Painting my British Heavies - Part 2, Painting horses

In my last post I left the British heavy dragoons assembled, primed and ready to go. Now I am ready to talk about painting them. Again, there are many very fine painters out there who do a much better job than I could ever do, but someone had inquired about my process so I thought I would cover it. Regarding style, more about this later.

A bit about paints and inks

Everyone has their favourite paints. When it comes to paints I'm a bit of a Philistine, doing all of my earlier painting with craft paints and only in the past few years migrating more to Vallejo. Still, there are some things I like to use the craft paints for. Also, because they dry more slowly they are easier on my brushes, not requiring me to clean the brush as often. In general, I often use the craft paints for my under painting and use the Vallejo, with their better coverage and thicker viscosity, for highlights and details. 

I also make a fair bit of use of washes, and for these I mostly use Liquitex acrylic inks.

A bit about brushes

Again, everyone has their favourite brushes. Sable is considered the best, of course, but again, I find the Vallejo paints so hard on brushes that I am perfectly happy to get by with synthetics. The brushes I use I purchase from an art supply store (Curry's, Series 2500), and are a round brush made for watercolours and acrylics. They cost me under $3 each and I buy them in multiples. The sizes I use are: #00, #1 and #2.

I also generally have a retired #2 for dry brushing, as this destroys the brush and a trimmed down #00 for piping, lace etc. I always reach for as large a brush as possibly, rarely using the #00's for anything but fine work with the #1 being my workhorse.

I have learnt the hard way that the best way to keep your brushes functioning is to rinse them often and the moment the paint starts to dry on the bristles (or just before!) wash them with a bit of soap and water. I keep a cake of soap on my table in a dish. Finally, never leave your brushes standing in the water and always make sure they are holding a point when you stop painting with them for the day.

The brushes I use, top to bottom: a #00 trimmed down for fine work, a #00, #1, #2, and a couple of retired #2's used for dry brushing. At the top is my painting block that I use to hold figures when painting. With riding figures, however, it doesn't work so well as there is no base to grasp them by, another reason I painted these guys attached to their horses!

A bit about style

Okay, I feel like I'm going out on a limb here when talking about style, especially as I see most of my painting as being appropriate for viewing on a gaming table, not zoomed in close to be seen warts and all. In my defence, I will say that I have painted about 5,000 figures since I got back into wargaming 20 years ago and my painting style has been developed to that end!

I would describe my style as more impressionistic than precise. Some might call it blobby or dabby and I'm good with that. I always work from dark to light, priming with black as I find black makes the colours punchy. I don't outline, but let my darker underpainting come through to break up some of the elements. I generally undercoat with a darker version of the colour I am doing, and then follow with mid-tones and highlights. Sometimes I settle for just a base colour or base and highlights.

I also make extensive use of washes and dry brushing to bring up details.

A step by step tutorial

This first part of the tutorial will deal with painting the horses. I find there are a lot of beautiful figure painters who seem to spend too little time with the horse - which is too bad, because generally the sculpts are very good and with a bit of effort, painting them can be super rewarding. The process may sound a bit tedious, but this actually can go very quickly when working in batches, as I always do, with the base horse probably not taking more than 15 minutes apiece (harness etc. is more tedious).

Reference

I would suggest that if you are painting cavalry a good place to begin is gathering horse reference. On my iPad I have a photo file dedicated to horses of all colours, gleaned from the web through image searches. There is a great deal of variety, even among the classic colours like chestnuts, bays, roans, greys, etc., with different coloured manes, stockings, nose colours and facial markings. 

The 4th Dragoons rode horses that were bay, brown and chestnut, but over a campaign other colours would have crept in. I like a few lighter coloured horses in the mix, so added some beige (roans?), but avoided greys (not used for heavy dragoon trumpeters) and blacks (because I dislike painting black horses!)

Underpainting

My first step is to paint all of the horses with a dark undercoat, in this case raw umber. (In the photos below, I will try to include the paints used behind the figures.) With the exception of greys (I use dark grey) and blacks (black) I undercoat even my light-coloured and white horses with raw umber.

Dry Brushing

Next I dry brush all of the horses. By dry brush, I mean getting some paint on the brush, scrubbing the majority off on my palette and then brushing it lightly over the horse. This is a great technique to work up details, especially something like the musculature of a horse, with the paint building on the raised surfaces but not getting so much into the crevices and valleys. Remember this will ruin your brush, so use one that has already lost its shape!

The colour used for dry brushing will be my base colour for that horse. In this case I have divided up my twelve horses, with two being beige or tan, seven being shades of brown and three being reddish brown (chestnuts? I'm going to avoid the horsey names, they just confuse me!) 

Horses with base coat raw umber, and dry-brushed sandstone (light), Vallejo English Leather (red brown horses) and Saddle Brown (mid and dark brown horses).

Close up of beige (sandstone) horse. The dry brushing allows some of the undercoat to come through, although with light horses I give it a pretty good covering, relying more on later washes for definition.

Dry brushed Saddle Brown. Here I can allow more of the underpainting to stay in the recesses.

Dry brushed English Leather. 

Highlights

My next stage is to add some high lights. Here I am using my base colour mixed with a lighter tone, often a yellow or beige, and, not dry brushing this time, but stroking that on to the areas I want highlighted, following the shape of the muscle - this goes on high points of muscles, rump, ear tips etc. I don't worry too much if it's a bit patchy, blending some on the rump maybe, as this is still a preliminary stage.

I mostly add ink washes later, but with the light coloured horses I apply a first coat now, before adding highlights, in this case a wash of raw sienna and raw umber, to bring up the horses' musculature.

 

Red horses with highlights worked up. They look a bit pasty, but again, this is underpainting. You can see I am using my good #2 for this work.

Mid-brown horses, with more highlights worked up.

Darker brown horses, with fewer highlights and done with just a more concentrated Saddle Brown.

Beige horse, with sandstone reapplied to highlights over the wash. A bit patchy, but that is okay and will be resolved later.

Washes

Having done all the prep work ink washes can now be applied. This is fast and gratifying, applying multiple layers of washes until the horse has the depth and tone of colour you want. I sometimes will apply up to three washes, remembering to allow the wash to dry before applying the next layer. These washes will sink into the recesses and also smooth out the transition on the highlights you applied earlier. The ink washes I use are:

Dark brown horses: carbon black and raw umber (multiple washes)

Reddish horses: raw umber and a rust brown, sometimes following up with just a raw umber wash

Mid-brown horses: raw umber or coffee brown

Beige horses: a light wash of raw umber mixed with raw sienna 

Dark brown and reddy brown horses with washes applied.

Beige and mid-brown horses with washes applied

Markings, socks etc.

Once the washes are dry I add the bits that further individualize the horses. I give them a mix of whites socks (one, two or three legs), black socks (usually all of the horses' legs) or none at all. The horses are given different mane and tail colours, mostly black but a few with reddish or beige manes and tails. The latter usually require a light ink wash afterwards.

I will give white facial markings to a number of the horses, and these can be quite varied from small patches, to larger blazes. Sometimes they will even run down into the nose and around the nostrils.

Finally I will give a few of the horses flesh-coloured noses (usually some of the reds and beiges) or dry brush black on some of the noses.

The hooves I paint universally grey. There is variation in actual horses' hoof colour, but as they mostly get hidden by the flocking on the base I don't worry too much about this.

Here are the beige and mid-brown horses with their individualized markings.

And here are the dark brown and reddish horses. The one second from the left with the red mane is my attempt to paint what is called a "liver chestnut".

And here are all of them again with the paints used to do the various markings etc.

Harness, blankets etc.

I now finish up the horses with the harness, rolled cloaks, valises etc. I will get more into my application of paint in the next tutorial, but here is my process in brief.

I will paint a dark base colour (in this case a very dark burgundy red mixed with black for the rolled cloak and valise and a very dark green for the saddle blanket.) This I highlight with the mid-tone colour (allowing the undercoat to come through to define some of the folds) and then add a few lighter highlights, mixing both the red and the green with a bit of yellow for those.

All the harness is painted flat black, with a few highlights of grey added to bring it forward and touches of silver are added to the harness where there are buckles and bits. The eyes, as well, are painted with black and then the smallest dot of white is the last thing added to bring the horse to life!

All twelve horses painted.

A close up showing how the dry brush, highlighting and ink washes combine to make a well-defined, glossy coat, and how the addition of socks, facial markings, pink nose and beige mane and tail individualize this horse. Also note the small dot of white in the eye to bring the horse alive!

P.S. I could have saved myself a lot of time by referring readers to these tutorials by one of my favourite horse painters in 1/72, Marvin at Suburban Militarism. Here is a link to his series of four tutorials. I can't remember if I have read all of these but Marvin's results have always been an inspiration.

https://suburbanmilitarism.wordpress.com/2017/01/22/courses-for-horses/

And now on to painting the riders, which can be viewed here.