Seeing spots part 6 - Roaning

If you wear glasses, it's time to put them on. We are going to get into the very intense detail now. Do you remember how I said in the last post that white markings take forever? What we are about to do takes longer still.

We're going to add roaning to our horse. On a real horse, roaning refers to scattered white hairs mixed into the main body color. On our model appaloosa, we'll be adding some colored hairs in as well, but in the same style. We'll also be using the roaning to make some more spots. This is the look you'll be aiming for:



You have a choice here. You can use a tiny paint brush and very thinly diluted paint, or you can use professional quality colored pencils with a VERY sharp point. On Scarlett, I'm using Prismacolors which I have come to prefer. In the interest of letting you make an informed decision, here is another Tumlinson sculpture, Desperado, roaned using a paint brush:



Starting on the dark areas of the body with a white or light color (I used mostly French Grey 50% with some White and Putty Grey Prismacolors on my girl) and create a bunch of teeny tiny strokes following the hair pattern. The mane and tail are done the same way, you'll just make each hair far longer.



You don't want all solid blocks of roaning here, make more spots by leaving some holes. Feel free to overdo it and leave tons of these holes, you can always fill some (or most, or all) of them in later with more roaning.



Some, but not all, of these holes can have a spot painted into them as well. You can also take your pencils and add some tiny spots wherever your reference picture or artistic sensibilities dictate. Just be sure to stick to the spot placement guidelines we went over earlier.



In areas where there are unbroken expanses of roan hairs, I like to make parts of the roaning more dense, even going so far as to scribble in blocks of white like a kindergartener with a crayon. Be careful with this, it's easy to overdo.

The trickiest part of all this will be when you need to follow a cowlick. The easiest way I've found is to outline the cowlick in roan hairs and then fill it in layer by layer as such:



When you hit the edge where the body color and the white meet, dig out some pencils that match the body color in that area and paint some hairs onto the white marking with them by way of blending. Scarlett is obviously not a horse groomed for a show, but a broodmare out in pasture, so I went over all of her white areas with hairs done in French Grey 50% and Putty Grey to make her look both shaggy and not so squeaky clean. You may or may not want to do this with your horse depending on the model you're using. Lastly, you can choose to halo your spots with a bit of light and dark hairs mixed together. I haven't done this to Scarlett yet, but probably will by the next time you see her. Here is Scarlett now:



The worst is now over. It's finally time to paint the finishing details!