White Turf 2025 Sketches

Apart from the cross-country skiing, another highlight of our trip to the Swiss Alps was attending the White Turf horse event on snow. That’s right, the horses race on snow! The “track” is actually a frozen lake covered in snow, and provided the temperatures stay low enough for it to be safe, fun events like this take place every winter for three consecutive weekends. Not sure what the official names for these are but the events mainly comprise of horseback riding (jockey-style), skiing behind horse and sitting in ski-affixed chair. Although my partner goes there to photograph, my passion lies more with drawing and of course this is a great opportunity to practice sketching horses again, something I have not done for some time. Now how about a series of them?

On Skis

iPad and Procreate app were used this time as the tablet was easier to bring along and with schedule being quite tight as we had to squeeze in skiing and walks in the morning. And here is the first drawing I made at the hotel! Little One is indeed featured to introduce some kawaii twist to the series. This of course is the “dragging behind horse in skis”. I must admit I struggled a bit with the horse as I had to start recalling how to draw one easily using “circles and triangles” as basis. After some trial and error, it all came back to me. Not a bad start…

In Chair

And once I returned back home to the Netherlands, I continued my project. Efforts from the previous drawing made it a bit easier for me to master the horse better. And to add some variety and to challenge myself of course, I decided to draw the horse from the opposite side. I continued with the “circle and triangle” basics and turned the drawing to illustrate one of the other events, where the jockey sits on a chair that slides along the snow with the skis attached on its legs. Once again, Little One is featured for added cuteness!

On Horse

And I wanted to save the “easiest” event to draw till the last. That way I got the more difficult stuff out of the way and can continue drawing with ease. But was it that easy? I have in the past worked with horseback riding sketches, but this one was a bit different since the jockey is leaning forward and not sitting completely on the horse. What further proved challenging was having to enhance the leg movements of the horse so we can visualize the speed. I hope I nailed it now! Compared to the other two drawings, this is less complete but still being worked on.

And here concludes my three sketches from the White Turf event a few weeks ago! Over time, I will be developing these drawings further by coloring them in and introducing backgrounds eventually to create some cute paintings to remember the weekend by. Not sure yet if I will continue with digital painting or decide to print, trace and paint of paper but we shall see. Look forward to working on them further so please keep your eyes peeled!