Pastels are Awesome

       One of my prizes from NaMoPaiMo was a set of earth pigments. I was so excited to get them because I have wanted to try pasteling for years. It struck me as something I might be sort of good at, since it is kind of like putting makeup on a model horse. I have a lot of practice with blending makeup. I also had a lot of already prepped horses. What I didn't have was anything that was already in a base coat. Saturday I decided I was going to change that and I picked out several horses and got them into base coats. I have had the pigments for almost 3 weeks and I hadn't found the time to do anything with them. That needed to stop. I need to do something fun that is just for me. 

     I decided the first horse I wanted to focus on was this Copperfox pony. She told me she wanted to be a buckin paint and I said OK. I have never done a paint horse and I have never done anything in buckskin. Seemed like a good idea. 

    I have zero experience with art piments but I do have experience with makeup, which is basically the same thing. I grabbed the color that I thought I needed to get the color from my reference and I started building. It was cool to see the change in the color of the pony

     I knew about spraying finish in between layers so I went in and out, sprayed the horse, added more layers and so on. 

     When I felt the color was too light for what I wanted I changed up the color and tried again. I got to a point where the color on the pony was close to the reference, but darker. I didn't know really how to fix it, and I was a bit impatient. Mostly I was having a really great time!

         I started adding the dark points to this little pony and it was even more fun than the body color. I could definitely see the difference right away and the transition from body color to dark points looks so natural. I struggle to achieve that with acrylics. 

      I added some pigments, ran out to spray a coat of finish, came back to do more pigment and so on. The color built up so easily! I really love using pigments to finish a horse. 

     I didn't end up being totally pleased with the body color, but it's nice enough. The points came out really well and everything looks great. And it was so fast! I was having such a great time. 

       So much faster than I ever would have imagined I was done with the body color, done with the black points and ready to start on the whites. I found a reference that had a relatively small amount of white, which I thought might make things a little easier, since I know that whites take forever. In just a couple of hours I went from base coat to working through white markings. I still have to do mane, tail and hooves, but I have come a really long way in just part of an afternoon. And I am really liking the results!

     Thank you again to Jerri Tedford for donating the earth pigments and to Jennifer Buxton for holding NaMoPaiMo and for making my dream of putting makeup on a horse a reality.