"Horse Colors Explained" Topic

"There are many coat colors of horses out there, and determining horse color involves more than just body color…"

See here

link

Armand

A nice guide. For our era and likely scales, the bay is the easiest and most realistic. Greys are challenging, if not to look like rocking horses, with exaggerated spots. Chestnuts, in my hands just do not "work". They look like I did not finish them.

Waterproof Ink layers are just magical over almost any base coat and transform the lighter colours especially. Blacks are surprisingly tricky. They do need a slight sheen and white markings and dark grey or brown harness will help.

Thanks fro showing this. I hope it prompts some helpful suggestions from the experts

Illuminating!

A Standard Black horse will fade in the sunlight, and turn a rusty brown if left out, where a Jet Black horse does not fade at all! Jet black is a blue-black color that is truly fade resistant.

Five Star Ranch is in Toronto, Canada – approx level with Marseilles, France.

So – it seems that standard black horses will fade to rusty brown at that latitude (43.5N).

I live at latitude 53.7N – so about 704 miles (1,132km) northerer.

Assuming that the sunlight at my latitude is the lesser – will my standard black horses fade to rusty brown as much?

During the Napoleonics and earlier – black horses were seen to be stronger than other colours. So my British, or North German, standard black horses are going to be blacker that your Portugesey, Spanishschen, Southern Frenchen, Italien, Turkish, North African, etc standard black horses.

Result: +1 for black horses kept at higher latitudes.

PS. Obviously it doesn't need to be stated that the rusty-brown business starts at the English Channel/La Manche.

Thanks….

La Gendarmerie d' Honor has Black Horses…

Armand

Well done Tango! Thank you for this!

A votre service mon cher ami…!

Armand

I have had a great deal of fun painting horses to match the local stock..Piebalds and skewbalds are especially fun.

Are you talking US stock? Far greater variety there and terrific effects can be achieved. But not right for Europe 1815-ish.

Regiments tried for uniformity and the idea was that black horses were strongest (which was probably true, if they were fed and cared for, and in temperate climates) so they ended up with the Carabiniers, Grenadiers a Cheval de la Garde and Gendarmes d'Elite. Bays and chestnuts went with the light cavalry, even the elites (Chasseurs a Cheval, Gardes d'Honneur, even Dragoons de la Garde for example)

Of course the poor pathetic mounts of the Cossacks survived through anything, when the posh French ones ended up as a roast supper

British horses were best quality and best cared for, but KGL beat them hands down still.

White and greys?…

Armand

White and greys?

They were usually used for musicians and show-off generals, Armand. Greys (which includes "white" in the English way of describing horse colour) remained popular for flashy, civvie riding horses, but not cavalry mounts (the big exception to that being the Scots Greys).

Thanks

Armand

AQHA Horse color poster.

More here:

link

But wait there is more.

link

I just follow Britains: black, white, dark brown & light brown.

(smile)

Armand

Simple distinction between bays and chestnuts, which I hadn't realised (despite painting wargames horses for around 50 years) and I know often wrong-foots others: a bay is a horse that, whatever its body colour, has "points" that are darker than the main coat; a chestnut has "points" that are the same colour or lighter than the main coat.