A Farrier in Action

At the Dutchess County Fair yesterday, the farriers competed to make a perfect horseshoe. They had exactly one hour to create a standard shoe design, starting with a straight, rectangular bar of steel.

An hour was about right for me to try to capture a keyframe of the action. I watched Pennsylvania farrier Elmer Glick wielding his two-and-a-half pound hammer, which was moving so fast I had to paint it as a blur.

From where I was standing in the middle of the tent, he was lit by cool light spilling in from the sides. I contrived the background tones to be darker on the right side of his silhouette. That made his hair and his shirt stand out light against dark. I lightened the background on the left side to make his face and hammer read clearly.



This video (link to YouTube video, jump ahead to 2:35 for farrier only) gives a sense of the controlled chaos and energy of the moment. By the way, can everyone see these embedded Facebook videos?
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For more about painting people in natural settings, check out my video tutorial, Portraits in the Wild.

"I loved how genuine these videos are. James doesn't hide anything. When his subject walks away, he shows us how he deals with it to save the painting."
—Stan Prokopenko, Proko.com

"Insightful, direct and inspiring, Portraits in the Wild brilliantly shares James Gurney's creative process of capturing those fleeting moments of beauty that life provides.”
—Edward Jonas, Chair, Portrait Society of America

Download (66 minutes, 1080p HD widescreen MP4 video) Available at Gumroad and Sellfy for $14.95

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