private in nature one at that. These horses make me smile. I love this painting and enjoyed working on it and sharing my how I painted it steps with you.

I am available to assist you with your paintings through private tuition, on line or in my studio for a tuition fee.

The completed painting of Rosco and Rusty the delinquent Clydesdale, below.

The images of my art works are copyright, contact me to purchase originals and print images and please respect my free lessons, learn from me all you like, but do not copy. Thank you :-).

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Happy creativity

Kathy Shell