Explosive

Hehe, I think Jake was a bit taken aback by Archie, here.


-----


"That's no fair," Belle squinted angrily to the blasé man's back as he jumped the young stallion over an imposing oxer combination.
"Tough love, hun," the rider grinned as he finally pulled up the fleabitten rose grey to the fenceline which Belle was now leaning over, clearly irate.
"He's assigned to--"
"The both of us," Jacobi cut in as he dismounted Afterglow swiftly with a sly grin, "and I shotgun the trip before you."
"...Go to hell, Jake."

As he smiled sweetly to himself, his horse watched bemusedly as the blonde woman stalked off crossly.

"We're going to England, Archie," Jacobi crooned to the stud as he pat his sweat-laden hide before handing him over to a hot-walker to cool down.

Merely weeks later, the pair flew out to Happy Paddocks for their first international cross-country event. The competition was fairly small with only a few contestants, yet said opposition was proving to be rather talented. Thankfully, the course designer had been sparing and the technical difficulty was kept to a minimum for the Novice class.
When it was their turn to go, the pair was by then a sheer bundle of nerves, energy and palpable tension ready to catapult onto the course from the starting box and explode over any jump in sight. Jacobi controlled his massive stallion's actions with a kind, firm yet soft hand, smoothly guiding and calming the pale grey into an impulsive yet easy stride towards the first fence.


-----


The sheer amount of refs and layersss that went into this. o.o Lawdy.

So, this is sexy little DD Afterglow performing in his first HARPG show, ~AngelitoCaz's XC Show at Happy Paddocks, in the Novice class, under Jacobi D'Alton. :3 In this image, they're shown negotiating the fifth effort of the course.

I've been working for a while on-and-off on a cross country pic for this boy, and I'm glad I finally got around to finishing this for a competition. The entire background is one massive manipulation composed of countless free stock photos, which is why it looks iffy and unnatural. xD Sorry, I'm not a very good manip'er. But I did my best!





Art, horse reference & characters © *Hazel-rah
#HorseArt-RPG © *moonfeather
References & stock photography © ~Rai-Stock, ~Stock-a-holic, ~BlackHauraki, ~grace-stock, ~game-breaker, =Ailedda, ~demonstock