The Journey of the Brave Inca Painting

When painting animals it helps to start with a great photograph. The photograph to the right is one of Brave Inca, Champion Hurdle Winner at Cheltenham. Using this horse as an example, I will try to explain how I go from blank canvas, to finished painting.

I like to think of every painting as a journey, or more specifically, a trip to my in-laws house. The first time I went to see them, my then boyfriend, Gary, told me that when the roads could not get any narrower, we would be there.

So the journey starts with the main roads, or the big brushes. At this stage, progress is fast, but if you take a wrong turn then it can take a long time to get there. You could end up in Limerick when you intended to go to Dublin. If I do not get the basic structure of the animals features right at this stage, it will make life far more difficult later on. At this stage the background is really only used as a way to paint over my mistakes. I often find it helps to cut the photograph to the scale of my canvas, or alternatively, look at it through a viewfinder, i.e. if the canvas is 20x16, I will cut the photo to 5x4. It helps to get the proportions of the negative space right, because if the negative space is wrong, then so is your animal.

Once I am happy that the structure is correct, I can move onto the basic shading and colours. This is where we turn off the motorway, but these roads are still quite wide. I find the shades and tones in a face like a jigsaw puzzle, and once the pieces are all the right shape, it should all fit perfectly. It is here that minor corrections can be made to the structure if pieces still do not fit just right. This is the most time consuming part. Gradually the brushes get narrower as the detail gets more precise. I will also start to think a little about the background colour. My backgrounds tend to be neutral, and I try to pick out on something that will compliment the animal.

Then I move onto the smaller brushes, the little narrow country roads, putting in the details of the eyes, the most important feature. Very often there are little whiskers or lumps in the skin around an animals mouth, and now is the time to address those details. At this stage I finish off the background, setting the animal off against it.

Finally, I arrive at the end of the in-laws lane, and it is time to sign it!