Art - a fun way to learn conformation!
© 1996-2005 Claudia Coleman and Kristine Carroll All Rights Reserved

Horse Country hosts an Art Camp created by Claudia Coleman who has painted horses and hounds for over 30 years with her experiences taking her far and wide. Her paintings hang in four countries and she is represented in the US Art in Embassies program plus numerous private and public collections. A rider and follower of hounds herself, her hunting pieces reflect a thorough understanding of the sport and the countryside. Her paintings hang in many noted collections, including that of the late August A. Busch, Jr, the Masters of the Foxhounds Association of America, and Evergreen Farms. You can also see her illustrations in The Horse Behavior Problem Solver by Jessica Jahiel, Storey Publishing LLC 2004 and by visiting her web site at http://www.am-portfolio.com

Lesson 1

What's below the surface you spend so much time grooming? Even if you don't think you're artistic these lessons are cool! a way to learn. For those with an interest in art, they are an excellent guide to the beginnings of good composition.

Supplies needed for all lessons:

To begin our project you will need to gather up some tools:

• some art paper or drawing pad
• four different hardnesses of pencils (Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4) or charcoal pencils
• erasers, of course (hint: a Stedaedtler Mars Plastic is good for pencils and a gum eraser is good for charcoal)
• a view card - take a piece of mat board or not too fat cardboard andcut a 4 by 5 inch rectangle in your paper out of the middle. Youthen have a "viewer" like the thing on a camera and you can look at a sceneand place everything right on the paper... when you move it closer or awayfrom your eye you change the view from wide angle to zoom etc. Art stores sell professional kinds which are adjustable for the proportions of the canvas. I use one constantly. This solves the old problem of starting a painting and suddenly the horses feet are off the page.
• a hand mirror - helps you see your mistakes when drawing. The human brain does not recognize the reversed image as the same and instantly can spot a problem that the memory has overlooked. It is sort of like your mind sees what it wants to see and not what's really there...the mirror tricks the mind.

Play around with your tools so you are familiar with how they work. They provide you with the means to express your thoughts. Practice on scrap paper to learn their feel. By the way, the best way to sharpen your pencils is with a small, sharp pocket knife. A pencil sharpener will devour them. If you don't know how to whittle, maybe a parent or an adult friend will show you. It's really easy and practical. While you are getting used to your tools, we will talk about horse anatomy as it pertains to art.

First of all horses are supported by bones. When life on earth was totally in the sea, the ocean supported most of the body mass and very few bones were needed. So, picture if you will a jellyfish who decides to take a stroll up the beach and graze on some green grass (in hopes of becoming a horse.) The first thing that happens out of the water, he finds he is very heavy and sticks to the ground. He grows some legs, but they just buckle under him and so bones were developed to replace the supportof the sea. The rest is history! He grew long legs so he could travel fast from predators, and a long neck to reach the grass. How he got the bones he did is a little more complicated but you get the idea. If all he had to do was stand still, four posts connected by a rigid frame would do nicely. But mobility was needed to survive and that is why all the support system of an animal is a series of bones connected by restricted rubber bands so to speak. All of this mechanical engineering has to defy gravity continuously and we'll talk more about that later.

Now to some drawings: Learning to see where the bones are is a combinationof knowing what you're looking at and feeling for it. All that grooming pays off here because you can feel all the important ones. The alignment of the bones is related by angles, all which keep the horse from falling over. Look at the drawings here to see where the basic structures lie. Through this process you will also learn the elements of good conformation in a horse. All of the structure is to make the effect of gravity as painless as possible. The angles that equally balance each other put less strain on the animal. Look at the "Plug" and look at the "Prince." Equal angles spread the pressures of gravity evenly over the body so that no one part gets more abuse. If all the parts are working in harmony, the horse functions with comfort and ease. When things are out of whack and the horse tries something other than grazing he can cause injury to a part that is not aligned properly and we all know what that means.

There is another important feature of angles illustrated by Plug and Prince. The greater the angulation, the greater the reach. Remember the laid back shoulder? It allows the horse to have longer bones that when extended let him reach further and travel faster with less effort. That's why the race horse can cover the ground in fewer strides than the pony. (Although ponies can book!)

For a little experiment cut 6 sticks of wood to make two different "legs," two long, two shorter, and two shorter than that. Do not make these "pair" equal to each other. Now for leg #1 take the longer of each pair and connect them, like a shoulder, a forearm, and a leg. Do the same with the shorter set. Now, if you stretch these two legs out straight one will be longer than the other and that's what happens in the horse with good angles and the one with too straight angles. All those terms you hear about in conformation: behind in the knee, rotates below the knee, sickle hocked, narrow through the gaskin, etc. refer to angles and bone length. Some of them are detrimental to the ability of the horse to function well and that's why people pay attention to them. So, draw some stick figures of horses to show the angles of the important things like legs, shoulders, hips etc. (see my doodles above) and try them in all kinds of different activities. Go to the barn and just watch the horses for a while. Even while you are watching your friends ride or have a lesson, look to see just what is going on inside the horse. Lesson 1: Bones and Angles Lesson 2: Perspective Lesson 3: Light and Shadow and Weight