Brown Horse

Incredible portrait. A real personality comes out. Great technique. I think you may have found your calling! Wow!

Gorgeous! Love the tuft of hair at the top of his head.

Fabulous smooth fur on his face, really really nice.

holy crap!!! this is so well done!!!! I think you should be doing animal portraits......JUST AWESOME

Fabulous job! Looks so realistic! Details are superb!

Oh thank you so much everyone for all of the wonderful compliments! I love painting animals and I started doing commissioned portraits in September. This one is not commissioned but is for sale ;) I can't believe that painting Bob Ross episodes got me to this somehow!

This is gorgeous painting! Looks like a new step up with animal portraits! Incredible details!

The hair on this guy is awesome, his whiskers, eyelashes and mane. Do you use a brush with one hair or two? lol

Excellent work, love the toning and detail.

Sunnylady, Tom, Brian and Robert - Thank you all for your kind remarks! Most of my smaller brushes are actually inexpensive synthetics - I have a couple just for "smooshing" and blending, but I do use my Bob liner brush for the eye areas and the fine details.

Reminds me of all the horses in Wellington FL and Kentucky.
You capture the majesty and nobility of the horse.

Thank you Michel!

Thank you GunaM! I remember your in progress horse painting and that I thought it was quite nice!

lovely !

Great portrait! I just made my first attempt on a horse and this fully blows my goofy Ed out of the water. I love this, and hope I can emulate some of yours realistic qualities on my next attempt. Did you do this all in one sitting?

Most of the tutorials online that I saw were multiple sittings and that just isn’t really my style. Would love to hear about your trials on this one! Great work!

Thanks David!

Thanks Kaylee!! All of my pet portraits are in multiple sittings. I have uploaded the stages pictures I took for this one to give an idea of how it progresses. I usually start with some sort of "wash", then do the eyes and other black areas. Next stages go from mostly darks to the light/highlights at the very end. The first few stages, I use very thinned down paint and get slightly less thinner with each step. I have good blending brushes and blend constantly. In the beginning, the layers dry faster which makes the next layers go on easy with mud mixing. This one was done in 6 days (30-35 hours or so). The first day is the drawing on the canvas because freehanding is NOT my thing! haha. I also love the satisfaction of a one sitting painting, so sometimes I will start a pet portrait and do a landscape in between the stages to get my fix. I do use only oils, so I can not comment on acrylic, but I am sure someone could do that in a day. I also watched a lot of tutorials before trying animals, and then just adapted to my own way.

I love it! I think adapting our own way is the ideal process anyway, then you know what works best for you! Thank you!

I like the way you show the stages of painting the horse above. I can tell you spent a long time on it and it was worth it. A very lifelike and gives me a relaxed feel of being with the horse.