Pale Horse Rider

I started off thinking I’d do this in the style I like to use for Westerns: sensible background and abstracty, spacey silhouetted figures in front of it.  With there being a lot of sky showing, I thought I’d make it interesting by including lots of yellow, red and orange.  That was the plan.

The main colours in this one were rose dore, Winsor red, French ultramarine and Indian yellow.  With both reds being warm, this is in the key of orange warm.  There’s lots of Payne’s grey and titanium white in there too.

After masking out the figures (or at least the edge of the figures) the first job was to add the sky.  There’s lots of the yellow and the reds (mainly the rose dore but also a little Winsor red) in there, as planned, but also some blue.  I was careful to make the sky yellow around Devon’s head and blue around Duane’s for a bit of contract.  The diagonal lines in the sky add a bit of energy, contracting against the vertical (or slightly left leaning) figures.

Then I added the hills: a variegated mix of Indian yellow, rose dore and French ultramarine.

Finally, on to the figures.  Masking fluid off first, then a spattering of masking fluid for stars.  Then I added the colours.  I started with Duane on the right.  I should have started by wetting the whole figure but didn’t.  Instead I dabbed in some Winsor red, French ultramarine and Indian yellow and tried to paint the Payne’s grey around them.  The problem was that I needed to be slow and accurate with the Payne’s grey around the outline of the figure and the primaries were all drying on me too quickly.  I tried to keep the primaries wet by adding water but wasn’t brilliantly successful.  Anyway, once the Payne’s grey was all on, I sprinkled on some salt.

Then on to Devon.  This time I wet the figure all over before dabbing on primaries and then dabbing the Payne’s grey in the gaps and around the edge.  This was so much easier than what I did to Duane and the results were so much better!  Oh well, live and learn.  Once Devon was painted, I sprinkled over some salt.

And once it was all dry, I decided to do some tinkering.  For both figures, I wanted to give some small subtle indications of detail.  The odd crease in clothes, a sign of where the flesh stops and the clothes start, that sort of thing.  So I tinkered.  I added white hat bands and white patterns on Duane’s poncho.  I glazed some yellow and red over any flesh.  I added creases in white and Payne’s grey, added shadows in Payne’s grey, darkened hats and hair in Payne’s grey, added some curved lines to create 3D effects in Payne’s grey, the tassels along Devon’s chest in Payne’s grey, some rough facial details in Payne’s grey.

And you know what?  I ended up with an interesting painting.  Likeness-wise, Duane’s pretty good but Devon less so.  Devon also has a bit of a paunch in this one.  The combination of abstract spacey patterns and figure drawing-type marks has worked out well.  Payne’s grey is made up of exactly the same three pigments as indigo (presumably in different proportions) and stands out against the orange sky just as well as indigo does.  If I’d known all along how this would turn out, I’d have either had a lighter sky behind Duane’s head or made Duane’s head lighter.

Not interesting enough, though, to go in the shop window.