Me And My 5 – Unison Colour Associate Artist Rebecca de Mendonça

I love using pastels to draw and paint horses, they are the perfect medium for conveying their textures, from the shine of the eye to the long hair of the mane, but also for capturing movement, life and energy. If you would like to join me and find out more about my process for capturing horses, take a look at my latest video workshop available here on the Unison Colour website.

Read on here to see 5 of my horse pastels from over the last few years, showing how my style changes over time. For all of them I have used a variety of pastel media, sketching with willow charcoal, then using my Unison Colour soft pastels to give a rich base, and then working into the piece with Conte Sketching Crayons, pastel pencils for subtlety and detail.

‘Thomas’, a commission.

Many pastel artists find themselves painting commissions of horses, and this was the commission I was most proud of. This horse is a superstar gold-medal winning eventer, and when I met him to take photographs for reference, I could see that he really knows what a superstar he is. He is very tall, and there was a moment when he lifted his head proudly, and I managed to snap a shot to work from with the light catching his fine bone structure.

Those freckles were a nightmare to draw, as I hate to focus too much on details, but with this horse they couldn’t be left out. I painted a surface of Colourfix primer onto mount-card to work on, mixing variation colours to create a hue that I could use as part of the coat. I don’t really do commissions any more as I found that I was so anxious about getting the portrait right that I lost my freedom to create. But for some artists they can be very enjoyable.

Shoes and Tattoos

I have always been fascinated by the people who work with horses, and the rapport that exists between them. This large painting was inspired when I heard the familiar ‘tap tap tap’ of the farriers hammer in my neighbours stable yard behind our house. I dashed round with my camera and sketchbook, and found the farrier working in the heat of the day. It wasn’t quite what I was expecting but it was an absolute gift to be able to paint him, his tattoos and the beautiful form of the horse in the burning sunlight.

I did the minimum possible with the background, in order to create a sense of space and the feeling of a hot day, but not to detract from the subjects themselves. So anything I didn’t think was needed, was left out. That is the beauty of pastels, you can just sketch something in lightly to suggest it.

‘And You Are?’

This large pastel was inspired by a day at the races, and the way that the low winter sunlight catches the fine bone-structure of the thoroughbred horses. I loved the intelligent look in this horse’s eyes, as if he was demanding who I was, and why I was looking at him so attentively.

I tried working on black for the first time, and used pan pastels to draw the soft, smooth underlayers of the fine coat. I then used Unison Colour pastels, Faber Castell pastel pencils and Conte Sketching Crayons to create more depth and details. As with all of my work, I only put in as much as I thought was strictly necessary. With this one I introduced a few subtle vertical lines behind the form of the horse, to break up the black background. I loved that the way the back light showed up the steam as he breathed.

Swish and Flick

This pastel was one of a series I painted on red, mainly because I was getting a bit bored with working on neutral colours, and I wanted to see what I could do with the red as a foil for the bright sunlight shining on my neighbours Arabian horse (a different neighbour this time) as he swished his mane and tail.

I painted the background with several thin layers of red acrylic paint, and then coated it with a layer of Colourfix primer Clear, which will turn any surface into a pastel surface.

I used a limited palette, using the beautiful subtle grey/lilacs that Unison Colour make so well, such as Additional 31 and 33, as well as Grey 27 for the sunny highlights. I added very soft movement lines around the horse, to show that he was moving through the space.

Through the Light

This is one of my most recent paintings, and you can see that I am developing a lot of the themes from the previous work. I am becoming more abstract with the space that is behind the horse, and really celebrating brighter colours, and also colours that weren’t really there.

As in ‘And You Are?’. I am picking out that steam again, but this time the steam is very important, and the horse is almost just a silhouette. In places I have only hinted at the form of the horse, but in other areas I have worked in more detail.

I developed my background of Colourfix Primer, colour Blue Haze with water colour and Pan Pastels, before drawing the horse.

This is one of a series inspired by steaming horses after they have raced, and in all of them I am exploring the space around the horse, and the exquisite shapes of that negative space.

I hope that you enjoyed seeing some of my work! You can see more at rebeccademendonca.co.uk.

You can find the Portrait Of A Buckskin Horse Video Workshop here.