PleaseI am so very excited to share that the portrait of Zap in finally finished!! I love how he turned out and feel like this is one of my best horses to date. I painted him on a G3 Cantering Warmblood because is is one of my favorite molds and it just seemed to be the right choice.
This horse has been a long time in the making. When I got back to Mn I knew that I wanted to have a horse painted to look like him and after the last portrait problem, I figured I might as well do it myself. That way if it doesn't look right I can only blame myself. The first time I tried to paint Zap I did it in pastels, but did it in the worst way ever. I mapped out his white markings and then tried to pastel AROUND the markings. (Palm meets face) Not only did I lose all of my mapping, but in order to get it back to the way it needed to be I would have to paint it back in, with A LOT of paint. Not to mention the dark dust got on every inch of the horse so the white areas weren't white anymore. I did try to recover the horse by trying to paint the white markings again, but it looked awful.
So I decided to just start over. New horse, different strategy. Since this is a horse that I don't plan on selling, I painted him with acrylic paint. Not the best medium to use but I've worked with it before and know how to mess with it. I prepped, mapped and started painting. I did about 3 layers of thinned paint and I love how he turned out. In the past I never thinned my black, I just painted it on. This works much better, the paint flowed over the model better and I was able to put a little detail into the edges of the pattern this way. If I could change anything, I would have added a little more pink to his nose, but the real horse didn't really have much pink anyways. And I HATE when models horse too much pink or tan on their nose.I got him all sealed and eyes glossed. Now he is just getting a few extra days on the shelf to make sure he's nice and dry before he goes in the box for the show. Of course I gave him the same name as the horse he was so lovingly made after.
Introducing....... Zappoli
Please excuse the not so great pics. I was super excited to post about him and didn't take great pics yet.