How to Paint a Painted Pony

Painted ponies have distinctive white spot patterns.

A painted pony is another term for the breed known as a painted horse. These horses are popular for dressage, driving, jumping, ranch work, showing and different types of riding due to their high intelligence and calm, willing nature. For artistic purposes, these horses are striking because of the unusual and varied coat patterns that are the origin of their name, "painted" horse. While there are some physical characteristics that are common to painted horses, accurately painting the coat pattern is the best way to make a painting of a horse look distinctly like a painted horse.

Things You'll Need

• Canvas or art paper
• Paint
• Paintbrushes

Instructions

1. Paint a white horse. Painted horses tend to have broad, muscular chests and muscular hindquarters. Do not paint the mane and tail.

2. Decide upon the horse's coat pattern. Painted ponies have one of three patterns: tobiano, overo or tovero. A tobiano horse has white legs below the knee, dark coloring on both flanks, white markings on the back and oval-shaped dark patterns. An overo horse has dark coloring across the back, usually only one or no white legs, a splashy or spotted pattern and large white markings on the face. A tovero horse has dark-colored patches at the flank, tail, chest, ears and mouth and often has blue eyes.

3. Mix a color for the horse's main coat color. Painted ponies are always two colors, one of them white. The other color can be black, bay, brown, roan, chestnut, dun, red dun, gray, grullo, buckskin, sorrel, perlino, palomino, smoky cream, cremello or champagne. Look at a chart of horse coloration for help deciding. Plain black, deep brown or red-brown are easy, accurate colors to use.

4. Use a small brush to lightly mark in the horse's pattern. Remember, a tobiano horse has regular, solid patches of color, an overo horse has more irregular markings and spots and a tovero horse only has a few dark patches that don't quite match the markings of a tobiano or an overo.

5. Fill in the markings and shade the horse.

6. Paint the horse's mane and tail. A tobiano horse often has two tail colors, with the base of the tail a different color from the tip. It may have two different colors in the mane, as well. An overo horse typically has a single-colored mane and tail. Toveros may have either.

References

• Dictionary.com: Painted Pony
• American Paint Horse Association: The Breed
• Doctors Foster and Smith: American Painted Horse

Resources

• American Paint Horse Association: Coat Colors