When looking to commission an equine artist for a custom horse portrait there are several key questions you should be asking apart from the initially obvious ones of price and style.

What does it take for an equine artist to capture the true likeness of my horse?

One really important key to successful horse portraits is whether or not the artist has captured the true likeness and character of the animal. The artists ability to paint an attractive picture is not the same skill as their ability to accurately observe the finer details and nuances necessary for you to say “That is my horse!”.

No-one knows your horse as well as yourself – their character, habits and quirks that make them the individual you know and love. A quality equine artist will have developed the necessary skills to identify how to portray these in a painting. And it necessarily follows that if you ask an artist to produce a painting from a small photo you took yourself, that maybe has poor lighting and you’ve cropped off his ears, then you’re probably lined up for a disappointing result.

Does the horse artist need to visit my horse personally?

If you want the very best results, then in short, yes, the artist needs to visit. Even if you have taken some excellent photos – large, clear, sharp, this just isn’t as good as the artist being able to see the horse for themselves.

Artist meeting your horse: Face-to-face, the artist can get a MUCH better overall impression of your horse, that will enable them work more knowledgeably with the reference photos, be they the artist’s or your own. Photos are limited in their ability to capture detail; they are subject to the lighting conditions; they are limited to only one angle – in short, it’s like looking at your horse through fuzzy binoculars instead of standing next to them.

Having the artist make a personal visit does of course affect the overall costs, and this may well prove a deciding factor.

If you have to go down the route of supplying your own pictures to the artist, please remember – poor photos usually equals poor painting!

Equally though, if all you have are average photos, a good quality artist will still be able to produce an acceptable portrait from them, it’s just that despite their skills & creativity, they can only paint what they see and imagine the rest.

Personally, I recently produced a painting of a horse that had sadly died. The owner was able to provide me with a small selection of pictures. One had the right angle of head and body, but the colour and shadow was bad and was wearing a bridle which wasn’t wanted in the painting. I needed to use the other photos as reference to ‘fill in’ all the missing information – and the resulting painting was a success. The client was really happy with the result “it is absolutely stunning. thank you so so much!” – take a look in my gallery Fine Horse Portraits by Andy Hunt – http://www.finehorseportraits.co.uk/gallery/horse-portraits-gallery.html

Andy Hunt


Horse paintings boldly painted in brilliant colors

Marcia Baldwin’s Horse Paintings is so exciting to view and touches my heart as it captures the wild spirit of the horse in juicy large oil paintings.

I am in love with color and with horses so I just delight in how Marcia combines my two loves into one art form with so much life and emotion. And I can indulge myself with her horse candy for hours on end – she has 121 pages of horse art on her site and is contently creating more! She sells her art from her site as well as on ebay.

“Color, depth, harmony, rhythm, pattern, and unity… all things I explore as I paint.”
- Marcia Baldwin

Horse Pictures for Equestrian Decor

Horse paintings slide show…

Her art horse paintings range in style from Realistic to Impressionism and Abstract. I don’t now if it is possible for me to choose a favorite painting – I love so many of them.

Horse business marketing tips

Marcia Baldwin is doing a lot of things right for her business. She has a website, a blog, sells on ebay with an ebay store and auctionsand has an ebay ME page. She also made image slide shows to add to her ebay product listings that show off sold horse art.

You can do most of this too for your horse business. Do you have a website? What about a blog? Any products you can sell or give away on ebay? Yes, give away, think of these gifts as ways to lead people back to your website.

Make and post your own Slide shows on your site and blog and let others advertise for you by embedding the slide show on there site just did for Marcia Baldwin. She didn’t even have to ask me. I just love to share wonderful horse art and she made it easy for me to do so with this Slide shows.

You don’t have to be an horse artist to make image slide shows. Slide show would would be great for horse farms with horses for sale, riding stables showing off their riding areas and riding trails, and horse trainers showing off trained horses working calmly through riding manurers or trail obstacles. Use your imagination – keeping in mind they should have some entertainment value.

I did do a search on youtube for ‘Marcia Baldwin horse paintings’ and received the dreaded message: No Videos found for ‘Marcia Baldwin horse paintings’. So she is missing out on the huge youtube crowd. Did you know that youtube gets twice the page views as google? Don’t you miss out here – put up some videos about your horse business!

Horses and books in my mailbox; what a delight!

It is not often that I experience excitement at the opening of my mailbox. But this morning as I pulled out the mail I caught sight of an image of a cowgirl* astride a brown horse with three wild horses running before her – a bay, a black, and a dappled gray. Yes, the sight of horses, inked on paper, can make my heart beat faster. I didn’t name my site, A Love for Horses, for nothing.

I then looked at the return address on the package and saw the name, Linda Hines, an author, and knew the package held a treasure of books. I couldn’t wait to get the package open to check them over.

Books – I love books, always have from the time of young childhood when my mother would sit with us on the bed and read until we or she fell to sleep. Books containing artwork and poems have always been a top favorite. So I was delighted when I flipped through the two books and saw both laced with black and white artwork by a multitude of wonderful artists and quotations and excerpts of poetry and prose from 18th and 19th century authors: Goethe, Lord Byron, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Percy Bysshe Shelley, William Shakespeare, William Wordsworth, among others.

Even as I have grown a custom to reading books on the computer screen, I still adore the good old paper versions. I love the heft of books, the feel and smell of the paper, even the sound of my fingers flipping the crisp pages. So many positive emotions evoked from past books that just the lifting of a books is pleasurable to me. OK, you may say I have an book addiction. I confess that I own about six large bookcases filled with books and magazines.

Linda Hines sent me her first two books, Alteza, The Metairie Saga, Book One and Phantom Suns, The Metairie Sage Book Two. My horse art, “The Enchantress” is used on the cover of “Alteza”. Some of the cool black and white horse and cowboy silhouette artwork in these books are from EZArt Graphics.

The first book:

Alteza, The Metairie Saga, Book One
by Linda Hines

How passionate the Nineteenth Century! When daring ideas sparked modern innovations; discontent sparked European revolutions; and need for inspired leadership spurred Thomas Carlyle to ponder the qualities of “Great Men.” Yet the American frontier had its own visionaries ‚Ķ and the Metairie Saga is a tempestuous tale of their daring spirits, devoted hearts and forbidden desires.

Inspired by Goethe’s “Dream no small dreams,” this exciting new series often parallels cultural and historic European events, while literary details enhance and inspire its pages. Surviving Chicago’s Great Fire, Galen Metairie returns to Alteza, his family’s cattle empire in the Territory of New Mexico. But can the love of his young bride surmount the bond her mysterious husband and his brother’s wife still share? Or will a ruthless renegade prove a greater threat? Because if Moor is involved, the issue is never cattle or land or even wealth; but vulnerabilities ‚Ķ and one man’s power over another man’s heart.

*Artwork on the package: The artwork may actually be a depiction of a cowboy with long hair, but my first thought was cowgirl, I guess I automatically put myself in the saddle. But you can be the judge (leave your guess in the comments). This same artwork is also in the book, “Alteza” in black and white on page 209.

Lovely and unique equine sculptures

While surfing the Internet I discovered the delightful horse artwork of Karen Aneiro on her website, EquiSea Farms. She creates fine art in wire and colored glass and her sculptures sparkle with the life spirit of what inspires her, Arabian and Friesian horses!

The names of her equine art is also wonderful, here is a sampling: Magic, Tribute, Piaffe, Noor Al Noufous (The Light Of The Soul), Neptune’s Gift, Sea Dreams, and Easy Silence. I love the one named, “SPIRIT AND ANCESTOR” which was the winner of the Peoples Choice Award of the Icarus International Art Show, in 2003. I also would love to have the large “Catchthespirit” sculpture in my garden.

About the award winning artist: Karen Aneiro

Karen has participated in several art shows and has won awards at the international, college and local levels. Her sculptures are collected world wide and sold in Virginia & North Carolina galleries. Prices range from $100.00 to $5000.00. If you are interested in commissioning a sculpture, painting, or photography, please email Karen at artistakarena @ yahoo.com. Subject, pose, medium and colors of commissioned sculptures are your choice! Karen is also expanding into creating pottery, tiles, and clay sculpture as well. Textiles made from our llamas’ wool and yarn for your own projects will also be available.