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MinervasMuse — Realistic Horse Painting Tutorial
#bay #black #cherry #chestnut #color #equine #grey #horse #paint #shade #theory #tutorial #white #how
Published: 2015-08-15 04:55:08 +0000 UTC; Views: 8689; Favourites: 257; Downloads: 0
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Description
So it's finally done! This was brutal but goodness it was fun. It's enjoyable to try and help people and put thoughts down in one centered place.In this tutorial horse anatomy, horse shading, color theory, and painting realistic horses is covered. This also explains how big the picture is.
Remember, even though this tutorial covers a lot of information and may even expose new ideas and rules to live by, you should take your own time to further explore these topics and practice. No artist got to the level they're at today by some sort of luck called "Talent" or being "gifted", perhaps those help, but in reality those artists invested time and effort into creating their pieces and that is the only true way to getting better. So reference, study, and practice!
Other tutorials:
References:
My Doberman because he looks like a horse
www.equine-world.co.uk/about_h…
bastardrat.com/restinpetes/ske…
t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:AN…
All copyright belongs to MinervasMuse(Kate Davis), do not claim as your own, redistribute, or steal.
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Comments: 29
Excellent job! It is very useful. 
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This is glorious, but I do have a question. What extra colours should be used to help with the highlighting and shading of a silver bay dun? It looks ok with using red and yellow hues, but I still feel like it is rather 'flat' I tried adding purple and blue with very low opacity, but it either doesn't make a difference or involuntarily bursts into flames and dies ahah.
fav.me/d9nda2i Believe it or not, I did use a lot of colours XD
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Uh, lord, multicolor horses. I didn't put those in the tutorial at the time because they are so much work. I mean paints, Appaloosas, roans, you name it. I also didn't feel comfortable enough offering advice on them at the time.
Well, anyway, onto the current question. Your little horse is not only two colors (white and the tan), but she already has added colors to her (the teal and blue in the mane, eyes and speckles), so you're going to want to avoid painting her every color of the spectrum too much. Honestly, I'd need to fool around with her before I gave advice. If you wouldn't mind waiting a few days, I'll send you some quick drawings of her painted with other colors added and whatnot?
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haha gotta love the difficult ones.
Thank you so much for you help. I really appreciate it 
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So I'm horribly slow in getting back to you and still haven't drawn the examples but I did see this on my art feed and I think it could help you. I love this artist bcause her knowledge of color is astounding. The particular horse she colored here is close to your horse. Notice how the tips of color on the horse are the same as on yours, the teal and blue in the tail of this horse but mane of yours. the-day-of-shadow.deviantart.c…
Now she added a ton of colors that I may not recommend trying to do all at once the first time, but note how many shades of blue she put on the horse when shading and coloring and how it accentuates the little blue marking in the tail. This is what you should do. Focus on adding hues of blue throughout to showcase your horse's blue markings. She also has some red spectrum colors on the horse seen in the white mainly and as highlights. An interesting technique a lot of artists do is use the blue spectrum, or cold colors, for highlights and warm colors as shadows to experiment and add depth. Think about it and let me know if that helped. If you still want me to draw those examples and can wait a very long time, sorry x_x, I'll still do it.
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haha not a problem. I'm incredibly slow with my art too. It would be amazing to see them but please do not feel pressured into doing the examples!
I've been watching her for a while and I adore her use of colour. Thank you so much for showing me how to use the blue to help show off her markings. I'm working on another piece at the moment so I can't wait to try using those colours with her.
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ahhhhh, how are you so amazing making such wonderful things ;u; I will draw all the horses soon
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I'm glad I inspired you!
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This is totally awesome! So helpful!!! I will definitely recommend people to this if they ask!
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I'm very glad it covered what you wanted! And thank you!
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Awesome job really! Your tutorials are detailed perfectly!
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That means a lot, thank you <3
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Yes, this is totally helpful!! A lot of these topics are skipped in art class, depending on who is teaching, so it is great to see them covered in this way.
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I'm glad you find it useful. It's hard to find some of these topics exist when you have no idea what to look for. It took me way too much research for me to find these accidentally when they're so important.
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Finding them accidentally is right, so it is a great help to have the concepts introduced in one spot. I have found discussion of color theory and the various forms of lighting in several books on painting by David Gurney (author of Dinotopia), and a few other topics covered in some basic watercolor guides, so if folks want a deeper discussion (the subjects and examples are often landscapes, humans, or still life rather than equines), I do recommend Gurney's books and The Complete Watercolorist's Essential Notebook by Gordon MacKenzie.
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Oh, wow, I never knew he wrote Dinotopia, but otherwise I appreciate the suggestion. If I get a chance I'll check out the books. Most of the time though I watch YouTube video series on the concepts. There's a professional digital illustrator who does a marvelous job at explaining things, I just happen to forget his account.
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"here is a horse that doses not follow rules and should be killed with fire immediately. Seriously."
I cant stop laughing.Holy crap XD Well deserved fav and watch there XD
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You made my day for commenting on that! I'm so glad someone found that as funny as I did.
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this is SO helpful!! I'll make sure to use it next time I'm drawing a horse
thank you so much for this!
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Glad you appreciate it!
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For how long have you been drawing horses? Probably not as long as me. And you understand all of it... all the details. the whole anatomy. the lighting
This is amazing and I'm totally using it for my realistic pieces
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Well, to be honest, I was a crazy horse girl all growing up and I always drew them. I just didn't start up with them digitally; however when you learn the basic techniques of how to find small details and colors, you really only need to acquaint yourself with some anatomy. Really, you're doing just fine and I have personally found sometimes finding that right piece of information on how to do something can improve your work much faster than just drawing a horse day to day. For instance, color theory rockes my damn world.
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Oh, I'm so thrilled someone likes it! If there's any other type of tutorial you feel that doesn't already exist or there just isn't one that goes in depth enough, I'd love to help create it.
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I have so many tutorials, but I shade my characters with linearts, & sometimes getting the right touch to it is super difficult.
So this is really helpful.
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Fair enough, but I am glad it'll help you
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