Thoroughbred Racehorse - Red Silks

I have always been a fan of race horses, even as a child when all we had were races once a year at the County fair. I suspect much of the attraction came from the many times I read ... and re-read ... the Black Stallion book series but for whatever the reason, race horses have always fascinated me.


This image is the first piece I did after my move to Kentucky. After a year of watching television specials on the Kentucky Thoroughbred sales, the Triple Crown races and a visit to one of the big horse Thoroughbred breeding farms where I actually got to lay hands on a stallion whose stud fee was more than I had paid for my farm ... nothing other than a racehorse could have possibly been my first drawing when I started working on my art again.

The brightly colored silks of the jockeys caught my eye in all the races on television, which led to my experiment with the addition of colored pencil in this piece. Somehow, it seemed as if the color and movement of the "big time" races here in Kentucky were more dramatic and required more in an image to catch the eye. I was pleased with the effect in this piece and have continued to add colored pencil accents to my graphite and carbon pencil studies more often in much of my recent work.