Since you’ve landed on this page and stayed long enough to start reading, you must be interested in learning more about colored pencil portraits. You probably have a horse or pet you would like to have immortalized in the finest colored pencil materials and using the best colored pencil practices.
You may be less familiar with me personally, so let me share some information with you.
About Colored Pencil Portraits
I’ve been painting and drawing pictures of horses since I was a child. I learned to paint by doing every paint-by-number painting of horses I could find.
When I couldn’t find new ones, I started over with favorites, but made changes in color or leg positions or other details. Then one day, my mother said, “Why don’t you draw your own horses to paint?”
The rest is history.
Why Horses?
Why, of all the beauty on God’s earth, do horses fascinate me so?
The easy answer is that there is nothing else that equals the grace and beauty of a horse. There is a quote running around somewhere that says, “Ask me about poetry in motion and I will show you a horse.” That pretty much sums it up for me.
When God made the horse, He did something very special.
When God made me, He put inside both a fascination with watching horses and with attempting to capture on paper what I see in life. A never-ending challenge, to be sure.
Horse portraits have been my primary artistic endeavor since the mid 1970s. I’ve painted backyard pets and champion horses for horse owners across the United States and in Canada.
But I also do other animal portraits too. Dogs, cats. An occasional cow. The most unique animal portrait to date shows a mallard drake tail up feeding in a pond.
Capturing Memories
Over the years, creating portraits has come to be more than just making oil paintings or colored pencil drawings that look like specific animals. It’s more about capturing a moment in time or a fond memory than about the tools or techniques I use. There’s more of warm feelings in my artwork than pencil and paper. A number of portraits have brought tears to the client’s eyes, especially if the subject of the portrait is no longer with them.
The value of a portrait far exceeds the cost of materials, time and effort for most clients. Their portrait is a priceless memory; an heirloom that captures a special animal.
Creating art that captures the essence of a moment as well as the spirit of the individual horse is my personal motivation for every portrait.
Do you have a moment that needs to be captured in oils? Contact me and let’s talk.
