Sunday 31 December 2023

Painted in 2023

Another year gone by, and it's time for my annual recap of all the custom horses I've painted...


28 this year, a much lower total but I'm still pleased - there were a couple of long pauses where I didn't paint any at all, so I'm just happy that I didn't stop entirely, and picked up the paintbrushes again after the months when nothing happened!

There's also a few scattered through here which haven't actually been introduced and explained on the blog yet, but I'll get round to writing about them and sharing bigger pictures eventually.

24 solid colours, one spotted, and just three pintos this year, I'm finally getting out of the habit of wanting to paint every pony patchy!

None are colours I'd never painted before, though quite a few are different variations or shades, or experimental paint application techniques, which make them still slightly different to my previous interpretations of coat colours. There's a fleabitten grey speckled with pencils rather than just paint, a couple of metallic chestnuts, and one where the customising project included a whole new hairstyle and show tack too.

And, like last year, I've managed to add quite a few 'firsts' to the list of breeds I've painted : Sorraia, Welsh Sec C, French Trotter, Kerry Bog Pony, Kabardin, Don, Chincoteague, Sandalwood, Muraközi, and Gelderlander.

Unfortunately, not all of them have names yet, but really I wanted to post my recap on the final day of the year, and will fill in all those blank spaces later as I think of them!

Tales from the Body Box - The CollectA Megabox, part 1

As I said in my earlier blog post, here, I recently ended up with a big box of second hand CollectA models, the cost of each duplicate to repaint being entirely absorbed by the total value of the models I'm keeping as they are - effectively these are free 'bodies' for my customising hobby!

Here's the first few breeds I've given their new lease of life as unique custom repaints...


The lovely little Campolina sculpt, it's so nice to have a rare breed so well-represented, and this handsome horse is the third of his breed to join my herd, after the original finish red dun, and my grulla repaint. This time I went for a different shade, a bay dun, with heavy primitive markings just like some of the best-know reference pics of this Brazilian breed. I'm really happy with how he turned out, I always find the paler colours more difficult to get looking really good, but I think the amount of darker detailing on this one stops him from being too washed-out and bland. I've named him Caldeirão, which taken literally means 'cauldron' but actually refers to a volcano's crater!


A second Brazilian breed (I didn't do this on purpose! Laughing), and it's the Mangalarga Marchador now in chestnut. In fact, I've named this one Castanhiero, which means 'chestnut'!


I copied his deep shade somewhere between red and liver from the reference photo in one of my horse breed books, his high white socks and quirky face marking are inspired by that one too - not a direct portrait, but I really liked the way the rich colour combined with so much white detail.


The Shetland pony is also a sort of semi-portrait idea - my own Shetland's father was written down as cremello on his pedigree, and though I've never managed to find any photos of him online, I decided to paint one of my CollectA ponies to match roughly like he would have looked. She doesn't have any white socks, and just a tiny few-hairs white marking on her forehead, so I went with the same for this mini model of her sire. His name is Snap Dragon, after the real pony I never met.


Another notoriously cute pony breed, the Chincoteague, a hardy native island pony with a tough nature and a sweet face! Though they do come in solid colours too, pinto is common - and the best-known pattern for the breed, after the much-loved Misty of Chincoteague came to fame. I decided to go for a buckskin pinto, just cos it's one of the colours I paint least often - again, I often struggle with giving the light yellowy brown enough depth, and getting the contrasting dark paints applied evenly enough to not look messy. This time I bypassed a lot of that trouble by having the legs be white rather than black!


One of my favourite CollectA moulds for her simple expressive calm - the twitched back ear, the passive face, the steady still pose. The Don was famously the horse of the Cossacks, and a huge influence on a lot of breeds from Central Asia into Eastern Europe. While chestnut might not be too far from the original finish paintwork of this model, I really wanted to have a go at my own version of this typical colour for the breed. Mine's turned out a lot more muted, tending toward brownish rather than orange, and I've gone a bit lightly with the metallic sheen - it's there, but I didn't want the gold to overwhelm the paint itself!


Next, the Nonius sculpt repainted as a Kabardin, an ancient breed from the Caucasus. Why the change? All Nonius horses are black, and I already had the black original finish model, and it's not a colour I could really add much variation to - not like my new chestnut Don being different enough to my other chestnut Don!


So I got out my breed books and hunted through for one which made the best match to CollectA's Nonius mould, with his sloping hindquarters, slim shoulders, and lonnng convex profile - and this was it! The example in the photos had a particularly nice pale nose, too, which settled it - I do love a mealy muzzle on a very dark bay!

Much like with the Nonius-to-Kabardin, I picked the CollectA Friesian from the box of duplicates to repaint, and thought 'now what am I going to do with you?'. My existing one in original finish is already a well-painted black, with some nice warm tones in his paint and a sleek semi-glossy finish, so if I painted a black custom it wouldn't really be that much different to the one I already had, only in the eyes and feet would I be able to show any more detail. And the breed is almost entirely black.
So, any other breeds it looks like? Not with that body type and that much feathering, combined with the typical upright pose - it's pretty much only Friesians which have the exact same outline as Friesians!

Then I had an idea which solved this dilemma - the breed is almost entirely black, but not 100%. Purebred chestnuts exist! Sadly they're deeply unpopular in the show ring, and chestnut stallions can't be approved as breeding studs. The vast majority of breeders from the post-war period onwards have been trying to eliminate them in preference for all black, and these days they're all DNA tested - any stallion which even carries the red gene (despite being black!) cannot be registered with the international breed society either.
We may well end up losing the red gene from all continuing stallion lines in future - except in the USA, where a second spin-off unaffiliated breed association allows chestnuts. So I've painted a specifically American chestnut Friesian, to create a little model character who can be appreciated for what he is, and not treated like a rule-break or a mistake!


I think the mould looks great in a different colour to usual, the lighter paint brings out a lot of the sculpting detail which is hidden in a plain black. CollectAs always have such beautifully expressive faces, too!


He looks like he's a bit of a lively one, on full alert and ready to spring into action!


I still have one more duplicate Friesian to paint, so I'm going to have to think even harder to come up with another colour, or a different breed he could switch to be instead! May have to go partbred in the end...

Here's another pony who changed breeds significantly! To me, the Haflinger sculpt never really looked like the breed she was designed as, too light in the body, too long and lean in the leg - more like a lightweight riding pony cross, than the mini-draft build of the true Haflingers which are like big chunky barrels of blonde pony Laughing But the head is too large and long for a really refined show pony type, so I spent ages sifting through all my various horse books to try to find something which has both the small elegant build, and the larger head.
Eventually settled on Indonesia, and the similar Java and Sandalwood ponies, which seemed ato be the closest match - they look small and pretty, with the heavy head being noted as a negative 'flaw' in the text description. The Sandalwood seems to be a little bit finer in the leg, a couple of books mention imported Arabians and small Thoroughbreds being used in the colonial era to refine them and make them more a riding-pony type, than a practical tough working animal - the Java is still truer to old type.
One of the Sandalwood pony photos showed a very-speckled fleabitten grey, and I decided that was the one I'd copy for my first repaint of this breed - I actually found the exact same photo online, though it's very tiny : here


And here's my model version! Not a colour I've painted very often, even though my first real-life horse was a speckly grey, it's very fiddly at this scale where using the toothbrush-paint-spatter technique wouldn't look quite so good as it does at Stablemate scale - on a horse this big, the specks look better if they're slightly elongated to follow the direction of the hair. I used a combination of two methods this time, firstly a lot of little paint strokes applied with a tiny brush, then over the top of that I added more detail (and more darkness to the most heavily speckled areas) with a normal writing pencil. I think it's quite effective, she looks as speckly as the reference picture!


Another angle, which doesn't flatter the proportions of head to body in the slightest, but shows her face well! I do have one other Haflinger body, not from this boxful but from an earlier purchase of play-worn models which needed a new lease of life, so I think she'll be getting a friend of the same breed at some point soon - they come in plenty of colours!

Next up in this batch, and yet again, this was the result of flipping through several different breed books to pick a best-match to a model I didn't really want to repaint as it's original all-one-colour breed! This time was the American Cream Draft, a sculpt with a hefty neck, long back, chunky leg, and not a lot of feather, so I looked through the pages til one jumped out as a good likeness - the Muraközi. A draft breed from Hungary, they're mostly black and grey but the example in one of my books was such a stunning dappled chestnut that I knew that was the colour I wanted to paint!


Here he is, I'm really pleased with how he turned out - the dappling was a bit nerve-wracking to paint cos there's always the feeling that I'm potentially ruining a paintjob which was working out fine and would've been best left well alone without the dapples, but they were worth the scary stage cos they look nice in the end!


It's always satisfying to make a brand new breed page on my website and expand my collection's range, but I think researching and painting them myself is even more fun than just buying one! I've named him Király, which means King.


And here he is with his book self, so you can see the beautiful photo which inspired my breed choice!


The Tennessee Walking Horse is one of my favourite CollectA moulds, showing the breed's very interesting gait in a natural flat-shod style, without the artificial wedged and weighted shoes and long-toed trimming which were the showring standard for many decades. It's nice to see model companies deciding not to favour the exaggerated Big Lick style any more.
I painted a bay sabino once before, so this time I decided to go for a different white pattern, and make him a seal brown tobiano pinto - love how he turned out! His name is Diamond Dreamer.


A second Haflinger, became a second Sandalwood pony! While looking up the breed for painting my first one, I was struck by the huge variety of colours they come in - dun in all its forms seemed to be fairly common, as do flashy white markings. This one wasn't copied from any one pony, just me combining the coat colour from one with the idea of long white stockings from another.


And the last, for now - the Hackney has had a makeover from chestnut to...chestnut!
I always found the mould far, far too chunky to be a decent representation of a very fine-boned delicate and elegant breed, so one more time I flicked through my little collection of horse breed books, on the hunt for a tall carriage horse of a more warmblood-type. The Gelderland seemed the best match of all for the model I had in hand, so that's what I went with. Most of the example photos showed vivid bright gingery or red chestnuts, all with extensive white markings on the legs, and the faces too.

There's many many more to come, I wonder what breeds I'll be painting next year...


Tales from the Body Box - Stablemates and Mini Whinnies

Another catch-up post to squeeze these into the correct year, even though they were completed back in autumn customs done over the last couple of months, I've been better at painting than getting them posted on the blog!


I haven't ended up with many of this Peruvian Paso mould to repaint in the years since it was released, at least not til the 'Handful of Horses' blind bag series came along, and now suddenly I had two at once! So I consulted my horse books and Google, and found that chestnut is one of the commonest colours by far, so that's what I painted. I decided to go for a very dark shade for a change, cos I seem to have done a lot of light chestnuts when making my racehorse portraits, so with this one not having to look like any one real horse, I was free to choose a completely different end of the spectrum chestnuts can be!


I've named him Cascabel, picked from a real Paso's pedigree to make sure it's the sort of name a horse really would be given in Peru!


This one was a bit more experimental, I originally set out to make him a custom of one of the Balearic breeds, either Mallorcan or Minorcan, which are typically black, leaner-limbed than the mainland Iberian breeds, with a narrow roman nose, and much shorter mane and tail. his mould seemed the best match for the physique, and the mane was easy to trim' down by carving the end into the curve of the neck. Because I'd already painted an almost-black Andalusian on the same mould, I decided the best way to make him look more different was to add the ribbon decorations which are added to the horses' manes for showing, parades, and special occasions.
It was only afterwards that I realised the Balearic breeds seem to have slightly different turnout traditions, and their decorative ribbons are attached as separate rosettes, not one long running line of loops. So I've accidentally done a custom of one breed, but dressed it as another!
I'm undecided on the best course of action here, just accept that he's an Andalusian after all, or peel off the wrong ribbon and dress him with a different set of ribbons arranged the correct way so he can stay Mallorcan/Minorcan. Either way, his name would be in Spanish, so I called him Fiesta and will figure out what to do about his breed later on!


This one's a much easier breed allocation - I set out to paint a palomino Welsh Cob cos I realised I didn't have one, and now I have a palomino Welsh Cob, so that's just what I wanted to happen! I've named him Gold Star.


I think the G3 Friesian makes quite a good cob, even though in real life Friesians are much leggier-looking and longer in the back than a Welsh Cob, the model here is a little chunky in the leg (this sculptor has a tendency to give all her Stablemates thicker solid limbs, even on light breeds), so it's perfect for having a change of nationality! And the flying Friesian trot also works well as the notoriously fast and floaty Welsh trot (hard to keep up with on foot, but a delight to ride!)


Another model which had me reaching for my breed books, I've already painted two of this mould as grey Orlov Trotters, but wondered if any of the other trotter breeds from around the world would make a nice alternative so I didn't just keep doing the exact same thing with them, only varying the amount of dappling! I settled on the French Trotter as both a good match, and also an interesting breed to add to my collection. Chestnut is a common colour for them, and the breed example in one of my books was this gorgeous bright shade with a metallic sheen, so I decided to copy him.


I picked the name Gericault, purely cos I heard someone say it on an art documentary I had on in the background while painting, and it seemed as good a name as any!


Down a scale now, for a Mini Whinnies model, the smallest size I paint at the moment. I got a mixed lot of bodies (someone selling their duplicates from blind bags, there were multiples of many of them!), and this one I thought would make a nice Akhal-Teke, a little bit too much mane but the rest of him is fine!


I used a lot more of the gold paint than usual, brushed on in light layers over the top of a matte basecoat til he looked about as shiny as I thought I could take him without starting to look decorator-ish! I named him Guneshli, which I need to check the meaning of cos I can't remember what it means now!


My first custom on this mould, I've been wanting to get one for years but somehow they never came my way in body batches til now. And I'd already had the idea for what I'd paint when I did get one - a Sorraia.


Trying to get the light to show his colour better, my first custom of this breed (on the CollectA Lusitano mould) was a very dark greyish grulla so I wanted to go the opposite way this time and paint a lighter one with a much browner tone to it. I've named him Altamira, and I'm pleased with how he turned out.


And the final one for now, I found one of these little Highlands I didn't know I had left, and rather than paint her as yet another of her own breed (I have a LOT of Highlands from that time I set out to paint every possible shade and genetic combination of dun in the breed, hahah!), I did a bit of researching what other small chunky ponies there were with a bit of heel feather and a lot of mane. And the main candidate seemed to be the Kerry Bog Pony, so that's what she became!


They can be a lot of colours but because I was avoiding any of the ones I'd painted on this mould already, she ended up being the most common colour of all, bay! But I don't mind, cos I do love painting bays, and they can vary so much from gingery with a black trim, to deep mahogany brown with darker shading, so they never get boring. Again, no name yet, apart from the unflattering nickname of Bog which might end up sticking if I don't hurry up and choose her something nicer!


Another of the Mini Whinnies body batch I got cheap, they're such tiny little models but I don't find them too small to paint, just have to find a small enough brush! These more recent moulds are a lot more precise and realistic than the early ones, most of the newer horses are shrunken-down versions of larger models, so their proportions and poses tend to be a lot better, even if some of the detail is lost in the miniaturisation process. And I even managed to give this one tiny thread braids, just like I do for my Stablemate scale Saddlebreds.


My first repaint on this relatively recent Cantering Morgan mould, and I chose a colour I've had saved in my photo reference folder for a very long time, this beautiful shade of sooty palomino! I find this colour very hard to mix paints to match, and to blend the shading, but he turned out very similar to how I wanted, so I count that as a success!


It's always fun to work with a new sculpt, especially one which I'm not all that familiar with as it's mostly been used for club exclusives and rare special runs - aside from this custom, I only own the black regular run.


Another tiny little custom, but of a much bigger breed! I'm not sure if this Mini Whinnies mould has ever been issued with an official breed designation, but I'd already painted a skewbald cob so I decided to go for a solid coloured Clydesdale for more contrast than just painting a piebald one, hah.


And finally, the Standing Stock Horse mould, repainted as a very loud red bay appaloosa. Although, I find this mould doesn't make a very good true-type Appaloosa, so I've been allocating mine the Colorado Ranger breed instead.


Even though the finish on my spotted paintjobs isn't ever quite as neat as I'd like, at least not at this small scale, it's still fun to paint one now and then! I've named her Red Stars.

CollectAs to keep

Time to tell you all about a huge and very enjoyable parcel I had last month - a GIANT box of second hand CollectA horses!

They were listed on Ebay in bulk lots, really reasonably priced, and with an element of mystery - from the photos, you couldn't really see what was in each batch cos they were piled into shelving in multiple rows, with only the first few clearly on show. So I decided to choose some of the mixed lots at random, after all I don't mind so much about duplicates as many collectors - the spare ones can be passed over to have a new lease of life in the repainted side of my collection!

When they arrived, I unpacked the box and set them to one side of the table for 'keeps' and the other side for doubles. I was surprised and very happy with just how many I didn't have already - a grand total of 15 new horses for my herd!

Which made me think....I did a little bit of mathematics, and figured out that the brand-new prices for all the models I'm keeping as they are, add up to MORE than I paid for the entire boxful. So every single custom horse I create from the remainder of this bulk lot, has effectively cost me nothing at all - the difference even pays for the cost of the paint I'll put on them!

I'll show the first few customs in another post very soon, but for now, here are the original finish arrivals which are staying just the way they are.


When I first started buying CollectAs, I picked my favourite colour whenever there was a choice of two, but more recently I decided it was a bit of a silly 'rule' to restrict myself to just one when many of the alternate colours were just as nice. So I've been gradually adding the rest of the colours to my collection. That'll be the case with almost all of today's introductions, sculpts I had already but now in a different colour too. This is the palomino pinto mare, no breed was given officially but my bay pinto I've got as a Sandalwood Pony so this one will join her on that breed's page of my website.


The matching foal, I had the standing foal already but now I have both mares this foal can be paired with the second one.


The Standardbred Pacer in black, I picked the chestnut before cos I thought he might be rather plain looking, but the really dark colour shows off the fine detailed sculpting better, I think! I'm so glad they did this breed before the chunky leg era, it works so much better as a long lean-limbed horse!


The palomino Missouri Fox Trotter, her colour is better in person than in the official picture OR my photo, one of those models which doesn't photograph brilliantly but looks nice in hand!


The very sweet Quarter Horse foal, the bay colour is better shaded than the matching adult!


The black Thoroughbred, who's far from being plain black, with a lot of brown tones subtly shaded in. And again, hurrah for the slim-legged older moulds, I dread to think how chunky a collectA TB would be if they released it now! I'd already been thinking of ordering this mare brand new, but giving a home to a second hand bargain one is even better.


The Tennessee Walking Horse foal in black, which is an odd choice by CollectA as they didn't make an adult this colour, their TWH stallions were bay pinto or palomino!


The chestnut Hanoverian, who made a last-minute change from 'duplicates' to 'keeps' - I was convinced I had him already but when adding the others to my site I realised there was no photo, so I checked my shelf, and I really did only own the bay one after all!


The really dark chestnut Morgan, which I did get in a second-hand parcel once before, but in a very scuffed state so I repainted him. This one is in much better shape, and I think his paintwork is better than the other one I had, too - a nicer shade of brown showing on the paler parts, and the black is deeper and less greyish.


The Norwegian Fjord foal in grey dun - the matching adult in this colour was among the first few I picked out when I was adding second-colour horses to my CollectA collection, so it's nice to add the matching foal as well.


The grey Andalusian, another model I had once before but had to repaint - he was all marked up with felt pen marks which wouldn't come off, this one is in lovely clean condition so gets to stay as he is!


The gorgeous Clydesdale mould in very roany black sabino (not grey, that colour doesn't occur in the breed - all the 'grey Clydesdale' photos on Google and various picture-sharing sites are mis-labelled grey Shires)


And the matching foal to go with him, a little bit wobbly but by tilting the base board here I convinced him to stand without leaning on his dad!


The Shire foal in grey (which is grey, but shouldn't be - they're always born dark and it's too young to have gone this pale!) I already had the mare but not her baby, so this little one completes a family for my shelf.


And finally, the draft horse with a cat. I didn't buy this model when it was released cos I wasn't too keen on the idea of them being fixed together permanently - the cat seems a bit too big for the size the horse sculpt, so I'd have preferred it to be removeable so I could take a picture without! But now I've ended up with the pair of them anyway, I'm justifying the slight mismatch in scale by saying it could just be a very big cat, and a smaller than average heavy horse!
No breed was specified for the drafter, I'm trying to find one which has SUCH a convex nose but also not a lot of feather and comes in chestnut. Nothing ticking all the boxes so far!