Introduction
Let’s contemplate the dapple. It’s one of the most difficult coat effects to paint convincingly, isn’t it? There’s just something about dappling that will challenge an artist to extraordinary lengths. Why? Because while requiring a ton of practiced skill to master, dapples ask us to go one step further — they demand keen observation to pin down. That's to say, they require a new kind of Sight to decipher in pigment. In this then, we need to practice our astute attentiveness to even begin to tease them out because make no mistake, there’s far more to dappling than painting on dots.
So we must learn to See them first. But what does that even mean? Now most people merely look at something to identify it, to see it, but for us, we need a very different type of perception, we need to See it. This is the art of observation, of meticulously analyzing something the moment we look at it, picking apart its qualities, dissecting it with a much more clinical perspective, something convincing dappling relies on quite a bit. So we need to analytically study dapples on real horses and in photos to compare and contrast them in order to decipher their details, patterns, and diversity, building a mental library and awareness that only comes with a lot of observation.
And the payoff is huge. Indeed, a beautifully and correctly dappled model is essentially a grail in the painting world, a rare beast that took a great deal of time, insight, and skill to bring to life. Do it right and you’ve got quite the feather in your cap! However, do it wrong and, well…not so much. So let’s explore some ideas about dappling to better hit our target and avoid some of the common mistakes. (Recommended reading: Dazzled By Dapples Part I and Part II. It’s about dapple grey specifically, but many of its ideas apply here, too.)
Mix It Up
Dapples come in all shapes, sizes, tones, and spacing even on different areas of the same horse. For instance, they can be smudges, dots, explosive and star–like, fractal and frost–like, shaped like jigsaw pieces, geometric shapes, streaks, amoebas, and branches. As for size, they can be comparatively small little dots to large bursts of color. Likewise, they can be more evenly dispersed or be widely spaced apart over different areas of the animal, and everything in between. Similarly, they can even be grouped into clumps, “rosettes,” or “dappling chains,” especially on dapple greys, so look for those as well.
Pro tip: Count dapples across a region of the body to better gauge their size on your model. Also size your reference to the scale of your model to better visualize the characteristics.
Also note that dapples can be light patches of color on a dark base (typical dappling) or a dark patches of color on a light base (reverse dappling). For example, a dapple grey is a great example of light dots on a dark background whereas a dapple champagne is a clear illustration of a dark patch on a light base. However, sometimes these two types can occur on the same horse as can be seen on some sooty dapple buckskins or dapple roans.
Additionally, every dappled coat is as unique as a fingerprint. No two are alike. So be sure to mix it up in your portfolio to keep things fresh and faithful. And it's fun to explore the diversity each dappled coat offers up as a smorgasbord of new ideas and effects. Absolutely, don’t be afraid to express those in your paintjob since they add realism and authenticity, and even more, that necessary novelty that kicks your work up a notch.
Dapple Patterns
The most important thing to remember when painting dapples is to interpret them as a pattern. Forget about the colors for a moment and train your eye to see just the pattern, like literally how you would interpret an appaloosa or pinto pattern. Like if you were to paint a giraffe — apply those same interpretive skills just like that. Indeed, a flawed dapple pattern is akin to misinterpreting a pinto pattern. So look for the flow, characteristics, and relationships among the dapples as they occur over the body. In this, find the pattern in both the dapples and in the dark networks in between the dapples. And don’t overlook eccentricities! They’re important details for that necessary touch of novelty and realism.
Pro tip: Use a photo editing program to turn your reference into a black and white or greyscale image to remove the confusion of color, helping to make that dappling pattern pop out at you more. Another even more powerful trick is to use the program to invert the lights and the darks in the image, which will really make the pattern obvious.
Now the critical thing about dappling patterns is their look of “ordered chaos." It’s “ordered” because it does have a pattern but it's also “chaotic” because it has a spontaneous, randomized, organic, “grown” quality to it. It's that genetic "luck of the draw" look that’s so necessary for pinning down that essential quality of a good dappling job. But this is one of the big reasons why painting a dappled coat is so darned tricky to mimic—it's made of two opposites that have to marry together seamlessly. And, indeed, this can be extraordinarily difficult intrinsically, but also because of a glitch in the system. A glitch? Yes. Why? Because our brain can be thought of as an efficient pattern recognition machine. Really, when you break life down, nearly everything can be distilled into a pattern of some kind, right? Well, our brains evolved to key in on that with blinding sophistication which is great for survival but a real problem when it comes to painting realistic equines. This is because the moment we start painting, our brain wants to enforce a pattern, but it’s own pattern, not the pattern of nature. In this, our brain will make our strokes too habitual, too regimented, too orderly, too contrived than what nature presents to us, erasing that necessary ordered chaos so necessary for realism. Things will become too evenly shaped, sized, toned, and spaced, and so very quickly and right under our noses. It’s alarming how easily it happens! So it takes work, discipline, and vigilance to work against this regimentation, so be sure to stay aware of this tendency to counteract it.
Pro tip: Take a lot of breaks when dappling to break up the brain’s penchant for falling into habit. Also think about painting upside down on your model and also turning your reference upside down to help break up your brain’s “jumping to conclusions” mechanism. Plus, also regularly evaluate your paintwork “backwards” in a hand mirror to gain an instant fresh eye. Another handy trick is to squint your eyes to better generalize the overall effect to pinpoint problem areas.
Because one of the biggest and most common mistakes is a stylized dappling interpretation. In this, they're too regimented, homogenized, and formulaic, and will be placed on the piece with a too-orderly, contrived look. For example, dapples of identical shape, size, tone, and spacing all over the body is a common hiccup. Or dapples can be placed on discreet areas of the body with swaths of white or dark in-between rather than have that chaotic fade-in and fade-out, mottled nature. To help as a countermeasure, always work from quality reference photos and learn how to interpret them more clinically.
More still, and this is important, the dappling pattern is different between the different coat colors. That’s to say a silver dapple with have a very different pattern than a dapple grey than a dappled sooty than a bloom coat. In short, dapple patterns aren't interchangeable. So we can’t lift a dapple grey pattern and change the tones and expect to paint a convincing silver dapple, for example. Nope. Instead, each color manifests dapples differently and we need to See all those differences if we hope to render our patterns accurately between the colors. To that end, we can group dapple patterns into ten categories:
- Silver
- Sooty
- Bloom or condition
- Dapple grey
- Seasonal
- Clipper
- Pangaré or transition
- Reverse
- Roan
- Dun
Now this isn’t to say that each one has a set pattern per se, but more of a bubble of telltale characteristics. In other words, each has a spectrum of distinct patterns and elements so look for them in your references. In particular, sooty dapple patterns have a lot of diversity within the bubble such as we can see between buckskins, bays, chestnuts, palominos, etc. so be sure to pay attention to how each color is uniquely affected by sooty dappling. On that note, dappling on dun coats is quite rare, but it does happen from time to time. When it does, it’s more subtle and uniform, and not so profuse so pay attention to how quietly it occurs if you do encounter it in a reference. On that note, bloom or condition dapples can have a "now you see them, now you don't" quality to them, which can make them hard to photograph, making field study a critical component to developing your Sight. Along with that, clipper dapples can sometimes show up after a horse has been clipped, particularly on dilute or silver coats, and even if the original coat wasn't dappled. Wild, huh?
But the point is, don't be "pattern blind" by thinking simply slapping some dots onto your piece is painting faithfully. Those dots typically have to be configured a certain way for that color to read correctly, so pay attention to what your references are telling you. It's also important to avoid pattern blindness in order to See those peculiarities in the first place so it can be a kind of Catch-22. So study study study! Observe observe observe! And follow your references closely when it comes to dappling so you capture the gist of the pattern well enough. Absolutely, refining your eye to See the different dappling patterns quickly will be one of the best artistic assets you can develop.
Caveat: Sometimes certain dappling characteristics can be indicative of a specific breed. Put another way, some breeds tend to dapple their colors in a more specific way that really isn't wholly applicable to other breeds per se. For example, the dappling on silver dapple Shetlands or Minis is kinda its own thing and not necessarily transferrable to say a Morgan or Rocky Mountain Horse. Or the stark and striking sooty dappling on Tekes isn't quite transferrable to say Quarter Horses; there are some differences. So be sensitive to how breed families can have their "own" type of dapple expression to put the correct one on your model.
Pro tip: Take a bunch of references and in a photo editing program pull the color out of them. Now sort them according to what you think they are. Can you discern the dappling patterns well enough to tell a silver from a grey from a sooty from a seasonal from a pangaré simply by looking at the dappling pattern? That's where you want to be.
The Rules
Dapples have overarching tendencies, yet even so, there still exists a dizzying spectrum of variation within them so stay open to that. Nonetheless, it's handy to know the rules not only as guidelines to build from, but we can also learn how to break them to add more novelty and diversity to our portfolio. So what are these rules?
Rule #1: Dapples aren't often the same shape over the entire body of the horse. Shapes vary as dapples emanate from the horse’s coat, sometimes in synch with the hair growth. Dapple grey, silver dapple, and sooty typically possess the greatest diversity of shapes, which can appear to be explosive and chaotic. In contrast, bloom dapples, reverse dapples, dun dapples, and roan dapples tend to have more discreet and consistent shapes. Seasonal dapples can run the gamut of possibilities from being rather like jigsaw puzzle-like to more round and generalized so pay attention to that detail on your references. And pangaré or transition dappling can also have a lot of variation depending on the particulars of the coat, but it's definitely its own thing. But overall, ignoring this rule creates a cloning effect, sometimes even a polka dot look, wherein each dapple is the same shape on the body, most often round or oval, as if they were applied with a Q–Tip, a brush dab, stamp, or stencil. Similarly, the popular "star dapple" technique in the past produced this effect which is why it's probably so rare to find today in modern works. This problem can also be a product of a problematic airbrush technique of doing regimented figure-8s of dark color to create dark networks around a pale area to create a dapple.
Rule #2: Dapples aren’t often the same size over the entire body of the horse. Size differences can coincide with location on the body or how the dapples are clustered together. For instance, dapples on a dapple grey or sooty may be larger on the hindquarter and shoulder, but smaller on the barrel or neck. So specifically look for these size differences over the regions of the body to develop an eye for it. Forgetting about this effect creates a regimented, formulaic appearance that looks artificial and contrived, again creating more of a polka dot effect than an authentic dappled coat.
Rule #3: Dapples aren’t necessarily the same tint, tone, hue, intensity, and shade over the entire body of the horse so study how these elements can vary in different areas. Altogether then, accounting for this rule helps to infuse that necessary ordered chaos into our paintjob. What’s more, it can make our paintjob pop more such as with bloom dapples that appear lit from within, making the coat appear to have that healthy glow because we're accounting for the diffusion of tone often found in this type of dappling. Overall then, ignoring this rule produces a “painted on,” flat, artificial feel with dapples appearing harsh, regimented, and forced.
Rule #4: Dapples aren’t often spaced the same over the entire body of the horse. Spacing usually varies among dapples from either rosettes, clumping, or dappling chains to areas of wide spacing, and everything in between, often linked to their location on the body. For instance, barrel dapples on a dapple grey can be spaced more as dappling chains, clumps, or rosettes whereas they’re often more widely and randomly dispersed on the neck. In this, paying attention to the nature of the dark networks helps us See dapple spacing better as in the wider it is, the further spaced the dapples are, or the more narrow, the closer the dapples are spaced. This means those dark honeycombs are just as important as the dapples which is why overlooking this rule typically causes a regimented, artificial, and polka dot effect.
Rule #5: Dapples are a part of the coat, not “painted on top.” As such, they shouldn’t appear “painted on” as though they were floating on top of the coat. For best results then, dapples often do best when painted along with the color, not plopped on later after all is said and done. Dapples should also be free of brushstrokes, ridges, or blobs, indicating they were hastily dabbed on with a brush. Ignoring this rule makes dapples “sit on top” rather than “sit back” into the coat.
Rule #6: Dapples don’t have harsh, clean, or sharp edges. Look closely at any dapple and notice a diffusion zone around its circumference. This means we need to blend the edges to some degree with the base color to diffuse them into the coat. Disregarding this produces “painted on” appearance so take care to diffuse the borders of the dapples to help them “sit back” into the coat more.
Rule #7: Don’t interpret dapples as just light dots on a dark coat. Because dapples are part of the coat they shouldn’t look like dots plopped on top of it. Interpreting them simultaneously as light patches in dark networks and as dark networks surrounding light dots will help to convey both sides of the same coin. Also note how the dark networks, or "honeycombs," can "break off" along their edges into a more ragged edge, sometimes their color ending abruptly (as sometimes seen on some sooties, greys, and silvers) or diffuse into the coat (as can be seen on some greys, seasonals, transitions, and pangarés). In other words, try not to paint dark swaths of color to plop dapples on top later. Instead, paint the honeycombs and dapples together, Seeing both at the same time, and paying close attention to the nature of those honeycombs as they "break off" into the coat color. Overlooking this rule can create a flat or hurried-looking dappled coat because only one side of the coin has been considered.
Rule #8: Dapples need to be carefully done, with skill and patience. Dapples shouldn’t be considered as inconsequential afterthoughts or hurried. The best results come when they’re painted with great care and meticulousness. For instance, goofs in this rule can often result in “haloed dapples,” "donut dapples" or "spiders." Haloed dapples have an encircling off-tone due to how they were painted so make sure the tones you use to blend your dapples in are spot on. On the other hand, donut dapples have a middle that’s blown out with a ring of more intense color, often caused by a clumsy use of the airbrush or improper dry brushing. As for spiders, they happen when the airbrush spits, streaking pigment similar to blowing on wet pigment with a straw.
Rule #9: Dappling patterns have a personality or “feel” that’s important to capture. For instance, the pattern on some dapple greys, sooties, clipper, and pangarés is often abrupt, flashy, and “in your face” whereas on bloom, roan, dun, or some seasonal patterns, it’s much more subdued and coy. Silvers and reverse dapples can have all sorts of personalities from quite loud to more demure and "peek a boo," so follow your references closely. But overlooking this rule creates dapple patterns that don’t feel right or which end up too blended, formulaic, or regimented for their personality. So pay attention to the "feel" of the pattern in your reference and try to convey that in your pigment.
Rule #10: Stay fresh to avoid a formula or routine approach. Here’s where a mental library and the infusion of new reference materials are critical. Your dappled paintjobs do best when they don't resemble each other, but are as distinct and varied as they are in life. The fun thing about painting dapples is exploring their diversity, so why not play around with it? Neglecting this rule produces a formulaic, predictable look to your body of work when in life, dappling patterns are far more varied and spontaneous.
Dapplemania
Dapples are a popular component to add to paintwork because they add some flash that grabs the eye. However, a common syndrome to rethink is “dapplemania” wherein those folks so affected are more prone to overlook non–dappled pieces, even when these pieces possess finer mastery. Thusly, dapples become a blinding distraction to them, even from subpar workmanship.
There’s this, too: Unless the coat is dapple grey, silver, clipped, sooty, seasonal, or (sometimes) pangaré, most coats simply aren’t so heavily dappled, if at all. Indeed, most dapples on solid coats tend to be subtle, not seen as oodles of glaring dots over every inch of the body as we sometimes see in stylized paintwork. Honestly, an overindulgence of dapples can become a gimmick, creating a dependence on a crutch rather than actual mastery of the media. The truth is that a hallmark of a masterful painter is the finesse of their non-dappled “plain” colors. Indeed, the ability to deliciously wake up such a clear coat in pigment is an uncommon skill not given enough kudos.
So simply put, don't rely on dappling to carry your paintjob. Every element of your paintwork should stand alone while also work together as a whole to carry the piece. Likewise, collectors, don't be so easily seduced by dappling. First ask yourself, "Is it realistic? Is it authentic? Is it factual?" Then ask yourself, "Does the dappling forward the paintwork or distract from something? Is it more of a visual crutch than an asset? Is it overly regimented and artificial looking?" In short, don't take dappling at face value as you need to be as savvy in determining accurate dappling effects as an artist to make sound collecting decisions.
Conclusion
Dapples are certainly a challenging pickle, aren’t they? They definitely keep you on our toes! And that’s a good thing. By pushing you, dappling compels you to stretch farther with your sensibilities and techniques, and that keeps your work evolving, fresh, and innovative. Dappling also hones your ability to See things on our subject, compelling you to dig ever deeper more analytically into more aspects, and that spells great things for your portfolio. In this way, effective dappling is a one-two punch between masterful technique and keen Vision. Get those two well developed and in sync, and you got this! And if you'd like more discussion on the different types of dappling, visit Lesli Kathman's blog post on the subject! Also check her post on vascular patterning with dappling and how body temperate affects dappling, and lastly, condition dappling. That'll keep you busy for awhile!
Just be sure to check yourself by working from new photos for each new piece to avoid unconscious formula through repetition. Stay fresh, stay curious. This also beefs up your mental library, helping to inform your bristles with more options. And practice — practice practice practice! Learning to dapple well really does require an array of practiced techniques and that just takes repetition. Ultimately then, you’ll have a firmer grasp of your objective when you pepper your work with dapples coming at them like this, and that just spells better dappled paintwork.
The real trick with dappling to remember, however, is nailing down that look of ordered chaos, that organic, “grown” look they have as they emanate from the coat. Indeed, it’s those artists who can pin that down most effectively who tend to create the most convincing dappled paintjobs. So don’t just study what’s similar between dapple coats but also what’s different as it’s in that diversity that holds a key to deciphering ordered chaos all the better. Also study the works of other artists you admire to see how they met the challenge and solved the problems.
And try not to get discouraged — dappling is hard to paint. No artist just blithely sweeps through them effortlessly! Just remember that every beautifully dappled paintjob is backed by years of mistakes and missteps, and it’s okay to make them because that’s how you learn. Dappling also takes a ton of work, discipline, keen attention, and a lot — a lot — of patience. You don’t just bang out dappling willy nilly! It takes great care and diligence. So be kind to yourself as you dapple and employ strategies that keep the process bearable like taking periodic breaks. So observe, practice, stay curious, and above all, work to have fun, and you won't find yourself in such a dappling dilemma any more!
“The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that have been concealed by the answers.”
—James Baldwin
I'd like to thank Lesli Kathman and Lynn Cassels-Caldwell for the use of their photos for this post. Ladies, without you, this post wouldn't have been so helpful! Thank you! 
