Tales from the Body Box - Two race mares

This month I've finally ticked two more racehorse portraits off my to-paint list, both on Breyer's G2 Thoroughbred mould, and both mares who claimed their place in the history of National Hunt racing over the last decade.

This is Quevega, who made history by winning the Mare's Hurdle at the Cheltenham festival an incredible six years in a row, giving her the dual honour of being the first ever horse to win at six consecutive festivals, and the first to clock up six wins of the same race at any course. Any fans who remember cheering her on will never forget her name, and nor will any who visit Cheltenham racecourse itself - the bar is named after her!

I've had her in mind for a portrait for years, and I'm really glad to have got her done at last! 

Here is a photo of the real thing just in case you don't know her, you can see that as well as the white sock, she's got a little smudge of white further up her shin, probably from a scar where the hair grew back without colour (I have, in the past, mistaken a bit of stray spit foam from a horse's mouth for a white marking, but this is present in photos taken on different race days, and with her foals after retirement, so it's definitely real and permanent!)

She has such a lovely face, the main part of getting her colour to look right was the sandy shading to her nose, chest, and in a few other spots; often when a bay horse is clipped they lose a lot of the variety in the coat colour but she has more depth of tone, which made her enjoyable to paint. 

I never quite know whether it's best to do the clipped or unclipped sections of a paintjob first, I reckon it might depend on the ratio : if it's a trace clip, with more of the coat left on than taken off, then I paint the clip section on last. But if, like these racehorses, there's much more of the body clipped than not, I paint them the clipped colour, then carefully add on the full coat parts afterwards.

The second portrait is the chestnut mare, Annie Power. Like Quevega, she was a fantastic hurdler, winning some of the very top UK and Irish races in flying style, including being the first mare to win Cheltenham's Champion Hurdle in twenty two years. 

Sometimes Annie Power ran with her mane plaited up, other times it was loose, I decided to go for loose for the simple reason that I don't like resculpting manes!

She's another to have this high blanket clip; because so much jumps racing is done over winter and spring, the horses are more familiar in their clipped state than in the natural darker colour of their full coats. Here is the real horse to compare - the dark mark on her shoulder is just a rug rub, so I didn't paint it on the model!

Showing the white stripe on her face, the only marking she's got - I always think it's almost a shame when the horses who become the stars of the sport, or my own favourites to follow, have minimal amounts of white, because it'd be more fun to paint eye-catching unusual face markings, or a lot of flashy long socks!