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Step by Step Painting Demonstration: White Horse

By , About.com Guide

7 of 10

Guide the Viewer's Eye with Directional Brush Marks

Painting horses step by step demonstrationImage: ©2006 Marion Boddy-Evans. Licensed to About.com, Inc.

It's still not looking pretty... it's gone all gray and dull. But pretty is not the point of taking a photo of this stage. Rather it's to show how using direction with your brush strokes helps create form, or a sense of volume in the face.

The brush strokes on the nose go down the length of it, drawing the viewer's eye along. Notice how these long brush marks stop at the line I painted in at the previous stage, while the brush marks under the eye going in quite a different direction.

Do you see how having the two different directions in brush marks makes the viewer's eye interpret it as having a curve in the shape, rather than it being flat? The brush marks under the eye are very crude at the moment, but even when they're less obvious and the colors blended, they'll still guide the viewer's eye.

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