🐾✏ DANCER ✏🐾 

I had the absolute pleasure of drawing this stunning horse. I had a excellent quality photograph to work from kindly provided by Mark Fell a professional photographer. The detail was perfect and ideal for a portrait of this size. I LOVE working against a black background but its a bold choice for clients to go for but when its paired with the right reference photograph of the subject it can create a really striking portrait.

Given his colouring against that black background it really catches your eye. I have a red Staffordshire Bull Terrier who is a similar colour so I am planning on doing a portrait with the black background for a tutorial on Patreon. So that is something I’d like to get done in the next couple of months.

The larger the portrait the more space I have for adding details. This 14″ x 20″ is a lovely size for a single subject and if the layout is right where you can fill that subject like I have with Dancer here you can achieve a very realistic portrait.

Drawing horses require a slightly more refined approach. They have such short fur on the face especially during the summer months when they do not have their longer, thicker winter coat. You can see all the skeletal and muscular structures under the skin which create all those highlights and shadows. It’s vital to capture these and get them in the right place as it will change the look of that horse if these are not correct. It’s not like a dog with longer fur where certain areas of the structures are hidden by curls – with horses any mistakes where you haven’t got the highlights and shadows in the right place will show up so much more. Ultimately it will change the look and proportions of that animal which is not what we want.