"Up & Running" new racing drawing

Freeze!
Hold!
Observe and
wonder...

This is how the complex high-tech well oiled absolutely stunning machines that are race horses look in full and I mean full action.

They are breathtakingly beautiful.


"Up & Running"
pencil on paper.
50x46 cm
Sheona Hamilton-Grant. All rights reserved.

The reference photograph for my new piece has been generously provided by friend, TB specialist and talented artist Linda Shantz. 
Capturing this moment is down to her. Million thank yous Linda!

Freeze frame a moment like this, at this angle, and you highlight just how much power, height and thrust is collected before sending the legs extended to pound the ground on their next stride.

Drawing this has been a unforgettable journey of re-discovery and learning.
Part of the journey involved:

  • refreshing my knowledge and recollection of personal high speed gallops on various horses over various terrains and how they felt.
  • discovering that a horse moves around 1800 litres (2 buckets of air per second) in and out of its lungs during one race and in doing so inhales 380 litres of oxygen of which a quarter (95 litres) is taken up into and used in the blood. (Source education-and-research/respiratory-system/ )
  •  Analysing photographic information and sitting happily mesmerized viewing several slow-mo video footages. 





First Film ever of Race horse in action filmed in 1878 by Eadward Muybridge

What a fascinating world to have been plunged into.
The raw natural beauty of these equines is poetry in motion to say the very least....


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