Come have a cozy paint session with me | Shire Horse Painting

Hey everybody, it's DJ Bee and in this video we're going to be doing something a little bit different. I have been really enjoying experimenting with traditional mediums and I wanted to paint this shire horse with you in this video. So I'm starting here on a wood panel. I've just added a little bit of gesso to it and I've sketched out my horse drawing there. Then I'm using just a liquid wash of a nice raw sienna colour here that makes a nice orangey hue and that's supposedly so that your brain can see the painting a little bit better and I've watched other artists use this method and it looks really cool in the final outcome. And then I have a very limited palette, I'm trying to teach myself to colour mix a little bit more so I have all my primaries there, a white, a brown and a black. And I mixed this black mixture with intention of not using actual black because that's what a lot of professional artists do. But I ended up having to go in with some actual black because it wasn't quite dark enough. I'm using acrylic paints here and they don't mix the same as oils do, they're a lot less vibrant, so it's a bit of a learning curve to mix acrylic versus other kinds of paints. But I'm just going in with a really big fat brush and laying down the shadows. So anywhere that I see dark in my reference is what I'm painting here. And this style that I'm teaching myself, I'm trying to be really intentional with my brush strokes so I don't want things to be super detailed, I want them to be a bit blockier, a little bit more impressionistic and I'm really liking this process because it's so different from my other methods of painting and creating art. So then I tried to mix a slightly lighter color here which you can see is quite blue. That is the thing that I notice in references with white markings is sometimes there can be a blue tinge to them. This particular horse was a black and white Sabino so he was a little bit tricky to accomplish in this style actually. So I'm struggling to find the darks and the lights in these lighter points but also the mixing of the hairs. There I'm adding in the black because things were not quite dark enough. I wasn't happy with the darkness that I was achieving with that mixture so straight in there with the carbon black. I don't know if this is breaking rules or not, it feels like cheating to me but... Then I went in with a slightly finer brush to detail around some of the eyes. I'm not afraid to use a detail brush in these more tiny areas but I try to stick to bigger, broader brush strokes as a general rule. I mixed a shadowed pink tone here for the muzzle because he had a fully pink muzzle and this truly is the ugly phase of painting. It's hard to imagine what this will look like. As soon as I add a little bit more of that light tone on top I'm really seeing how this can come to life really quickly and then adding those highlights is when things really pull together. And then a slightly lighter blue mixture to highlight some of the facial structure and in that white blaze because this is very white so I'm blocking in all of that using this blue mixture. I was really happy with this tone, it was starting to feel really fun. It's fun to play with color too and emphasize shades using some blue tones, some purple tones. A black horse is not just black and white, it can have a lot of variants to it. Attempting these Sabino markings was a challenge, I wasn't exactly sure how I wanted them to look so it was a little bit finicky. I'm trying to be very intentional, slow, and methodical with my brush strokes. Adding another light hue on top, I'm really following the form of the bone structure in the face and attempting again to add a little more of that Sabino-ness. This was looking really rough, I was not happy with how uniform it was coming so I work this quite a bit in the process of this. It's hard to find the lights and the darks when there is an actual color pattern peeking through so I'm doing my best here using different brushes, kind of weaving textures, just seeing what things look like and continuing to work that a little bit more. I highlighted the eyelash and started detailing out a little bit of the eye. I started to refine a little more of the forelock there and then came in with my white tone to highlight the blaze because it was hard for me to see exactly what this was going to look like without having it a little bit brighter on that forehead because most of his face was actually white. This painting took me a total of two and a half hours to finish so it's a short session and I feel like the outcome is pretty gratifying. I'm also making sure not to cover too much of that underpainting, I want a little bit of that orange peeking through, I like that kind of unfinished look. It's looking a little rough here and the camera is on a bit of an angle so it is a bit distorted in what it actually looks like but these are almost purple tones that I'm using through the majority of this. Got a little into the weeds of detailing with a finer brush with a slightly brighter hot white, attempting more of that roaning, really not sure what I'm doing with all of this. I also like to bounce around, I don't stick to one area, I kind of like to go where my eye pulls me and that keeps me interested in it as well. I don't want to over detail too much of it. I then tried to create some separation on the jaw line and the bottom of the muzzle and I just continue to go back and forth, darks and lights to just touch everything up. I haven't fully finalized how this process will work for me going forward and I'm going into the background here and I'm not sure if it's better to do the background first or the subject first. I think this is kind of an interesting reverse psychology way of doing things and just went in with some detailing until I was happy with the outcome of everything. Wasn't fully happy with some of that Sabinoness so blocked it out with a little more black, created more separation on the jaw, but then went back in with more white because I really didn't know what kind of flow I was hoping for here. And then I could start on the background and I like to use a larger brush here, go along the edge, but I'm leaving pieces of that underpainting to peek through. That adds the warmth. So I went into the bottom corners with a dark green and then a slightly lighter green and then the sky I made this blue tone and I'm color mixing all of these colors individually as well so that I understand. I really liked this big fat brush for it and then I was able to go into the little pieces of hair with that sky color, but then I was going to have to touch it up. So that's where I say I'm not sure which is better, but I kind of like this layered look even though it's wrong. Experimenting is really important and letting yourself have the creative freedom to try things without the fear of failure and messing it up. It really doesn't matter. This isn't for anything. I like to film the process of it, but I don't really have intentions to sell these. I don't have intentions with these. I might potentially list some of these paintings up for sale because I don't really need them. I like doing them, but I don't really need them in my house. If that interests you, let me know in the comments. And then I went in with some other colors such as yellow, white, purples, oranges and created this kind of abstract wildflower look. I don't really know what I'm doing when it comes to backgrounds. I am very much a beginner in that sense, so I was just trying something here and I'm not sure if I like it or not. I think it turned out kind of cool. It's a little abstract-y. Then I went in to add a little bit of clouds, just playing with some highlights and I put one there and I did not like it, so then I tried to mute it out and then that mixture of blue was too dark, so I had to go back in with my original blue mixture and basically remove everything I did, which was making this a little overpainted. I have a tendency of overpainting things, but I'm pretty happy with how this looks. I think it's very unique and very stylized and it was quick and what my brain was looking for, so I'm happy with it. I intend on doing more of these paintings in the future, so thank you so, so much for watching. If you would like to see more of this content, be sure to like this video and subscribe to my channel. Let me know in the comments what you think and if you'd like to see more painting videos like this. I will see you guys in the next one. Bye!