"Which is your favorite horse color for painting?" Topic

In Spain and South America there are a lot of grey mules…

Amicalement
Armand

A tip for grey horses. Start with a thin black solvent paint undercoat and then paint with several layers of white.

Intersting, according to "The Book of Horses" the reason must Horses in the US cavalry were mostly "Bays" was horses with Black hooves were harder. Thus retained their Shoes longer, meaning less work for farriers. This book is for Horse Breeders.

Pretty sure the quartermaster corps was not that picky. If the horse looked healthy they'd buy it, as the Army was always running short of horses.

For my Thracians and Mongols I use the Przewalski pattern.
Later groups tend to get browns.

The last one I do of course (blue taffy)

Brown for the winner…

Amicalement
Armand

Since I finally have a few horses been doing some research. The hoof color hardness seems to be a myth. But my new herd is going to be Red/silver, Tovaro, coyote dun,blue taffy, dun perlino, chocolate palomino,sable dun, pintaloosa,flaxen blond, and mulberry grey.
My Prussian generals are going to ride in style.

I really like "bays," which I consider any base color from "Claybank" to dark brown, with black manes, legs and tails. I do NOT to Guard units for any of my armies (except Garde de Paris, of course!), so all black (which I NEVER do), all chestnut (Empress Dragoons) are out. I just don't have the talent or training for paint one-colured houses.

I enjoy finding that certain regiments preferred specific colors, and wanted to do the 5th French chasseurs a cheval with dolmans, buff belting, and claybank horses! I succeeded in doing 1 from this regiment, converting a 30mm Willie Prussian Hussar, cutting away the barrel sash, and giving him a Stadden hussar head with the shako painted yellow. Not correct, but I did not want to use a mirleton.

GdeP

I find that as a rule the most common mistake is to paint 'New World' horse colours such as Buckskin (which I had barely even heard of) and Palomino onto 'Old World' models. I have winced at Napoleonic pics in American magazines with such horses. I can remember one with Murat on an Appaloosa!

The second most common is to fail to research whether a 18th or 19th century cavalry regiment used a single colour of horse as the norm. Of course, campaigns would alter this, but not immediately.

I have made both mistakes myself – (although I was brought up with horses and live in a horse training town – 900 people and 600 horses within 100 yards.)

So… which are the right colors?…. (smile)

Amicalement
Armand

Someone on a horse color thread long ago pointed out look at cave paintings of horses, they are colorful.

Horses ARE quite colourful when considered across time and space, but on a day to day basis in most of Europe they are various shades of dark brown (Austria excluded?!). My brother loved to ride 'different horses'. He had 2 chestnuts and a grey, one after the other. He partly did this because he then automatically stood out at a competition. However the 3 daily gaggles of 80+ race horses at a time that go past my home never have a chestnut, and almost never anything but bays.(and yes, horses are being bought sold, retired or moved on – so the pool is constantly altering.)The horses themselves are typically Irish and English bred.

obviously :,,,,
The Horse of a Different Color

What I did this time was look at the horse chart went down the list picking the ones above. Then google that kind of horse picture, find one I liked and tried to paint it the best I could. The grey mulberry was the last and hardest but think it came out well. But even when doing cavalry I didn't start with any particular kind just looked at horse pictures found one and painted it.

link

I sit on a black horse when I paint