Official Hiatus + A Tutorial

Hello everyone! Wow, we haven't posted in... Well, a LONG time. We've all been busy with real horses and preparing and going to model horse shows. :) 

One of the models at Haunted Horses in October. Loved him!

Anyway, to get back in the groove of things, I thought I'd do a tutorial! This can apply to both photo showers and live showers, and it's something many of them have trouble with. What I'm talking about is finding the show side!

Knowing and being able to find the show side of a model is very important. There are several ways to find it.

You should look at two things when trying to find the show side. Let's take a look.

First is the head. Which way is it turning? Are they looking straight ahead or at one side? If the horse is looking to one side, you've done it. That's your show side.

As you can see, these horses head's are turning to 'look' at the camera. This is the side you would want facing the camera or the judge. PC: Breyer

So your horse is looking straight ahead, not looking any direction. The next thing you want to look at is the mane. What side is it on? The shading of the mane is can be a big deal and show off the horse.

While not the best example of conformation, this is the show side of this horse. Even though he's looking straight ahead, his mane is on one side and adds to the horse's look. PC: Breyer

Another example. The mane shading enhances the look makes the rest of his shading 'pop.' PC: Breyer

Now let's look at the ideal photo show photo.

RRS Soylent Green owned by EVR, painted by Emily Paige Squires

As you can see the horse is completely parallel to the camera so you can see his whole body. He's bending towards the camera, so we know we have the right side. The background and sand is in scale and not too distracting. The lighting also shows off his mold and his shading.

Hopefully this all makes sense, add any questions in the comments below! :) We are sorry for not being around and hopefully posts will be more frequent now. 

-Emma