Carousel Horse - The Patriot

A few of you may remember that my dad carved full size carousel horses and animals as a hobby. This is the last horse that he "finished". After he passed away my mom took this up to Oregon to be painted by the dad's carving mentor Ken Means. What Ken discovered is that my dad had not actually glued all the components together so it ended up being a bit more work than expected.

After seeing what Ken did with the paint work on this one, it really makes me appreciate just how good a carver my dad was. I'm definitely considering going back and repainting a number of the horses that I worked on to get it closer to Ken's style of painting.

This style of horse is known as a flag or patriot horse since it uses and American flag and Eagle motif. I think Ken did a fantastic job bringing this one to life.

It is hard to catch the subtlety of the shading in the mane. Everything seems to be a bit washed out in the photograph. There is a lot of black and brown shading that really makes it stand out and the eagle clutching the flag is amazing. I think I learned a lot just looking at this one.

This is one of the three horses that I have painted. While I think he still pretty good (I painted this one in 2002) I think he good use some freshening up. In true carousel style I would paint over the existing work rather than stripping him down to bare wood.