Original Oil Painting
Rapheal Belgian Linen Panel, 16″ x 20″

This fine mare is Always in Style, a retired Standardbred now living at Bonley Farms in Sunfield, Michigan.
Style, as she is fondly known, is the dam of several good harness racing horses, including Another Mile, by the great Keystone Raider.
Style’s portrait was purchased at the 2007 Michigan Harness Horseman’s Association auction and I had the opportunity to meet, photograph and observe her in her natural habitat during my 2007 Christmas trip to Michigan. As you can see in her photo, it was unseasonably warm that week and there was very little snow on the ground. It wasn’t warm enough to make her shed her winter coat, though, but she was still gorgeous.
Of all of the photographs I took (three rolls worth!), this is the one chosen by Style’s owners. There were some adjustments, but they were minor. For instance, the background in another photograph was preferred, so I combined that background with this head study for the final portrait.
Style will also be wearing a leather halter for her portrait and I’m going to give her a shave, too. No winter coats in the final portrait.
Once the primary reference was chosen, it was a simple matter to do the drawing, then enlarge it to full size and prepare it for client approval. Once approval was received, I transferred the drawing to the Raphael panel.
The panel, which is oil primed Raphael linen mounted to a lightweight, archival wood foundation, had previously been prepared with a layer of solvent-thinned paint. To begin work, I used a fine grit sandpaper to even out the surface texture, then transferred the drawing using carbonless transfer paper.
The resulting image was so light that I subsequently had to redraw it with paint, which I did using a small round sable and Raw Umber straight out of the tube. Once that was complete, I began painting with the eyes, which are the most important parts of any portrait, then continued with the darker shadows.
Unfortunately, after letting the painting sit for a couple of hours on the easel, then catching a sidelong look at it in a pass through the studio, I realized the placement was wrong.
Then I realized the drawing was slightly off kilter. Style was tipped a little clockwise, which changed her attitude.
So I wiped the canvas completely, then set it aside to dry. And here you thought artists made paintings effortlessly. Not so in this studio!
I used a variation of the classical painting technique of under painting and color glazes for this painting. It’s not the Flemish technique, but is a personal adaptation to that technique. In this adaptation, paintings go directly to the dead layer phase, skipping the imprimatura and umber layers. The time saving isn’t significant, since neither the imprimatura or the umber layer require lengthy drying times. But it does allow me to get more quickly into the detail painting phases and provides a little bit faster results.
When I choose to paint with this ‘twist on the Flemish technique’, I often pair it with a complimentary under painting. In that case, the under painting is painted in the colors opposite the final colors on the color wheel. A red horse in a green background appears as a green horse in a red background at the under painting phase. While this does work for oil paintings, it works better for colored pencil paintings.
For this portrait, the under painting is a mix of Raw Umber and Titanium White.
Back to the painting!
Once the first attempt was dry, I repositioned the drawing and transferred it again.
This time, however, I had to start with the background. That is not typical, but the previous paint on the canvas made it necessary to establish the shapes quickly and while the drawing was still fresh.
Since the background is to be a light blue, I mixed a little bit of Raw Umber with a lot of Titanium White on the palette to get a nice, flat color. I added a little bit of solvent to make the paint easier to apply in a ’stroke-less’ texture, then used a sable flat brush to carefully paint the background around Style.
After that was in place, I used various shades of the same mixture to begin blocking in Style herself, beginning with the off shoulder and working forward and upward. The focus of work at this stage was creating the basic lights and darks, so I continued to use the same, medium-sized flat brush. Broad areas of color were applied with the flat edge. Lines and smaller areas were applied with the narrow edge or, in some cases, just a corner.
I wasn’t able to complete the first round of under painting because of so much wet paint, but good progress was made. What is left will be picked up in the next session.
©Copyright 2009 by Carrie Lewis. See original post here.
To learn more about this artist, visit her website.