Saturday, December 25, 2021

Making the Most Out of a Photo

 While living 'country side' I often traveled country roads - looking for resource material for painting.  This painting has been done twice before. Why?  I loved the challenge of creating believable subjects.

Max and Major are two Belgian Draft horses - belonging to a local farmer - nearby where we lived in Kansas.  Having new Pan Pastels I have been looking for a subject - near and dear to my heart, and here was a photo that I have used before.  How could I improve it?  How could I paint it so I felt I had done my best rendition of the mood I felt when I took the photo?  Here is the final piece.  I loved how it turned out.  Kansas skies can be very colorless and bright, so one thing I did was created a believable sky beyond what I caught in the photo.

"Headed for the Barn"
9" x 12" Pan Pastel and pastel pencils
on Uart sanded paper


4 comments:

Salty Pumpkin Studio said...

Beautiful painting, the sunlight is spectacular. Belgians are gorgeous creatures.
Happy New Year!🥳

Pattie Wall said...

Thanks Maywyn!

Cindy D. said...

Oh wow this is amazing! I love horses, I love draft horses! This painting is just gorgeous horses and color and the landscape and I love how it's two friends. I just started some clumsy attempts at painting horses myself. :)

Pattie Wall said...

Thanks Cindy - I saw your horses - superb! These two guys were fence greeters. They were friends in a strange land - photographed the heck out of them.

More NEW art pieces

  Lukki - watercolor 9" x 12" acrylic done from Unsplash ph ref, thanks C Deluvio!