Kristian Beverly
Books. Horses. Plastic Ponies.
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!
