I got myelf an Andrea mounted knight for Christmas don't want to ruin it so how do you paint horses smae techniques as faces or uniforms? I use acrylics, enamels and oils.

I've done two horses in the last couple years. One was a dark brown with darker mane and tali and the other was a dapple gray.

The brown was just painted the chosen shade of brown with darker browns for the sahdows and around any musculature. He has an airbrushe white blaze on his nose and I think wite fetlocks (stockings). Lighten brown for highlights.

The gray was airbrushed Model master camoflage gray (the Vietnam a/c underside color). I then made a tiny hole in a plastic lid and airbrushed Floquil grimy black for his dappling. I then toned this down with a light overspray of the base color and added shadows. He has grimy black as a base for his mane and tail, with black wash and lighted gray highlight.

If you can, go to somewhere where there are horses and get some pictures. Any color changes should be tightly feathered or blended. Straight lines are out.

If he's charging a bit of white at the back of the eye will enliven himn, if not, just dab some gloss ove the black.

Have fun with him.

Hey,Godfather,again on bent knee,i kiss your signet ring,just got back from the works do.so i an not compus mentus(pissed},will give you some tips tomorow,will work in oils
Arthur

Shepard Paine's Building and Painting Scale Figures has a whole chapter on how to paint horses. It is worth the investment if you can find one.

Patrick

For this camel I used artist's oil paints. I first airbrushed some tan enamel paint for an undercoat, then mixed up an appropriate base colour for the camel with oils and brushed a thin layer of this on. I mixed up different shades and blended them in to give the camel more depth (this is why I used oils, for the blending). Obviously a horse is a little different, but I got ideas for painting the camel from guys who had painted horses and adapted them to suit my project. You can do the reverse here, perhaps.

Nic

One thing to bear in mind when painting your horse is what colour to do it, the history of what breeds were where, and at what time makes an accurate portrayal tricky without research.
After all, you wouldn't want some smartass pointing out that they never had such and such a breed in that country, after all your artistic effort, would you?!
For example, when painting the horses for my WW2 era German artillery team, I looked up what breeds were likely for the time in Germany in 'The Observers Book of Horses & Ponies' (mainly chestnut and brown Holsteins, Hafflinger and Hannoverians by the way), similar books are probably at your local library and a quick flick through will thwart those 'rivet counters'. The same info may be on the 'Net somewhere, it's just that my wife had the book to hand because she does dressage!
Just a thought.

Also, as I am painting two horses for a vignette I am doing, I got pictures off the Internet of what I wanted and printed them out. These make great visual guides.

The chesnut has a base of reddish brown acrylic, with burn umber, shadowed with black, and highlighted with ocher. He looks great.

The dappled gray looks nice too, again using an acrylic light gray base, with gray oils, using black and white as highlights.

I will post pictures when they are dry.