This year has been tough - lots of long hours at work and other commitments that have meant I was not able to do as much art work as I would have liked.
One piece that has being running since April is this plough horse.
It started out as an exercise and I was going to use acrylics.
I have not worked with them much but liked the idea of being able to layer the paints quickly.
I used a couple of photo references for this - the main one was in black and white. The sketch used that composition.
20 march 2011
I sketched in pencil and I should have spent some time getting this right but I didn't. Next time .........
The next thing I did was started blocking in colour. This was in acrylic.
It was at his point I realised how massive the area was and how much effort it was going to take to make this work.
I stopped at here.
When I returned to work on it I had decided to switch to oils.
I chipped away at it for April and blocked in all the colour. I worked on landscape behind.
05 May 2011
Next I started to work on the furrows. As it was such a big canvas I didn't want to get into too much detail. I marked the lines out then defined
11 MAY 2011
25 MAY 2011
When all other detail was added I went in and added the harness and shadows.
I added a pale wash to push the landscape and sky back and that was it.
03 June 2011
As ever learned alot on this-I should do more prep and make more decisive decisions as I work.