Spots Spots Spots

You don’t realize how many spots an appaloosa has until you decide to paint one.

Upon closer inspection of my reference photos, I realized I couldn’t get away with only doing face mottling.

Since he’s a chestnut leopard Appaloosa, I figured I could do some of the body mottling with some acrylic burnt sienna. I watered it down to the consistency of milk, like you do for white markings. A few layers in I realized this wasn’t the way to do this. So I added grey splotches to the body.

But before then, I decided to add some details to the muzzle. I broke out my oil paints and Cobalt Drier and went to work. Some pink marks are going to get dulled with white pastels.

I couldn’t put off fixing all of the red and grey. I dusted a layer of white pastels over the body, sealed it, and then painted numerous layers of white acrylic to tone the red down. I tried to keep my brush strokes going in the direction of natural hair growth.

So much of this model is experimentation to see if I can get the effect I want. He’s back on track again!