Gray is Scary!

     Well I did it. I worked on a dappled gray. I wanted to work on it on Christmas, but it was super rainy and windy, so there was no way I was going to be able to go out and do the finish in between the layers. So I waited until Saturday. I was planning on using the earth pigments but when I looked in the box I saw that I didn't have gray. Alright, eyeshadow it is!

     A while back, probably months ago, I put several horses in base coats. Micro Duke told me he wanted to be dappled gray. I was not sure if I believed that but I put him in a white base coat anyway. I got out my JSC Cremated palette, which is shades of gray and black, and got to work. 

       I made sure I had a reference photo handy and I worked on making my dapples with an eraser. I could not get them to be as tiny as I wanted them, no matter how hard I tried. It was a bit frustrating. I liked how he looked though, even with the out-of-scale dapples. 

      I added finish and I worked on darkening the parts that were darker in the reference. 

      I don't hate this. It bugs me that the dapples are out of scale, but so far I can't seem to get them to be smaller. I might need a bigger subject. I am actually considering doing a gray for NaMoPaiMo. It is a scary thought. 

      These picture is horrible, the real horse actually looks pretty good I think. But the photos did not come out well at all. Dappled gray is still really scary, especially in micro scale. But I really like how the horses have been coming out with pigments. This is now 3 horses that I have managed to paint for myself, and finish, in about a week. I also want to work on some others. I still don't consider my work anywhere near LSQ, but I am not embarrassed by the horses I have been doing. So that's something. 

     It's almost January, which means it is getting closer to the time where we think about, and focus on, NaMoPaiMo. I was going to try to get my Andalusian ready so I could work on her, but that is very unlikely to happen. I have so far only taken off her mane and forelock. I have a lot of sanding to do and I need to make her a new mane. She needs to be prepped... yeah she is almost definitely not going to be ready. But I do still have a bunch of prepped horses waiting for me. I think I might paint my Barnaby to a dappled gray. Maybe. I still have over a month to decide. But definitely if I do a gray, it will get "painted" in eyeshadow!