Stables and ponies

My 5 year old was given some money for her birthday by her doting god mother to learn how to ride a horse. Now that it is the school holidays, we decided to enrol her in pony camp - a 2 day affair to learn how to ride, groom, etc ponies. She was most excited and enjoyed it thoroughly.

While I was sending her to camp, I had the occasion to browse the Centennial Park stables, which are numerous and noted many picturesque possibilities. I took some photos as I didn't think they would take too kindly to me drawing on location. The instructors objected and I had to reassure them that I wasn't some kind of pervert. I told them I would delete the photos and they were for the purposes of art. Luckily I don't look like a pervert myself, or I might not have got away with it.

These two little girls were waiting patiently for the whole camp to go riding at Centennial Park. You can see that the stables are very dark behind them. I used a green wash over canvas. Canvas texture is very rough, so you can see the strokes very clearly.

I'm going to attempt to capture the motion of these ponies as it intrigues me how they can be done. Degas and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec did several paintings of horses galloping, which I thought very impressive.