Street Sense 4

I am at the end of the work in progress of Street Sense. There are only a few pictures left to talk about until the final one.

The first picture shows that Street Sense is nearly complete, he is only needing his legs finished, some neck and face work and that's it. I've gotten the rose color blocked in, and have added his Breeders Cup and Eclipse Award trophies to the collection. The straw has some more color added to it and the background color is finished.

This next picture is the last one before the finished product. I changed the position of the reins on his neck and finished his body and face. I painted him in his bridle as it is unique to Mr. Nafzger. He has them custom made, so his horses and former asst. trainer Ian Wilkes use them pretty exclusively. I thought this a nice touch as compared to a halter. From this point all that was needed to do was finish the trophies and roses and a few other finishing touches!

Street Sense continued

The next three pictures are stages in the work Street Sense.

In the first photo I have started to block in the other objects in the painting, along with the beginning layers in his hip. The objects that are blocked in here are his Kentucky Derby roses blanket and his Derby trophy. They are blocked in with thinned down Burnt Umber. I wanted to have these in place so that when I started blocking in the straw I could work around them. The hip area has been started with layers to start giving shape to his body.

The next picture in the post shows more beginning layers in Street Sense's body. There is eventually quite a build up of layers to get all of the coloring right. I have also added small details to get started such as his white markings and his eye. And finally I have added some muscle definition with many layers. At this point his hip is basically done. I have started to paint the background color and started getting some layers down for the straw. This is to start grounding him and the trophys and giving them their space in the painting.

Street Sense Part Deux

Once the sketch has been completed and I have made any changes, I then draw the image onto my gessoed canvas. I always do the underdrawing in pencil and once I am happy with that I then go over the pencil with ink or marker, as the oil paint and mediums will erase graphite.

The next step on this painting was to tone the canvas with diluted burnt umber. This step gives the painting a warm or cold feel depending on the color that is used. Once that was dry I then went in with burnt umber and started painting the areas that would be darker.

With the photo that is here, I had only drawn the horse to get a feel of the space that was left for other objects that I wanted to incorporate into the painting, and had started the initial work to give it some depth.

New Year, New Adventures!

I thought that the title to my first blog was appropriate as it marks the start of a new adventure for me. It is the beginning of a lot of firsts for me this year...

I wanted to start off with showing a work in it's many progressions to being completed. I chose to start off with one of my more recent paintings, "Street Sense", an oil on canvas that measures 30x24". The image that I am going to show is my study. For the majority of my pieces, I like to complete a study in pencil, that I am able to work out proportions, values, or maybe details that I want to see if they should be in the actual painting. This study was mainly to see if I liked the pose for the horse. I like to show my horses as they are comfortable, and I was having alot of issues as to whether I should paint him in his normal stance or have him standing like the traditional conformation pose.

Street Sense is the only horse to have ever broken the dreaded "Juvenile Jinx" in winning the Breeders' Cup Juvenile as a two-year-old and then winning the Kentucky Derby at three. He also is a very special horse to me as I know his trainer Carl Nafzger. Watching Street Sense on his journey was an incredible experience for me, so I knew that I had to paint him!

I had previously done a painting of Unbridled that Carl and his wife Wanda own. Unbridled won the Kentucky Derby and Breeders' Cup Classic in his three-year-old year for him. The thing that he loved the most about the portrait is that as he put it, It's just him! When you look at him and his eye, you just feel all the personality that he had.

It's because of the natural way that he stands that I chose to paint Street Sense as he is. I took a few trips to the farm for photos and in looking at photos of him that I had taken at the track, I realized that it's just his way. At the farm he had come straight from the track and hadn't been stood up for conformation photos and he just didn't seem comfortable trying to stand that way. The photographer in me was glad that I wasn't trying to get a good conformation shot, but the artist loved the way that he just wanted to stand. So be it...it is him!