Horse studies

horse study, by frankeber 

I’ll scratch your back…by frankeber 2013

2013

I’ve been drawing and painting a lot of horses lately. They are a fascinating subject and quite difficult. These two are horse portraits from reference material. The photographs were taken in Vienna, Austria. Horses are the most beautiful, benign creatures and as a carriage horse have a pretty thankless job, I think. The carriage drivers are called ‘Fiaker’ and it seems you can’t be one unless you smoke at least two packs of cigarettes a day! That was at least my impression…

Having said that, they treat their horses nicely, for the most part. They get a blankie when it’s cold and windy, a rain coat when it’s  rainy! Don’t try to feed them though, the fiakers really don’t like that! It’s understandable, people would feed them all kinds of junk through out the day. Can’t be good for the horse…

I don’t consider these real paintings, more like studies – both are quarter sheets, approx 11 x 14 inches

In these works, I am particularly careful to limit hard edges. You can see lots of lost and found edges around the horses muzzles and they seem to be almost connected. The colors on the screen don’t do it justice, the purple in the second piece looks like a bland blue on my screen. Some colors just can’t be replicated by a computer screen. Almost a comforting thought to me!

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