"Painting Horses Quickly" Topic

I've posted a bit about how to paint horses quickly on my ECW blog:

link

-- Jeff

I could never skip painting the hair and tack. Of course I'm painting batches of 5 5o 12 horses at a time, with 150+ to do I might learn to control that urge. That looks to give a similar finish as some oil painting techniques I have been experimenting with. Thanks for posting your technique.

I should point out that while I named to two inks that I used, probably anything in the "brownish" range would work just fine . . . and yes, they do have a very nice sheen to them.

Thank you for your comment, sir.

-- Jeff

I think you are right to paint to a style that actually works with the eye and gaming distances – I am increasingly understanding this with 10mm stuff. I want to paint everything when I am holding it 10" from my face, but on the table, I don't even see half of that.

Good luck with the rest of the project.

My philosophy is different from yours, but I do like your colour choices!

snodipous,

I fully recognize that not all agree with my philosophy and that is fine. There are many who love creating wonderfully painted horse and I applaud them. There are lots of "right answers" within our hobby.

Thank you for your kind comment, sir.

-- Jeff

Love it! Consider this technique stolen. It reminds me that right now the bulk of my napoleonic Austrians are resplendent in white primer, with dabs of flesh, gun metal and black for shako, boots, face hands, musket and a bit of brown for a backpack. I am ever so slowly going back and filling in the details, including a proper job on the uniforms, but en masse on the tabletop they look fine to me.

Same idea as your horses. they read correctly at gamig distance.

Interesting idea, thanks for sharing. I could always paint the bulk of them this way and throw in a dapple gray here and there if I want. Also, with most of the work done I cold go back and paint white on the muzzles very quickly which would also bring out just a little more of the horse detail in my opinion. I think that I may give this a shot.

Allen

They really do look fine massed up, don't they.

I've used a variant of this technique, which I believe is called underlighting, or at least that's what I call it. I've used for riders as well but I agree it's very well suited for horses.

The basic technique is undercoat dark tone / overbrush mid tone / drybrush light tone. Tones would be black/gray/white or dark brown/tan/off-white. Overbrush is what the Citadel paint guides call a wet drybrush. Then paint with colored ink or other thinned glaze (translucent color) that will flow everywhere.

You've added a pre-inking step of painting the large flat surfaces with a horse color. This looks like it gives some more variation and better color control.

First I would like to thank everyone for their comments.

Next please allow me to reassure those who said they might "steal" my technique . . . no need to steal, I am freely sharing it with anyone who wants to try it . . . and I suspect that it is far from original with me anyway.

Also I do NOT wish in any way imply any criticism to those who prefer a much more detailed painting of their horses. I enjoy viewing photos of such . . . but I do not have the time nor skill to do that so I use my quick and simple method.

Finally as to which inks I used. I am not suggesting that these would be the best; they are simply what I had on hand. I suspect that there are many inks that would work just as well or maybe even better.

I used a Games Workshop "Chestnut Ink" #61-69.
I used a Reaper Minatures "Woodshade Ink" #08206.

I used both of the above mixed 50/50 with water.

I also tried using a Winsor & Newton Ink "#954 Nut Brown" similarly diluted with water and was unhappy with it. I suspect that it would be better undiluted (but I did not try it that way).

-- Jeff