dapples!

Every once in a while, I need to do a "test horse". More often than not, these horses serve as practice, so I can move onto customer horses with confidence on how I want to do their piece. Other times, its that I want to test either a color or a technique but don't want to chance messing up on or over-working something that belongs to someone else. This little girl is a bit of a combination of both; I wanted to try a new dapple technique that had feathered edges and had a more "star" shape. This is something I could then transfer over when I do star-dapple grays.

As I moved along her, I added washes over the top of the dapples to help blend them a bit. I need to do a few more in some areas to fade them away, and then I think I will be happy with the result. I still need to finish her face, add white markings and some 'palomino mottling'. I've seen this happen on the light palominos; it almost looks like the mottling that champagnes get. I'll have to snap some pictures of it specifically from my 'muse'... a QH mare who was my inspiration.

During this experiment I also discovered that I can do a dapple by pulling up the paint with a bit of water, similar to how someone in oil paints would pull up paint with turpenoid or mineral spirits. This technique will prove to be extremely useful for subtle dappling on bays and chestnuts. Its something that I have always known I could do (I've done this for pulling up colors and shading that I wasn't happy with)... but I think in the future I can make the conscience decision to layer my paints in such a way that I can pull them up to make perfect, subtle dapples.

Once I finish this beast I can move on to the dappley critters who she was a test piece for!!