15th October 2024

I need to refine my painting skills in all mediums. The next logical step was to use acrylics. After researching Alfred Munnings and the way he had a touch of abstractness in his backgrounds. I thought I would try and do this in my own style. I also wanted to use a slightly limited pallet.

I realised once I started to paint the foal onto the image that my background colour clashes rather than complemented the coat colour.

The more detail I put into the foal’s coat, adding shadows etc, it was still not the right background colour choice of reds and oranges with the golden coat.

I decided to cool it down by adding blues, this had the desired effect of making the foal pop out.

The final result is better than I thought it would be, especially as I had made such a mistake about the background colour initially. I would have liked the foal to look a little more realistic, although this is hard as I actually don’t want to be the kind of artisit whose paintings and drawings look like photographs. That realism is commendable, but I don’t think it suits my thought process and loose way of painting. I like attention to detail, however, I respect photography as an art form in it’s own right and if I had taken a photograph that was worthy of putting on the wall, I wouldn’t want to duplicate it in a painting. I would rather have the original image blown up and printed on canvas.