Seeing spots part 4 - Spots!

Finally, it's time to add some spots! One would figure that you'd paint the white blanket first and then add the spots later. I prefer to paint my blankets around the spots. The reason being that the airbrush is very likely to spatter and overspray a little bit as you do this and there is no hiding that on a white background. You can save yourself hours of grief by painting your spots first.

Let's start with a few guidelines (Note that I said "guidelines", not "rules". It's very difficult to find hard and fast rules where horses are concerned. We follow the pirate's code around here!) about Appaloosa patterns:

1. Appy spots are not perfectly round. This is nature we are talking about here. Most spots are more of an oval and they frequently have ragged ends. They also vary in size.

2. Appy spots follow the hair pattern in a general way. Horses' coats do not grow straight from nose to tail. There are curves. There are cowlicks. I strongly advise you to go out and look at a real horse to learn where the hair pattern lies. I have yet to find a really good chart with this information, so I'm afraid you'll have to go to the barn and make a research project out of it. You are going to need this information later too.

3. Most Appaloosas have some spots that are darker than the body color. Often the majority of their spots are like this. Also, they are not necessarily all the same color.

4. Spots like to cluster. They will appear in small groups, they'll overlap, they might even line up in places. (Be careful with that last one. Sometimes what exists in life looks fake when placed on a model.)

Bear all this in mind as you paint and stick to your reference photos and hopefully you will end up with a lifelike Appaloosa, not a polka-dotted fantasy horse!

Now, on to Scarlett. I've loaded my airbrush with raw umber again and, using the same fine spray that we made our flowers with, have placed all but the tiniest spots where I want them.



Remember what I said about all spots not being the same color? Now I'm going to take some black and darken most of the spots on the upper half of her body. Since the color was already loaded in the airbrush, I went ahead and added the black points that will make her into a bay from this strange brownish-red color. I darkened the skin closest to her eyes, mouth, and nostrils as well. Now we have to let the paint set for at least few hours and we can start adding white.