Charcoal horse drawing WIP

When I was a kid I was horse mad. I never had a horse of my own, but I wanted one so badly. I loved any book that involved horses from My Friend Flicka through to the Jill and the ponyclub books. I had a secondhand riding hat that I picked up at the school fair and I wore that around the house and in the backyard which had been transformed into a showjumping ring in my mind (and a little bit in real life) and I rode my imaginary horse over all the jumps to victory.

I used to love drawing horses then too and when my family moved from Timaru to Christchurch and I had to change schools, I became good friends with a girl called Kathryn after I saw her drawing horses and we realised that we had a shared passion. Over the years horses gave way to all those other interests that you have as a pre-teen and teenager and I probably haven't even ridden since I was about 16. However I still love horses and I still like drawing them as I am discovering at the moment.

I still have a way to go on this one as it is sucking up a fair bit of time, but I'm pretty pleased with the outcome so far. We live fairly close to the Meadowbank Pony Club smack bang in suburban Auckland so often see horses being walked or ridden around the streets. I took this photo out of the car window while my husband was driving us past. I was pleased that I actually managed to capture the horse in the frame and actually like the angle which is good as it is the only photo that actually got the horse.

This is charcoal pencil on A4 Bristol and it is interesting on the smooth paper how you can move the charcoal around and it doesn't grab easily. That helps for certain effects but I'm not getting the real darks I want in certain places so I think I will finish drawing it and then fix it and then go over certain areas again. Hopefully I'll get this finished in the next few days.