Gallop On!

I found a suitable pair of brown shoes at a thrift store, and painted on the yellow portions and 'Rocinante' back in March. I just had to add the horses... and it took until this week...

After some research and pondering, I decided I'd use a DYI stencil made out of painter's tape. The first step was to get the shape, which I put more effort into than probably was needed. (I can't freehand draw a horse, and all screenshots of Don Quixote's shoes are too small to use.) So I fiddled around with carousel horse photos and clip art until I had something satisfactory. Then I could actually make the stencil.

I printed out my final silhouettes, one for each shoe, slapped some painter's tape down on my cutting mat, taped the silhouette to the tape, then cut it out with an exacto knife.

Thank you cutting mat for providing scale. It's not the easiest to see the blue on green in the photo, alas. The size of the horse I decided on was too big for a single strip of painter's tape, so I used two slightly overlapping. After I finished cutting, I used a pair of tweezers to get the silhouette out.

After cutting them both out, I peeled them off (carefully) and placed them on the shoes. After a little fiddling, I was satisfied with the placement and they were ready for painting.

...though, I was not ready for painting. So it waited until the next day.

Next evening I was ready and raring to go. I had decided I wanted to use an off white color, so I mixed white acrylic with a drop of yellow. Then I mixed in some fabric medium, which I did not use for the rest of the shoes. An experiment.

Then I got to painting. Just right over top of the stencil. They're pretty small with some fiddly bits, so I used a small brush and was careful. Even so, it was pretty simple.

Pictured above: the shoe after the first coat of paint. I ended up doing 3 or 4 coats, letting it dry in between each. Several coats = don't see brown through and harder to see brush strokes.

Right foot:

Left foot: