Kestrel’s little horse is looking better, bit by bit.
Progress! I thought it might be interesting to see how the layers of fine pastel dust build up. People who have never done this before don’t realize that it just takes time and patience; you don’t have to glob the pastel on there, thin tiny layers are the way to go. The nice thing about pastels is they are very slow and you have a lot of control, but it takes many layers to get a nice deep rich color. I’d also like to point out that I changed the markings from the living horse a little bit. It’s one of the nice things about painting; if you don’t like where a particular thing is, you can just move it over a little, or add on an extra blob here and there!
©kestrel, all rights reserved
©kestrel, all rights reserved
©kestrel, all rights reserved
©kestrel, all rights reserved
Aaaand… now it’s time for some details with acrylics! Acrylics kinda scare me because they are very fast. They dry out so quickly in my area I sometimes can’t even get the paint on to the model, because it dries on the brush as I’m trying to apply it. There are products that slow down the drying time on acrylics and I am using them here.
Although the acrylics are perfect for details, you just can’t get that same degree of blending and shading as you do with pastels. Some people use an airbrush for the blending, but I don’t have one, so it’s pastels for me.
©kestrel, all rights reserved
He’s starting to look like a horse now. In case anyone wonders, eyes are about the last thing you do. It would be very sad indeed if you did the eyes, got them perfect (NOT easy, especially at this scale!) and then the model fell over into a puddle of paint and ruined them. So, you save them for the very last. They really help to bring the piece to life.
It’s starting to look like I’ll be able to get him done by the deadline!
Wow, that’s so much depth on that coat. Also, this is pointilism. A pointilistic horse.
It looks so fiddly, kestrel. I’m in awe of this whole project. Why did you change the markings from your real little horse?
He has hooves! I am in awe at your patience Kestrel, and your pictures really show how building u the layers gives you that amazing depth with out it being a solid splat of colour.
Amazing!
@Voyager, #2: If you look back at the living horse you’ll see she has a straight line on that dark marking on her shoulder. Well. On this particular resin, that also lines up with a piece of the mane hair. That straight line was not doing it for me so I added a blob of darker color into the white, so that it would “read” better as mane hair. In this pic there is still no definition because that’s the next thing I need to do, make the mane and tail look like hair. Also, again on the living horse, the tail is very multi-colored due to some complexity of markings she has on her tail. Because I’m on a deadline and need to get this done, I decided to change that a bit (although I did leave a bit of white in the tail on the other side).
I’m quite impressed, I love seeing the progress, but it must take a lot of patience. Looking forward to seeing the finished work!