Thursday, January 24, 2019

Gentle Spirits


I found a photo of a dear grandson and thought it would be such fun to paint. His mom grew up on her family farm in western Minnesota, and our grandson, now 3, loves everything about this farm – being outdoors, riding in his grandpa’s tractor and combine, and going down to the pasture to visit with the beloved horses.

It was a process to paint this subject, though. To get the horses right, I used Paul Oman’s technique of drawing everything upside down. Turning the photo and the sketch book upside down literally confuses the brain and makes it much easier to just draw lines and shapes. In the end, it’s amazing how much the sketch looks like the actual photograph.

This week’s painting, Gentle Spirits, is an 8” x 9” watercolor. In a high compliment, our grandson's mom thought the painting perfectly captured the gentle spirit of her childhood horses.



No comments:

Post a Comment