Painting a horse portrait with lost and found edges.

This painting that I am currently working on is from two pretty good photographs, but I wanted to create a lot more atmosphere and romance in the oil painting than exists in the photos. The horse is a gorgeous aged gentleman, at 36 years still going strong and I want the piece to have a timeless quality.

To this end, I have replaced the stable walls and door and rug in the photo with a background half in deep shadow and half in light. He emerges from the shadows with the light accentuating his profile. (He has such a beautiful facial bone structure that I had to show it to the best advantage in his portrait).

The edges take on new importance in this portrait, meaning that I am trying to create contrast in some important focal areas ( the nasal peak, and the eyes)  while playing down contrast in other areas so that they lose themselves in the background. 

*Update -here are a couple of photos of the finished portrait.

You can see that I managed to refine the bone structure a great deal. I constantly check and measure proportions throughout the layers of a painting, making adjustments as I go along.

Work process video - painting a horse portrait.

I had already painted the first layer of this painting of a beautiful Chestnut Peruvian Paso gelding called Tucker, kind permission of K Broemmelsick.  I hung the canvas up to dry and it was actually almost a year until I managed to get a second session in. I filmed myself painting the next stage and made a video.  When editing it, I found out that I use my fingers rather more than I realise!