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A.P. McCoy Painting “After the Race” | Mariana Duarte Santos

This painting – “After the race” is an oil portrait of ex jockey A.P. McCoy, this was my first large scale oil painting (79.5×120 cm) so I decided to show you a few pictures of the process. This is another painting for my series “In the Jockeys’ Room” in this series I’m trying to capture a bit of the atmosphere of the behind the scenes of this sport, the intensity, strength and obsession that takes to be a top horse jockey. And who better than A.P. to personify all that.

ap mccoy underpainting
oil painting background and figures
ap mccoy underpainting
oil painting portrait ap mccoy
underpainting and background
art studio ap mccoy painting

I started off by sketching out the figures and background with burnt umber oil paint and turpentine, after that I added shadows and defined the dimensions so that once this layer dried I could start painting over it with oil paint and a mixture of turpentine and linseed oil.

I started by painting the background and the figures on top of that so that I wouldn’t have to paint around the figures and mess up finer details. As I painted each figure I would touch up parts of the background that didn’t seem quite right.

In the last image you can see the finished painting in my studio and have a better idea of its size.

ap mccoy oil painting portrait