The White Horse

White Horse - Rosie

8 x 10 oil painting

SOLD

Painting at the Horse Show - Blowing Rock NC

A great two weeks of horse show and painting. Ponies and leadline, dogs and barns, horses and spectators.  I had hoped to get more paintings finished of the show and grounds, but a number of commissioned paintings were completed at the show. Some from photos, others from setting the easel up on location and painting. Here are a few....

Pony Morning - Blowing Rock 11 x 14 oil on canvas

The Wave - Leadline  8 x 10 oil on linen panel

Not much more to say about this.

By the Ingate  8 x 10 oil on linen panel (this painting is available)

In the Boxes 8 x 10 oil on linen panel

(the people in this painting were constantly coming and going, they were not all together at any one time.  This painting available.)

At the Barn  8 x 10 Oil on canvas

In this painting, the barn was painted on location, the figure added later from a photograph (it was a gift to him) 

Another view of the Boxes,    "Keg",  8 x 10 oil on canvas

A commissioned painting of her horses in their stalls, this collector agreed to have the second horse eating the fern.  Thank you, so much more interesting,  Oil on canvas, 8 x 24

4 x 6 Oil on linen panel
This painting was commissioned and given to the horse's owner as a gift from the rider.


More leadline paintings, horseshow paintings and eventually you will get to see paintings that are to be gifts some time in the future.

Thanks, Steve

Evening Turnout, the first print

Evening Turnout has always been one of my favorite paintings. It was a matter of being in the right place at the right time. Two horses being led to pasture on a summer evening in Carolina. It was only a minute or so before they had disappeared over the hill.

Now it is the first of my paintings to be available as a print. Each one of these giclees prints on heavy weight paper has been approved and signed by the artist, me. The image size is a full 8 x 10. We are introducing these prints at $19.95 + 3.95 shipping.

Evening Turnout

Print - 8 x 10 image size

$19.95 + 3.95 shipping

Click the button below to order with a credit card or Paypal

Evening Skies, Pasture

What's an artist to do? It is winter in North Carolina. What to paint? There are no snow covered scenes to paint. Not that I am complaining. All the colors of spring, summer and fall have turned to a dull gray mixed with a muddy clay colored brown. Enough to bring you down.....

But look up! There in the sky! It's... It's...the sky!

It seems that nature compensates for the lack of color on the ground with a dazzling show above. No more hazy summer days when the humidity won't let you see a blue sky. A clear blue, a dramatic light.....Time to paint!

I really haven't settled on a title for this painting. Something with evening and pasture. It's getting dark, it's cold and muddy. Home from work and you have to move the horses or feed the dogs before you can go inside and relax. As you trudge along you glance up and see the departing day throw a splash of color.....

It is an 8 x 10 oil painting on canvas. And it is for sale. $360. shipping included.

Black and White Painting in Color

Today's painting, a horse head, was referenced from a black and white photo. But I can't paint in just black and white, I need color. Starting with a red ground ( artspeak for background ) on my canvas, I laid in the basic dark dark shapes. A few of the not so dark darks and then I jumped to the lights. Not straight white, a bit of orange and ochre to warm it up.

When painting in public, you get to talk to fellow artists of varying skill levels. I talk to quite a few who work in pencil or charcoal but are reluctant to paint or who have tried painting and were unhappy with the results. Let me use this painting to illustrate a couple of helpful ideas.

First, if you draw exclusively in black and white, be it pencil or charcoal or whatever. Make it easy for yourself and try working with only black and white paint. You already know how to discern tthe values ( darks and lights ) and to see the shapes, so just work with learning how the paint works. How it feels going on the canvas. How to thin. How it covers and how it blends. Play with that.

A second step is to work on a colored ground. You can use charcoal and white chalk or pastel on a blue or tan paper. Here is where it gets interesting. The white black and the ground color can be used to create cool and warm colors. Using a warm colored, say a tan paper or background you can use the black and white chalks with the tan showing through to create a range of warm tones. Now if you take your black and white and mix a range of grays without allowing the background color to show, they will have a cool, bluish cast compared to the color of your background.

Try creating two value scales (a row of ten squares going from black to white) side by side, one with the black and white mixed opaquely, the other with the colored ground showing through (work from your ground color adding white as you get lighter and using the ground color and black to create your darks. Do not mix black and white together in this scale)

In the painting below, white mixed with orange, ochre and red are used in the lights. The darks range from a deep mixture of blue and brown, to greenish midtones to bluish halftones and both warm and cool reflected light. A lot of fun, playing with a black and white image. If you find this interesting, I will be teaching a workshop in August. See below for more..

8 x 8 Oil on Canvas
$240. Shipping included

The workshop will be in Raleigh NC at Jerrys Artarama on August 14, from 10 - 4.
For more go to Jerrys Raleigh store.

Working on a Series of Paintings

Here is an ongoing series of paintings of a woman leading two horses out to pasture. So far, three different size paintings have been finished.These paintings are based a fews photos I took in the middle of portrait painting reference photo session. Actually, that does make sense, I was with my wife, portrait artist, Theresa Brown,we taking photos for her to use as reference in painting a portrait that she was commissioned to do of a woman and her horse at Chadale Farm in Cary, NC.

We had finished one session and Theresa and the client were reviewing the photos, so I prowled around with the camera. I almost missed the trio below, fumbling around trying to change lenses. I think that I was able to get about five shots.

The first painting of the series is a small thumbnail, 3 x 5 on panel, to explore the color and light and placement of the figures on the canvas. Sorry to tell you that it is already sold.

Here is a larger small study, 4 x 6 on canvas.

This is the largest painting of the series so far, 9 x 12 oil on canvas. You can see I have gone back to the first study for reference, but placed them more definitely in a location.

What's next? I am not sure. I might do an even larger, 16 x 20 or 18 x 24. It's really a lot of fun, So many variables to work with. Location of figures in the landscape and within the painting. The interaction of the woman and the horses. The amount of detail. The color of the late afternoon -evening light.

Or I might stay with this one and possibly publish prints of it and work on another series. I have already had a request for a similar painting with a blonde instead of a brunette.

The painting above is available for sale, $425. shipping included. Go to: http://www.smfilarsky.com/Recent-Paintings.html