Hard Luck Horse Ranch - Part 3

Here is the Hard Luck Horse Ranch completed. It turned out real well. I settled on coloring the horse as a bay with three white socks. One thing you have to remember when painting a horse with colored socks is that if the sock is white the hoof on that leg will be a lighter color than any other leg that does not have a sock. Funny, while just now typing this I remembered that I forgot to add something something.....the chestnuts! Chestnuts appear on the front legs of a horse above the knee, or on the back legs of a horse below the hock. They can be large, or very small. Some people call chestnuts "night eyes." Some scientists believe that chestnuts and ergots may be remnants of the pads that were under the toes of a very early ancestor of the horse. About 50 million years ago the first known ancestor of the horse, Eohippus, had four padded toes on the front legs and three padded toes on the back legs. These horny growths are probably the leftovers from that earlier age. I'll go back tomorrow and put a dark brown spot where they're supposed to be. It's amazing what you can learn while carving a horse.
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This has been a fun project and I hope you enjoyed following me along as I completed it.