Watching Melanie Miller paint is one of the best parts of NaMoPaiMo. Every year, she uses this event to stretch herself in new and interesting ways. Then she documents every step along the way. It's amazing. This year's project combines elements from her 2018 and 2020 models. Here's the whole journey in Mel's words.
Start to Finish
by Melanie Miller
January 30: Officially registered!
January 31: The first step is to color correct. I don't like guessing what the corrections are, so here's how I do it in Photoshop:
1) Open the image and create a new layer
a) Fill that empty layer with 50% grey (hit shift + backspace and select 50% grey from the dropdown.b) Change the blending mode to "Difference"
2) Add an adjustment layer (the half white half dark circle at the bottom of the layers palette), and select "Threshhold"
a) The threshhold menu will appear at the top of the screen, drag the little triangle under the graph over to the left to reduce the visibility to only a handful of the darkest pixels
b) somehow mark the location of one of these pixels - I like to drag guides to mark the edges since those will show up in the next step
3) Go back to the photo layer and add a "Curves" adjustment layer from the same half white/half dark circle in the layers palette
a) Select the grey (middle) dropper from the Curves palette at the top of the screenb) With the dropper, select the pixel you marked on the photo and the color will automatically adjust!
If images or a video of this process would be helpful, this is a great tutorial.
Now for the color swatches:
1) Select the rectangle shape tool (or whatever shape you want!)
a) The shape options will be at the top of the screen, select Fill by clicking inside the colored fill box, then click the color picker box at the top right of that menu
b) Use the dropper on the photo to select whatever color you want to sample. You can use Ctrl and + to enlarge if necessary. Select ok
c) Drag a box out near the spot you sampled
2) To help with color mixing it's nice to have a more saturated hue to reference. Start by clicking on the photo layer (so that the next step doesn't edit your original swatch box).
a) Again click inside the fill box, and the color picker box. This time instead of using the dropper, drag the little color picker circle over to a more pure version of the color. It doesn't have to be the most saturated corner, just whatever hue looks the most helpful. Click ok.
b) Drag out a new box by the actual color swatch.
Now you have a nice visual chart for color mixing, and you might notice that the photo itself starts looking different to your eyes. Looking at color this way helps flip your brain to looking at what's actually there rather than what you "know" the color looks like!
February 1: Base coat on! What if I just kept him this color? jkjk but I might find a unicorn around here to sunsetify.
February 2: I worked on Stetson all night and got a lot done. I going to document the steps because this is a pattern I've been putting off doing for years thanks to how involved it is and I don't want to forget what I've done. 😵💫 Hopefully it helps someone else too!
1) I used a watercolor pencil (could have been any kind of white pencil or acrylics, that's just what I grabbed first) to do a quick rough sketch of the hair direction to help with pattern layout and future roaning. I sealed this layer with some dullcote.
2) Then I blotched on some masking using the Molotow masking pen.
This is very generalized, I was only trying to make some white areas with lots of cutouts that I can edit later and that loosely matched my reference horse's pattern.
3) When the masking was dry, I painted several thin coats of a light pink mix using Golden's high flow acrylics. The high flow part is important - it is very thin and densely pigmented so it layers up fast and "tight", meaning I can get a reasonably solid color without creating any ridges around the masked spots. I used pink instead of straight white because the non-white pigment also helps with layering a solid color more quickly, and it will be a nice base color for my markings later.
4) When the light pink was dry, I used my fingers to rub off the easily peelable spots, and a rubber cement block to grab the smaller and more stubborn pieces.
5) This is after peeling up the masking, rubbing on a quick layer of PanPastel neutral grey tint, and a good layer of dullcote to seal it all up.
February 4: He looks absolutely unhinged right now, but I’m just introducing some freckly randomness and doing a refining pass on the markings. This is gonna take a while.
February 6: Something I’m doing during this refinement process is to take some quick phone pics to get a fresh look at the markings. You can still see a hint of the white that was on his neck that I covered up because it was too even, and I started layering white over some spots on his shoulder for a larger chunk of white, again dealing with some of the evenness. I can see in this new pic that I want to edit the outline of the shoulder marking some more and add in some smaller spots along the neck. I’ll keep taking pics as I edit to help ensure the pattern looks cohesive before I continue to the next detailing stage.
February 7: Welp I’m at a crossroads. I hoped I would have figured out by now if I was going to do some roan hairs in acrylics before oils, but I have not. I wanted to do my roaning in oils because it’s faster and has a nice soft look, but I am really liking how he’s progressing in just acrylics.
February 7: More step logging action!
1) After getting the bulk of the markings where I wanted them and reasonably detailed out (the detailing is very rough, that's fine, there's no sense in getting it perfect at this stage since there will be stuff going on next that will mess things up a bit), I masked the white spots off. I couldn't use my beloved Molotow masking pen this time because it doesn't have a small enough tip for the refined marking edges, so I just poured out some fluid (this was Winsor & Newton masking fluid) and dotted it on with a clay shaper.
2) While I waited for the mask to dry, I mixed up some little fleck color. It's the same consistency as the Golden high flow paints (not the fluids like you see in the background, this mix is much thinner than those). I decided to use just one sort of average color since the flecking is too hard to control to make a color gradient. It's not the right color for the more orangey areas like the flanks, but it's fine, I just need some flecks to guide my painting.
3) Flecks applied with a toothbrush. Dip the brush and tap off the excess, then rub your fingers over the bristles to flick little paint dots. Start by flicking off of the horse because the first ones will be too big. When they're the size you need, start flicking at the horse along the general hair direction. I started flicking over the back of the model for the first splatter, and then moved up toward the head as each successive flick resulted in smaller dots since my reference horse had small flecks on the head and larger ones on the body. Reload the toothbrush when the flecks get too tiny and repeat.
4) I removed the masking when the flecks were dry and started adding actual detailed roaning one lil hair at a time (using a 2/0 kolinsky sable) and working the marking edges to their actual desired shape. I was going to use oils at this point, but decided I liked how the acrylics were progressing so I'm going to stick with acrylics for now.
February 9: A little before and after! Before I hit the flank and the spot where the hair starts to make its soft downturn on the barrel I sketched in some guide lines. This avoids making the hair direction change too late and winding up with a cramped pattern, and also really helps when I'm holding the horse every which way. It doesn't matter if he's upside down or sideways as long as I have some little roads to follow!
These hairs are all out of scale and "sitting on top" looking for now, but they'll all get smaller and more blended looking with more layers.
February 11: I don’t know why but the sideways swoosh ‘n split over the loins is one of my favorite things! One more reason to take progress shots, I can see here I got the spine roaning a little crooked, gotta edit that before the next layer while it’s still an easy fix!
February 12: Other side roaned!
February 13: More steps!
1) Now that the first layer of roaning is done I needed to pick out the little colorful flecks left behind from the sabino pattern. These were the spots flicked on with the toothbrush on an earlier step. When I did the roaning they got partially covered, which was fine because they needed to be recolored since I used one middle tone for all of them to just get the random flecks on there. I also added in a bunch of grey skin shading.
2) Parts of my reference horse have softer, lighter colored roan patches, so I went in with some white Pan Pastel and laid those areas in. He's not sprayed with dullcote here yet, but I'll be doing that next, and then on to... more roaning.
Don’t despair if your roaning doesn’t look as hair-like as you were expecting after going over your whole model! This is a great illustration of how layering works. The white was the first layer and looks kind of chunky even though I did my very best to keep it refined. The second layer - I’m starting with the orangey flank color and will switch out to the other color zones next - starts to break up the “hairs”. Each successive layer will break the lines up further until it looks like one lovely melded coat color. So don’t give up, keep layering those bits on and you’ll eventually get to the end!
February 15: More hairs! I got all of the orange hairs in and moved on to the mid-magenta tones. The gameplan here since there's no wet blending is to blend the color zones by spacing out the border hairs. If you look on the neck you can see a concentrated zone of magenta, and then a bunch of gradually more sparsely distributed hairs into the area that will be darker purple. If you look really closely, you can see that there are a bunch of magenta hairs intermingled with the orange that I spaced out in the same way. This technique allows for smooth gradients without losing the white hairs underneath.
February 20: WOOF markings markings markings. I have been 1) adding all the little fiddly bits to Stetson's markings edges,
2) got another coat of PanPastel neutral grey tint over the whole body to start knocking back the color saturation and do some more hair melding...
and then 3) started adding the pinking. It's strongly tinted right now because I plan to do another PanPastel layer over all of this.
February 23: Working on markings! I do still have some more roaning to do after my “last layer”, but I needed to switch it up a bit. I bumped the contrast to show how his markings are also getting some hair texture. It’s a lot easier because I can use frayed brushes in addition to my detail brush to quickly get some hair buildup, and then do a couple of quick hair by hair passes to complete the effect. Because the color is white on very light grey and pink, I don’t have to be as time-consumingly precise with my brush strokes since there isn’t a lot of contrast to make less precise marks catch the eye.
February 24: Guess what I'm painting SURPRISE IT'S MORE HAIRS! I really am in the homestretch though - this time it's adding more white to the lighter roaned areas and just doing some bits of ticking on the darker areas. Before this step and after the markings touchups, I did do one undocumented layer of white PanPastel to knock back the saturation a bit more. I also made that coat as thin as I could in the darker areas, and scrubbed on as much white as I could in the lighter areas to get a nice smooth start to this last (?!?) roaning part.
I also switched to this brush because I like how it makes tick marks and it can still do all of the super refined roaning too like the larger brush I was using before (2/0 Raphael). The paint is high flow Golden, which is the perfect consistency for roaning! Sadly this particular brush is discontinued, and it was so good but you can still get brushes this size from Da Vinci that are very nice!
February 26: Mane and Tail basecoated.
February 29: I did it! Technically... he still needs his eye gloss, but I wanted to get this written down while I still remembered the steps.
1) I painted the mane and tail - acrylic glazing liquid helped speed up the blending process, then just regular paint mix thinned with high flow medium for the detail hairs.
2) Added some facial detail/finished around the eye shading and face marking
3) Painted hooves, eyes, chestnuts, the acrylic glazing liquid helped out here too
4) With desaturated purple and orange mixes, I dotted back on some random flecks inside the now softened toothbrush splatters and did some booboo touchups.
5) He's a reining horse in that deep footing, so I added a little dirty effect on the pasterns with PanPastel orange extra dark, and a little PanPastel burnt sienna extra dark more sparsely dotted on top of that. The burnt sienna extra dark was also added to the bottom edges and bottoms of the feet.
6) (not shown) one more light coat of PanPastel white on some strategic areas to enhance the light/dark contrast across his body
7) final spray and eye gloss coming up!
Here he is all finished up.
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He is an epic master piece~
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