Tales from the Body Box - Eclipse and Billy Ruffian

For the first time since I started this blog, I have some of my own customs to introduce!

I don't do them very often, my creativity comes and goes, or changes course between drawing, writing, making miniatures, and painting models, with long spells in between when I manage a whole lot of nothing. But every now and then I feel like creating some new custom horses for my collection, and will paint my way through a few from the body box. 
They're mostly minis, as time's gone on I've found I'm more and more uncomfortable with larger scales - because I paint exclusively with a brush, never pastels or airbrushing, I find it very difficult to get a smooth and even shaded colour on a larger surface, so my comfort zone is Stablemate to around Animal Artistry or Schleich scale.

This week's customs are a pair from the bargain box of last year's Mystery Horse Surprise SMs I got earlier in the year, so I could do some customs on the newer moulds that selection contained. 
I'd had my paints and brushes out to do some touching-up repairs on a couple of CollectAs who'd suffered in the post on the way here, and having picked up the tools is halfway to getting started when you're as bad at getting motivated as I am, so I decided to make myself paint something from scratch as well! 
Feeling all inspired and psyched up to start, the first one I picked out was the Spanish walk Andalusian mould, which would suit the rose grey idea I'd had kicking around in my mind as something I really wanted to try...

Eclipse, so named because there was an eclipse of the moon the night before I painted him.

I really like this little mould, the sculpting style is way more to my taste than the rather stylised and cuter trend we've had over recent years, with chunky legs and almost cartoony faces, this one's got a real lean and wiry look in comparison, with detailed muscling and gorgeous sharp-boned face! It's also very nice to paint, the detailing makes it easy to pick out the features - highlights and shading go in just right when the mould helps!

Here's how he looks in the shade, even without sunlight the red tones in the paint stop it looking flat and blue, a real problem with the Citadel (Games Workshop) paints I use - their pre-mixed greys tend toward blueness, which is ok for inanimate objects but hopeless on horses, so now I only ever mix my own greys using black, white, and hints of brown, tan or beige to warm or soften them.

I think the darker grey suits the mould well, and what must be my tenth attempt at dappling on an SM hasn't turned out too badly - that's the one thing I do find hardest brush-painting on a smaller model, I'm only ever really convinced by my dapples on a larger scale like Safari, but these are nice enough that I don't regret having tried them!

As always, the best lighting is when the horse falls over!

Once I've painted one I'm on a roll, and later in the day I picked out another mould, this time one I've never painted before - Django.

Ever since this mould was released, I've been imagining it in various colours and patterns of piebald and skewbald (tobiano pinto), and a light bay with not-a-lot-of-white was the first version I wanted to create when I got three in my mixed Mystery box. 

He didn't turn out quite like I expected, but I fingerprinted a bit of white paint where I hadn't planned a marking, and had to make the best of this by a swift improvisation of pattern - I actually think I like him more with this accidental redesign - it's all too easy to stick to a mental 'template' and paint models too alike, and now he's nothing like the minimal pintos I've done before.

I've named him Billy Ruffian, a name which perhaps needs a little explanation - I'm a big fan of sailing ships and naval history, and the ship Bellerophon was known in Nelson's navy as the Billy Ruffian because the crew couldn't or wouldn't pronounce the foreign-sounding name. I've always thought that would make a neat and amusing name for a model with the right character, and not long after I'd painted this little stallion, it popped into my mind as just perfect!

I always like those skewbalds or piebalds where the sides don't seem to match so I gave him a lot less white on the other side, the lighting doesn't help here but he's got two white streaks in his black mane.

Another mould I really do like, I've said before but I just love the flashy proud presence in his pose, and again the sculpting style is just what I like, it's lovely that we're getting so many SM moulds filter through to regular run status from the more limited and exclusive editions. His first 'brother' is going to be a seal bay with a wider spread of white, and I haven't planned exactly what the third one will be, but it'll be some other variation of coloured partbred cob.