Ethan

"I had rather see the portrait of a dog that I know, than all the allegorical paintings they can show me in the world."

Samuel Johnson

About four years ago, after a hiatus of three or four years, I resumed painting. Although I started back in by painting in a workshop setting, concentrated on working from a live (clothed) model, I soon turned my attention to animals. For one thing, I have my own menagerie of cats and a parrot, each of whom I treasure. But in addition, I was prompted into offering a commissioned pet portrait as an auction item for Lollypop Farm - the Rochester, NY area Humane Society. I was serving as a board member of that organization at the time, and was happy to do it. The item generated quite a bit of money for the fundraiser, so I was invited to donate such a commission for the next several years.

In the course of painting the pets whose owners had won portraits in these auctions, I came to appreciate just how cherished most pets are, at least in the US. Each of these animals has a story, too. When I paint a portrait of an animal, I am usually interested in including something in the painting that truly reflects the unique aspects of the animal's life with its human family. For example, I painted one handsome, mature tabby cat - Bob - who had traveled with his human companions to China, and lived there with them for several years while they were on an expatriate assignment. As I spent time with him, and listened to the family's stories of their China adventure and Bob's aplomb throughout, I was left with a keen appreciation for this intrepid little traveler. In the painting, I depicted him lounging near a chinese vase, inscribed with the Chinese script for "long life." I invented the vase, but I think I made a statement about Bob's spirit. And Bob's human companions were very pleased.

The picture I have posted here is a just-completed portrait of Ethan - a beautiful and much loved horse living in Wisconsin. As with most of the animal paintings I have done, I relied mostly on photographic reference, in this case provided by the client. Even when I take my own photos, however, I don't work from just one photo. I also have never used the background from the reference photo(s). For Ethan's portrait, I took quite a few liberties with the setting... creating a white fence to break up his pasture, and seeding the entire area with lawn, since I wanted a bright, colorful setting.

I did work mostly from one reference photo to capture Ethan's likeness. Although even in that situation, I found myself relying on knowledge of equine anatomy to ensure he did not come out looking flat. I am of the school of thought that you can not render anything well unless you know how it is put together. Early on in my painting adventures, I have been know to put a quick "sculpy" figure together to help myself resolve "how it is really built" issues. Ii am convinced that having some basic knowledge of anatomy really does help! I don't profess to be very skilled in this area, but I am most respectful of its importance, and keep and use several reference books - animal and human - on hand to help myself, and I can see where the knowledge has helped me to become better over the years.

Since placement is important for my work, I started out by making a thumbnail sketch of the overall composition I intended for this portrait. But, ultimately, I deviated from this initial plan. Once I was satisfied with the sketch, I did a drawing where I applied my anatomy reference to check out the structure of Ethan's body against general horse anatomy (e.g., rib cage placement). Then I transferred this drawing to the canvas using a grid. At this point, however, the planned composition did not include a fence.

As always, I started the painting with thin darks on a linen canvas primed with gesso is just sumptuous with that thin paint! Such a wonderful feel... Even after I started this underpainting (done in raw umber thinned with turpenoid), I still did not include a fence.

After the underpainting dried, I began the first applications of "local" color by blocking in the middle values and starting to put in some details. This is when I saw the need for changing the composition by introducing the white fence. This is also when I replaced the dirt with green grass.

I spent the next painting session going from the large shapes I laid in first, to smaller shapes that define and show differences WITHIN those large shapes. For instance, the horse is made up of two major shapes--the dark reddish shape, which is a mixture of the Transparent Red Oxide, Alizarin Crimson and Ultramarine Blue, and the shapes where light is striking him, made up of Cadmium Red, Yellow Ochre and Blue with white. At this stage I also thickly laid on smaller shapes to give definition to the horse and background. This was done with very few brush marks to make the shapes, e.g. light purple shapes to define the top of Ethan's back where the light goes through and bounces off his hide, and then took that cadmium red light and mixed it with some of the alizarin and blue to pick out depths and reflected lights and highlights in the neck and facial shapes of the horse.

I added white touched with purple for the blaze. On the near front leg, I used the background green to define the line of the leg and down to the hoof, which is just a grey mark with the brush and needed some further refining before I was finished.

I strived to keep from over working this piece. So, how do you keep from going to too much detail? My reply is to squint a lot, and stop looking for details. Squinting gives you a "hierarchy of edges" showing you which ones are important in your source material, and which ones you can toss out.


I work generally from dark to light, laying in a dark abstract foundation to cement in the design of the piece. Everything is subordinate to that design. I do change colors of things even when I use my own source material. If it makes the design better, it gets changed...

In this painting, I tried especially to make the work about more than the objects and their story (horse, fence, landscape), but as importantly about the amount and feel of the brush marks. A "painterly" painting...

Did I succeed?