Chinese Year of the Horse

I thought I would do a painting based on the Chinese year of the horse, I wanted to include some of the styling from old Chinese paintings so I did some research and came up with some ideas....

 

The stance from Chinese horse sculpture is very often quite close together legs with a slightly turned head so I went for that, they were also useful for studying the saddle and bridle.

 

My original photo was a very poor one from a dressage event years ago but it did have the right sort of pose, I also went with a vertical mane and an old parchment type background...

 

 

The Chinese letters say year of the horse, as does the stamp at the bottom. The three stamps, (well, painted to look like stamps) are good luck wishes for the year of the horse, old Chinese paintings had a lot of stamps like this on them...

 

 

They were actually made by the art dealers the painting had passed through over the years to authenticate it! I'm glad they don't do that now.

 

I also added some Chinese text to the bottom of the painting, these are sayings about the horse:

"A horse brings victory"

"The spirit of the horse and dragon"

and

"Be the first and take the lead"

 

Just finished the under painting.............