The Stylized Stallions of Laurel Burch

Laurel Burch is probably best known for her colorful cats, but she painted lots of other animals too, and among them were horses. Burch's artwork was highly stylized in that you can tell what the subject is, but it is not necessarily realistic. In fact when you look at the work lots of influences seem to pop up which is part of what makes the artwork so interesting. All of these influences seem to blend together to create something very unique. There seem to be Greek and Roman influences all the way over to aboriginal and African Tribal influences as well.

Try your hand at this project and see what influences you!

This is the piece that inspired our projects.

The drawing instructions look like this (click on the step to enlarge the picture)...

We started off by drawing in pencil
and
then using a black sharpie to outline the pencil.
Next we added highlights with metallic markers.
Thirdly we added designs and patterns with oil pastel,
but
we didn't color large areas with either the metallic markers or pastels.
We did add color using watercolor pencils
and
then using q-tips dipped in water to go back over those colored areas.
The result was an oil pastel resist
and
the pieces came out just gorgeous.
Don't believe me? Well check these out...