I enjoy detailed paintings of saddles, boots, etc. This was fun to paint!

...Ergo the metaphor - what the motorcar was to the American 20th century traveler, or working employee, (who used a car or truck to make a living), the saddle was to the American traveler and cowboy one to four hundred years immediately prior. What was under the hood, be it horses or horsepower did not change much. Rather, it was the drivers' seat and all its appearances that we have obsessed about. Henry Ford invented the first motorcar and the Spanish Vaquero invented the first western cowboy saddle.

from 'Cowboys-Vaqueros, Origins of the First American Cowboys' by Donald Gilbert Y Chavez