My first horse commission! It definitely stretched my imagination. The objective was to paint a customer's horse - but not realistic: something abstract with bright colour (pink and blue). The first challenge was to make sure that the face looked "right." I am not a horse person, but have enough friends who are to know that they see horses with as much recognition of correct proportion and detail as the rest of us have for human faces. So ... I decided to start with a sketched study and run it by the customer. All went well and my customer confirmed if looked like "Echo" so I thought I was well on my way. The down side of doing this is that Echo's face ended up more representational that I originally planned - I somehow felt committed to the detail once I had it, so opted to rely on colour to create abstraction.
Then came dealing with the colour. I think I spent as much time on this piece as any other painting that I have ever done. I experimented a lot with the impact of adjacent colours and am happy with the final product. I am especially pleased with the colour detail (see last photo). The concept was to have Echo echoed in the background, incorporating hints of the ears, head and main into it.
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