Smith Road Equines

5 x 5 inches, Oil on Board

For Auction at www.dailypaintworks.com

This painting is inspired from musing through one of my many sketchbooks.  I do live in a semi-rural area with more than a few Horse stables.  My way of sketching animals in a field is to make a quick gesture and then wait for the horse to go back into that same pose.  Generally animals do repeat poses as they graze. 

When I get the horse pose roughed in, then I build up the muscles.  I can do this by just observing the horse in whatever pose it's in.  Lastly, I put in a simplified background.  The horse in the background of the painting was what many artists call "happy accidents" and it certainly brings the viewer's eye right back to the center of interest, the main horse  

See the sketchbooks all lined up in the back?  They are just the recent ones.

Here, you can see real quick thumbnails the side of the actual sketch.  With the resulting painting,  I really simplified the background from the sketch because the horses are more important than the background and because of the small size of the piece.