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Painting Horses

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Mike Hillsgrove on Painting Horses With Inks

The word is INKS, INKS is the word!!! Run, do not walk, to the nearest store that sells that Games Workshop stuff and pick up a bottle of BROWN, CHESTNUT, BLACK, and FLESHWASH. It doesn't matter what paints that you use, but these are the inks to use.

Layout all of your horses on the table, the more the better. Black prime 1/2 to 2/3 of the horses, white prime the rest. Let them dry overnight. I don't care how dry they look in 2 hours, let them dry overnight. (Trust me on this, I worked for years in a paint lab). Then mix them up.

Get a few basecoat colors. A Dark Brown, a Light Brown, White, and a Buff color are nice. My suggestions are Scorched Brown, Vomit Brown, an Asian Flesh maybe, whatever. Open one of them (I keep mine on the slightly thin side) and basecoat every 3rd, 4th or 5th horse randomly, with the color you've chosen. When you hit the end, chose a different color and repeat the process till you've used up all the colors and have hit all the horses. Be sloppy, if a little white or black prime show through, no problem. Let them dry overnight. I don't care what the bottle says or how dry they look, let them dry overnight. If you don't, don't cry to me or badmouth the technique when everything gets screwed up.

Mix up the horses again. Pull out maybe 25% of the white horses to be pure white horses. Pick one of the inks, shake it and randomly every 3rd, 4th, or 5th horse slop the ink on all over the horse. Use fairly large wet brush (I use a 0, 1, or 3). Be generous. When you hit the end of the horses pick a different ink and keep going till all the horses are inked and all of the colors are used. You might even wave a brush at one or two of the pure whites to speckle or spot the horse. Let them dry overnight, seriously. Ink takes longer to cure. Even if you "got away" with it before, You won't this time. Guaranteed!!!!!!!!

Now for the details. Use the inks to darken the manes and tails randomly. Certain colors really look good together, On the darker horses, black in the manes and tails really are sharp, on the middle shades, use a darker brown/black/chestnut than you did your original wash with OR drybrush the manes and tails with either white or your buff color. I take at least one dark horse and use the buff drybrush for the mane and tail. On a few horses use a thined black ink to hit the lower part of 1, 2, 3, or 4 legs of the horse. On a few others do the same with the white drybrush. Mix these in with the others and chose maybe 10-20% at random to hit the nose and forehead (between the eyes) with a random bit of white paint.

When dry I may take a spotter and touch the eyeballs and or hoofs to some or all with black paint. If you have horse furniture, paint now (British Crimson on the straps and reins looks remarkably good - Someone told me this and I scoffed - what a fool I was).

Now you have a horde of horses that look like horses, no two are the same color, shade, or detailed the same. Flavor as desired, for example my Huns all are black primed and are all on fairly dark horses.

Joe Mann on Painting Hores

Get pictures to look at. The Oklahoma State site is great (http://www.ansi.okstate.edu/breeds/horses/). I find, for best effect, mane and tail should contrast with body color, hooves should contrast also. Standard base, wash and highlight, detail in the harnesses. On black horses and Bays, I highlight the manes, tails, and any blackbits that need highlighting/drybrushing in bright blue. That works for me. Gray just makes it look gray instead of black. Blue is unnatural and so looks like a highlight. For light colored horse legs (if i haven't blackened their socks) I use black hooves; for dark/black horses, beige hooves.

Douglas Barker on Painting Horses

For horses, paint them brown, use undiluted brown ink to wash them, and then paint the reins and harness with a leather or pale brown colour (I use Ral-Partha Cleric Brown). The ink will pool above and below the leather work on the figure since it is raised compared to the rest of the horse, so you'll get good contrast between the pale brown and the dark shadows. This can also be done to paint leather on people.

Ed Allen on Painting Horses

Well, most of those were done in a drybrush style if I remember right, mostly with the old Polly S and some Ral Partha acrylic paint. Dark brown, then drybrush with dark red brown, and then a little with red brown.

For Chestnuts, that's the full coloring, except for maybe lightening the mane and tail a bit sometimes. Black or really dark brown are good for the eye, no white in the eye is needed for a horse. Socks or stockings on 1 to 4 legs on maybe 2/3 of the horses, white marks on the forehead on some, on the muzzle on a few. Drybrush a bit of flesh on a few muzzles. I usually then pick out a contrasting shade of brown to do the tack, a bit of silver for the bit and maybe the rivets where the straps meet at the sides of the bridle. Then work up any baggage dangling on the saddle last, first with a dark color and then drybrush lighter. If you want to paint the hooves to look real, they tend to be tannish to dull brown, look at some pictures, unless the real cavalry unit is using hoof-black for a dressy look.

Bays are similar but get a black mane and tail, and black or a mix of black and brown up most of the leg and maybe onto the body.

Grays start with a medium gray to black undercoat. Then work up by dry brushing with light gray toned a bit with some brown or tan, up to white. Maybe using a damp brush at the end to blend the drybrushing in and leave it less patchy. There is a lot of characteristic patterning in real grays. Pictures will help.

Blacks get a black undercoat and a dark brown drybrushing.

If you don't have any picture books or old National Geographics or something with a lot of color photos of horses around the house, you can find one of those "breeds of horses and horse care" color picture books at Barnes and Noble for $10-$20. I just got one recently, so that I can look at photos of horses while I'm painting them, to get colors and patterning right, and not just from my hazy memory. I think the current batch is coming out nicer than those old ones that were definitely painted from memory without a reference for horse colors in front of me.

The last thing to note is that if you do a halfway decent job, mainly just keeping the horse color on the horse and saddle color on the saddle, without getting fancy, most people are not familiar enough with horses to really notice anything that is not egregiously off.

Dasandersx on Painting White and Grey Horses

First of all, remember to NEVER paint a white horse white. Paint them with a light grey, then drybrush an off-white over that. Maybe even a use a slightly darker grey around the saddlery/straps/reins. Remember that many white horses have darker points (nose, feet, etc.) that can really enhance the look.

For a grey horse, I typically paint the horse a medium light grey, then start mixing gradually darker shades and working my way down the horse. From the photos, (Robert E. ) Lee's horse was darker on the bottom than the top, and this seemed to be more from color than shadow. Also, for grey horses, the points might be darker.

Certainly I paint the manes slightly darker than the body color, but only for contrast.

Jeff Wesevich on Painting Dappled Greys

Use a "natural" sponge (get them from Michael's or an art-supply store), Touch it lightly to the paint on your palette, paper towel more off, then lightly dab the horse. (Assuming you've already got a grey base on the horse already).

I would imagine that if you were using acrylics you could give it a light gray "binding" wash (base color thinned to about 1:10 or 1:12) if you had any mistakes or if the dapple came out too prominent.

John G. on Painting Dappled Greys

Funny you should mention dappled grey horses, since I've just spent most of the day painting just that. I used Colour Party 'horse sheens' grey on a black undercoat (actually I think white undercoat would have been much better). For the dappling, I dipped the tip of a brush into white paint and then dipped it into water to dilute the paint (next time, I'll just mix up the right dilution of white paint to start with). I then gently touched the brush onto the horse leaving a very small droplet of watery white. When the droplets dried, the effect was just right (at least according to my otherwise very critical wife and daughter). Too much paint gives polkadot pajamas, too much water on the brush and the droplets run! The dappling took about 1 minute per 15mm horse.

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Last Updated: July 11, 2001

Comments, questions and additions welcome. Send them to Chris Brantley at brant@erols.com.