DarkArt Online Art Paintings Gallery in South Africa
Art in Johannesburg

Visit us and see more art paintings for sale online. Here at Darkart.co.za's art gallery, you can find the most lively and finest art paintings in South Africa.

Collecting all sorts of dead and interesting things is still part of my life today. It still had some grey fur and one tiny white tooth in the head. How long had the little body lain there discarded, not even a worthy meal for some other hungry creature? As an art teacher or artist, this is the one book you should have. The brown already shows some of the shadows and creates a good backdrop for the black outline of the actual horse. A colour printout is sufficient to get to this stage of the painting, the first proper layer and a basic background. It may look quite finished, but that is only on the photo, in reality it is still quite a rough painting. Pretty much the final touches, a minor correction here and the deepening of a shadow there. The trick to a good horse painting are shadows and shiny coats, and of course getting all of the proportions just right. And this is what the final product looked like, the day it was collected, two weeks after starting this 3rd? With big windows and lots of light, in summer it feels like living in a tree house. Also the hindquarters of the horse appear small in relation to the front. Don't take a picture of an unnatural stance, the way you would not expect to see in a painting. Don't cut the picture in half with any feature, ocean, mountains or as here the sky. You want the image to be off-centre horizontally and vertically. To take a good picture of any animal, you need to get to its shoulder level. With a horse, if you stand at the shoulder and take the photograph towards the head, you can get a very good photo. To photograph the whole body, make sure you can see all 4 legs, that the ears are pricked and also stand with your camera at the shoulder or towards the middle of the back. The horse should also be on level ground and not on a slope to avoid distortion of the proportions. With dogs and cats, you need to get down to their level, so that their shoulder is at your eye level. Never take the picture from the top looking down at the animal. The best time for any photo is early morning or late afternoon outdoor, so you get good contrast and shadows. This helps to get shine on the coats of horses or cows or creates texture if the animal is fluffy. a third from the top, bottom, left or right of a photo.