Introduction to Part V
Welcome back to this six-part series about painting tricky effects on horses, for beginners. Painting realistic horses is indeed tricky business. There’s just so much to account for and consider and weigh because it’s not just about painting what’s there, it’s mostly about painting what’s there effectively and in a flattering way, and that’s a whole ‘nuther order of considerations. Because one of the painter’s big jobs is to paint in a way that flatters the sculpture, to not fight the sculpture. Now granted, that’s a very subjective idea because what appears flattering to you may not to someone else, and that’s okay. Everyone has their tastes. But the point is, paint in a way that makes you comfortable with the overall result from an aesthetic perspective, not just a realistic perspective. Remember, you have to first like your own work! To that end, follow your gut. Not your heart, not your brain—your gut. Unlike your heart and brain, your gut will never steer you off course and into the weeds. So if something is bugging you in your gut—change it. If your piece reads beautifully in your gut—you nailed it!
But that said, it’s okay to let things go and move on. Because the trick to really improving is volume, simply painting a lot of sculptures. Numbers count! So try not to spin your wheels too much with a single piece. Know when to call done and move on to the new lessons the next piece has to offer. “Every horse is practice for the next,” wisely says Ed Gonzales, and he’s absolutely right.
On that note, don’t be so hard on yourself. You will make mistakes—we all do, even the most experienced among us. In fact, mistakes are your fastest conduit to improvement because each one holds an important lesson. Indeed, those who make the most mistakes and learn from them are the fastest to improve! So don’t be afraid of making a mistake…just surge forwards and fix them along the way. No big whoop. You’re the creator here, remember—you can redo anything you create!
That in mind, take risks. Try to avoid the safe route and veer from convention. See, the thing is, convention is riddled with errors, oversimplifications, and misconceptions as it often leans away from reality in favor of those things that are more dumbed-down and safe. Be a rebel! Dive into reality head first and worry about the rest later. If you See something in your references color-wise that goes against conventional painting? Then by all means, paint it. Hoof painting is a classic example here. For years conventional thinking had us painting the tops of the hooves pale and the bottoms dark, but the fact is Nature offers up so many more options. So explore them! Be bold and fearless! And hey—work from references and you’ll always have those to lean on, so go for it! (Recommended reading: The free PDFs, Painting Conventions: Fact or Fantasy? Part I and Part II.)
So with all this under our belt, let’s continue our exploratory adventures into painting realistic equines for beginners! Let’s careen in!…
Painting Chestnuts and Ergots
Chestnuts are those knobs of calloused flesh on the inside of the legs, on the forelegs above the knee and on the hindlegs between the point of hock and the cannon. Ergots are similar structures but on the backs of the fetlocks. It’s believed the chestnuts are the remnants of the proximal metacarpal and wrist pads and the ergots are the remnants of the distal metacarpal pads when the horse had multi-digit feet in evolutionary history. Now many sculptures lack ergots, a bit of a sculptural oversight so what you can do is just paint on a little dot where the ergot would have been and call it a day. It works. (It’s not recommended to sculpt ergots in if they’re missing as that’s altering a resin or custom which can be a no-no with a sculpting artist’s reserved rights.)
Now the thing to keep in mind is that both chestnuts and ergots are calloused flesh so they’re textured and colored that way. If you study them in references then you’ll see that they have a greige-ish coloration and are crumbly and calloused. If they aren’t trimmed, they can protrude quite a bit, too, until they naturally break off. However, some grooming trends peel them off almost flush with the skin and oil them, making them more flat and darkened, so look for that in your references.
So to paint them, think about this process:
- Use a small round with a good point.
- Paint the entire chestnut a dark tan. You can use Titanium White, Raw Umber or Burnt Umber, and a black of your choice to make this color.
- Take that mix and add more white to make a light tan color and use that to dot on tiny specks to create calloused highlights.
- Keep in mind that chestnuts on dark skin are tan-ish whereas sometimes they’re dark flesh on unpigmented skin. So look for those color differences in your references.
- Extra points: Texturize the chestnuts with your paint if possible. Ideally, they were sculpted texturized, but they often aren’t.
- For ergots, apply the same pigment ideas, only just boop a little circle of paint on the back of the fetlock where the ergot should go.
There are two things you want to avoid when painting chestnuts and ergots. First, don’t create a messy result. Have a steady hand so that callous color is exactly on the chestnut or ergot and not blooping into the leg. Precision is key! And second, keep the chestnut speckles tiny and not big dots. Keep scale in mind.
Painting the Palmar Foot
The palmar foot—or the bottom of the foot—needs to be painted too if it’s sculpted in. If not sculpted in though, you can still paint it in to create that illusion if you wish. So grab some good references of the palmar foot of quality feet, and study them. Note their textures and any discolorations as those are important details. But what exactly are you looking at? Well, the palmar foot is characterized by seven basic structures:
- The frog: That large triangular, calloused structure that’s so obvious on the bottom of the foot.
- The bars: The walls invert and thicken to run along each side of the frog, becoming the bars.
- The collateral grooves: Between the bars and the frog are the deep collateral grooves.
- The sole: The expanse of the palmar foot of calloused tissue.
- The white line: While whitish when clean, it turns tan or dark brown with dirt and with wear, becomes more of a slight groove around the perimeter of the hoof wall, the bars, and almost to the apex of the frog. This is the connection zone between the hoof wall and the sole.
- The water line: The unpigmented inner hoof wall that shows up as a pale line around the perimeter of the hoof. However, scale often compels us to omit painting this, and that’s okay. Many times, it’s simply implied.
- The hoof wall: The distal edge of the hoof wall.
So to actually paint the palmar foot, consider this progression:
- Grab your small round with a good point and longer bristles for a decent well of paint.
- A handy brush to also use for this is a small beaten up stencil brush for stippling. You can also use a beaten up normal brush if you don’t have a stencil brush. You just want a small brush that’ll create a speckled effect when tapped onto the surface.
- Mix up various greys, tans, greiges, and even greens if you wish to denote grass staining or manure. You can use Titanium White, a black of your choice, Burnt Umber, Raw Umber, Raw Sienna, and a green of your choice (optional).
- So mix up a very dark charcoal or dark brown, or some sort of dark color as indicated by your references, and paint the entire bottom of the foot that color, except the hoof wall.
- Then mix up a series of tans, browns, greys, and greiges, but don’t thin them. Now take your stippling brush, dip in to the color of your choice to start, dab out the excess and then gently and randomly stipple specks onto the bottom of the foot, keeping them tiny so scale is maintained. Just two or three dabs is enough for the first pass otherwise you’ll destroy all those specks and turn them into blobs, and we don’t want that. So let that dry. Now repeat with your other mixed up colors. In the end, you should have a multi-colored, tiny speckled mess. Good!
- Now thin down those greys, tans, and greiges down to about 1% milk consistency and gradually build up the highlight layers, using those colors back and forth, letting them dry between each pass. Things to think about highlighting are the bars, the rims of the frog, the dark line of the white line, and any crinkles or other details you want to input. You can go back in with your dark tones, too, to add more crinkles and details if you wish as well.
- Then paint in the distal rim of the hoof wall with either dark hoof color (for a dark hoof) or a pale hoof color (for a shell hoof). For an added detail, you can paint the rim discolored with dirt, manure, or mud if you wish instead.
- Don’t forget to paint in any portions of pigmented sole which can you do now. Like sometimes a palmar foot will have a dark spot from pigment and that’s a cool detail to add, so lean into your references.
- Extra points: Don’t be afraid to paint in staining or wet spots as, well, that’s life, right?
There are six things to avoid when painting the palmar foot. First, precision is key so avoid a careless hand. Highlights and shadow should be exactly where they need to be, not flupped up onto surrounding areas. Likewise, the whiteline should be even, tight, and not deviate otherwise you might accidentally paint in white line disease. So a steady hand is a very good thing in all this. Second, keep the structures clear to avoid a confusing result. Third, avoid regimentation in the speckling and streaking. You want your palmar feet to appear grown, not painted. Fourth, always keep scale in mind with the speckles and the detailing. Fifth, don’t fight the sculpture. How ever the sculpted feet are done, follow them and don’t try to add in painted corrections. It’ll just lend a result that less confusing and look more cohesive with the sculpture. And sixth, don’t deviate away from your references. Whatever colors they’re offering to you, take them unless it denotes an injury or bruising (like red or burgundy patches or streaks on the hoof wall or sole).
Painting Shoes
These are sometimes found on our sculptures and we need to know how to paint them realistically. To do that, we’ll first need some metallic silver acrylic paint. There are many different kinds to choose from so you have plenty of options. Just try to get one that isn’t so bright a silver, but more of a muted silver, or darkened silver, like “antique silver” or some such type as a bright “clean” silver color can be a little bit unrealistic after life’s wear and tear. And the thing to remember is that horseshoes are most often made of unpolished steel (unless they’re a specialty shoe), not bright silver metal, so think more in those terms. To that end, have a series of good reference photos to work from to stay on target.
So to paint horse shoes, consider this process:
- Grab your small round with the good tip and long bristles, for that necessary reservoir of paint.
- Have all your hooves painted and finished.
- The colors you’ll be using are the metallic silver paint and a black of your choice.
- Thin a dollop of black paint to the consistency of 1% milk to make more of a wash.
- Paint the shoes black, getting into the crevice between the shoe and the hoof. Be sure to get the bottoms to get the details there, and the inner rims, too, staying mindful not to bloop the black painting onto palmar surface of the feet. Let dry.
- Thin the silver paint to about 2% milk consistency and wash over that, maintaining the black crease with the hoof and painting around the shoe well on the bottom of the shoe to preserve their blackened color. Let dry.
- Boop on a tiny point onto each nail head in the shoe well to make the nail heads “pop.”
- Put a tiny rectangular boop of silver paint up on the hoof wall to denote the nail in the hoof where your references tell you (about 1” up from the shoe on a real horse so scale down). You’ll want three on the inside and four on the outside, between the toe and the quarters (make sure the nails are not on the quarters, a common error that’s critical to avoid). However, farriers like to use the least amount of nails possible, so three nails on the inside and three on the outside is fine, too.
- Extra points: Go back to hoof painting to add some staining around and streaking downwards from the nails on the hoof. Maybe even paint in holes to denote the older row of nails that were removed, too.
Conclusion to Part V
Little details like all of this can really take your paintjob over the top and provide a great springboard into more advanced methods and observations. Because, yes, there’s more to it than what I’m sharing with you in this series. Remember, this is a beginner-level exploration…there’s always more to add to the mix! And isn't that awesome? Always having a carrot out there to chase after keeps us hungry and stretching towards our potential, and so you discover—yes—not only can you do it, but you can even do more. So cool! Because wouldn’t painting become dull if you were able to do it all immediately? I think so. Always being asked to go that extra step into a new way of Seeing, a new way of painting, a new interpretation keeps things so fresh and exciting!
So in that spirit, next time we’ll jump into the last part of this series, Part VI. We have some mighty big topics to tackle in it, so hang tight! We’ll tackle it soon enough!
“Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.”
―Vincent Van Gogh
