Double equine commission in progress

Pencil drawing for “Glory”, on 16 x 20 canvas

My super understanding client ordered portraits of her two Appaloosas way back in August when I was in the middle of creating a swarm of lily pad paintings. I told her I couldn’t start until late September/early October and she graciously accepted the delayed start. Both horses are “blanket” Appies, with more or less white hair mixed in with the larger dark areas. The spots themselves present no special challenge, but it will require some finesse to get the roan areas working right.

This is where my occasionally applied ink undercoating will come in handy. Here’s a photo of a blue roan Appy I did as a demo piece for my booth way back when.

The salt-and-pepper roan areas show off quite nicely using crosshatch ink strokes underneath the paint.

This will work quite well for Glory, who is dark gray/black. We’ll see what tricks I come up with for the second horse, Lakota, who is a red roan. Last year I did a reddish Appy on Aquabord™ but he was just spots, no blanket and no dark areas–so that was a snap to do by comparison. Here’s Chesney–

We have spots…

Update to come when Glory gets some ink.