#588 Pine Trails Horse Ranch #588
by William Lum
Title
#588 Pine Trails Horse Ranch #588
Artist
William Lum
Medium
Painting - Watercolor
Description
Near Davis, California is one of the more active horse riding facilities in the region. Artists were invited to the Pine Trails Horse Ranch to paint and photograph recently by Yolo Art-Ag. I arrived with some artist friends on a Thursday morning and first thing we saw near the parking lot was a two-month old foal named Ask Me along with her mother, Sugar. In the next group of horses I saw out in a field was a reddish brown Pinto horse that really stood out from the rest. A pinto horse has a coat color that consists of large patches of white and any other color. We wandered around the ranch and I ended up sketching an old large fork lift in the hay barn instead of horses. But later in the day I saw that same Pinto being led down the road. I knew I had to paint that horse as my weekly project.
While I was near the hay barn sketching the fork lift, Carol Grismore pointed out a mustang with a brand on its neck. A mustang is a free-roaming horse of the Western United States, descended from horses brought to the Americas by the Spanish. The Bureau of Land Management captures these horses on public land and then “Freeze Brand” a code of the Alpha Angle System on the left side of the neck. The system was patented in the 60’s by Dr. Keith Farrell and it’s to prevent easy altering of the brand. You can decode the brand to get the year of birth and registration number. Then you can look up the registration information on the internet. For this mustang, we learned from the code that it was captured in a California Herd Management area and there are 21 CHM’s in California. If you see strange looking marks on a horse or burro’s neck, it just might be a BLM Alpha Angle brand.
This 11 ½ ” X 17 ½ ” watercolor was done on Arches, 400 lb, cold press paper.
Uploaded
September 10th, 2021
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