"Painting Horses - colour suggestion" Topic

Hello all,

I wonder if you could be helful to me regarding how to paint horses.

My "best" result was achieved so far with a Games Wokshop acrylic paint (Citadel Colour Dark Flesh 61-18) as it looks for me as the best natural colour for a horse.

Do you guys have other paint reference and technics to suggest ?

Cheers,

Gilles,
France

I black prime horses and give them a base coat of acrylic black. Then I dry brush some red brown on the high parts of the horse, leaving some black in the recesses around where the legs meet the torso. Then a use a smaller flat dry brush and use either leather or orange (both are basically orange in color, but leather is usually a little darker) and dry brush again for the highlights. Looks great! For some of the smaller surface areas, I have to use a regular brush and dab in some of the highlight color along the neck and the jaw of the horse.

Paint the tail and mane black and then simply dry brush with the darkest grey that you can find. If you want to add socks, paint a portion of the lower leg grey and highlight with white. Reins are usually left alone as black, other than painting the metal bits.

I get a lot of compliments for my horse work so I must be doing something right.

I have a few links will check them against the ones posted above and if unique will post here also.
VR
James Mattes

Good list, Condottiere. I used to use Ellsweb, but it's apparently gone. Looks like some of the material made it to VVV.

Favorite resource for horse colors:
equinecolor.com//color.html

jeff

On a related topic, what color are horses hooves? This always vexes me when I'm painting my horses.

Hooves can be either white or black.

You can see Ellsweb horse painting guide on my website in PDF, I will leave it until hopefully Ellsweb is back. By far the best painting guide I've read.

link

IS their a specific technigue for painting Dey horses ala those of the Scot's Greys.

Using the three layer technique and GW paints try these recipes…

In each of these the mid tone is a 50/50 mix of the base and highlight…

BAY
Scorched Brown base – 50/50 Dark Flesh/Vermin Brown highlights

DARK CHESTNUT
Dark Flesh base – Vermin Brown highlights

WHITE/GREY
Fortess Grey Base – Skull white highlights

PALOMINO
Vomit Brown Base – Bleached Bone highlights

BLACK
Chaos Black base – 50/50 Codex Grey/Black highlights

I have a few others written down but I can't remember them off the top of my head.

There is planty of info on the web for the white sock and face markings and mane colours (usually black or darker shade of coat colour).

G'day, Fritz.

On a related topic, what color are horses hooves?

For hooves without a white sock/stocking, they're usually a mid dark grey to a very dark grey.

For hooves with a white sock/stocking, it's a dark yellowish grey, almost like dark, yellowed ivory. Usually there will be patches, sometimes the majority of the hoof, in dark grey as well.

With both colours of hoof, you'll get a light get "salt line" at the top of the hoof, if it hasn't been oiled for a while. At times it can cover most of the hoof, making it look almost white.

The flesh under the hoof (frog) is a mid to darkish grey, when you can see it.

Most cavalrymen (and riders these days) would have either painted the hoof or used some sort of oil (lanolin in those days, probably). This prevented fungal infections, helped when the horses were standing in wet ground for any length of time and helped prevent the hoof splitting. This will make the hoof look very dark, almost black.

For wargames figures, a very dark grey or black would probably be easiest and most accurate. If you want pictures, let me know and I'll bung some onto the web for you.

Cheers.

Dal.

Jim, you can see a couple of pic's at members.westnet.com.au/DalGavan Neither of my horses has white on the legs, so I don't have a shot of the yellowish grey I spoke about.

Dal.

Thanks Dal! I'd almost say your information is straight from the horse's mouth or a picture is worth a thousand words. Very helpful indeed.

@ Condottiere

To be honest, I can't recall where I found that PDF! I had already read the article on ellsweb, but I know I got the PDF somewhere else, I just have no idea where. I'm just happy to have saved it; I hate it when good info like that gets lost when a website shuts down.

Many thanks to all of you, guys.

I'l have a close look at te links you mentionned.

Cheers,

Gilles

I've mentioned this in another thread some time ago.
On a brown coloured horse, pick any brown, paint the entire horse. Take a bronze and highlight wash the hind quarters, shoulder and neck. If legs are up possibley a leg or two. Then take a walnut and wash over the whole horse. The walnut will settle in crevasses, and darken the bronze wash. On the table, it looks like a horse in the sun. Experiment with what looks good to you. I do all my cavalry this way.
Cheers,
Thomas

Dead simple method: Prime back, drybrush dark brown, ink brown, carefully drybrush two lighter shades of brown.

y'all take way too much time with washing this, drybrush that, ink here, and still the horses "don't look right".

I oil rub my horses (no snickers please…) using this classic method:

1. Buy Windsor and Newton AKLYD oil paints-Burnt Umber, Raw Umber, Lamp Black, Payne's Grey, Raw Sienna, Burnt Sienna
They are oils that actually dry.

2. Prime horses White using Rustoleum or other premium primer. Using junk primer means you'll get a crappy result.

3. Apply oils to horses full strength. You can cut it a little with Turpenoid (odorless turpentine) with a flat brush. Make sure you get all the horse coated. Let dry about 5 minutes.

4. Rub the excess oil paint off the horse with a piece of foam…the inside of blister packs works just fine. I bought an "egg crate" mattress pad at Wal Mart. It's lasted me about 2 years.I cut the egg crate into small cubes/easily handled. Rub the oil off until the desired finish is achieved. It's an art form…the highlights of the casting will just jump out at you!! :<)

5. Let the figure dry 24 hours and paint the manes/tails with a dark brown, or black (grey horses). Drybrush manes/tails with Howard Hues Concrete Paint the horse's eyes black and touch with a dot of white. Paint the horse furniture as normal.

I paint 25-50 horses in a sitting. You can paint with the riders on or off. Works for both 15 and 25/28mm figures.

Makes this chore easy to do. Give it a try…you'll never "warsh" again! :<)

I'm so glad I found this link.

I've only answered it so that I can link to it as and when I need to!