Painting a cute Shetland pony

I made this painting a year ago, when I was following art classes.

I went online and found a pretty Shetland pony in a trot. His body was brown and white spotted, and he had dark blond manes. He looked so cute that I decided to paint this wonderful animal.

As I already mentioned I painted this pony during art classes. Which merely influenced my painting methods. I tried all kinds of new techniques, and worked for hours on the smallest details. Far more precise than I would normally do.

I started painting the background. The picture was taken on a field, with a forest on the background. The camera must have been focused on the horse, which made the background vague. I therefor decided to use a sponge, put all kinds of green and yellow colors on it, before dipping it onto the canvas. This was the first time for me to use this technique, and I feel like it worked out well for this painting.

Secondly, I started sketching the outlines of the pony. After which I filled the outline of the horse with a light brown color, a contour of what it should become had now emerged. Then the painting of the real horse began. Working from the back to the front, I began with the tail. Which was partly hidden behind his body. Then I painted the brown and white spots, layer after layer after layer. I also added some different lighter and darker shades to the body. To create the impression of shadow and movement. And last but not least I painted the manes of this pony. The hair turned out to look pretty fake, due to the light color. Almost like a “coup du soleil”, as if the pony had just styled it’s hair at a hairdresser. Even so I like the result of the manes, because they show the movement of the pony in the blown aside manes.

As the finishing touch I added some straight green lines in the background as grass, and some more shorter green lines covering the hooves a little. So, that the horse would truly blend in it’s surroundings. Lastly, I added some yellow spots, to add some colorful flowers to the grass.

All in all, I am pretty satisfied with the result. It took me many hours to paint this horse, more than usually, and I don’t think this precise work is exactly my style. Which also created in a different kind of painting than my former paintings. I tried many new techniques, which I can use in future paintings. I particularly like the way I created depth using shadows and highlights.