“I took a trip with a friend to pick up a horse for her barn,” says Caitlin Leline Hatch. “I knew there were going to be well-bred horses at this particular facility, which for me meant beautiful conformation and sculpted anatomy. I couldn’t wait to take some photographs. By the time we got there, however, night had fallen, and the indoor lights were not ideal for beautiful compositions. So I focused on line instead. Many of the horses there had strong, curving necks so I knew with a little encouragement of a horse treat we could work together to create some great angles that would translate to a pleasing painting.
“Because my photographs were taken under a less than ideal light source, I needed to push myself in the studio to make this piece speak louder emotionally than I would have needed to if I had had a stronger sense of light and shadow to work with. On top of that, I knew that if I wanted the painting to stand out I’d need to have a dark background so that there would be a powerful contrast between it and the horse.
“Creating a dark background using a wet-into-wet technique is challenging, because the paints usually start to lighten as the paper dries. My first effort to put in a dark background wasn’t enough. Once the paper had completely dried, I had to take a leap of faith to gently mist the entire background in order to put another layer on top of it without disturbing the layer below. I usually say a silent prayer that it will work out when this happens, because if it doesn’t all of the hard work I put into the painting is ruined and I must start over from the beginning.
“I challenged myself to use only two colors to create the entire piece — a warm and a cool. I focused on the subtle shifts in temperature so that there would be moments in the painting that really glowed. When you look at this piece in person there are some interesting separations of color that happened, almost creating a rainbow effect.”
Faithful took the top prize in the Animals & Birds category of the September PleinAir Salon. Do you have the next prizewinner on your easel now?
