Tales from the Body Box - catching up with my customs!

Quite a few to post today, I've been painting a lot more than usual over the last few weeks (my creativity goes in phases, soon I'll be back to not touching the paints for a year or two, hahah!) and have gathered up a batch to have their photos taken while we got a bit of sunshine, along with three who already had pictures but didn't get posted yet.

A mustang with no name yet, this one happened because I liked the base colour on my dun overo reiner and wanted to do another without the pinto patches!

One from the big bargain body box (last year's blind bags on special offer), my first custom on the G3 warmblood mould - I've ended up with a fair amount of the OF releases on this mould without really meaning to, but this is the first custom body I've got my hands on. I think it's also my first dark chestnut, I've usually painted them brighter purely because that's the shade of my orange pot of paint!

At a slightly different angle to show her face marking better. I've named this one Harecroft Nutmeg.

Another first, this time I picked out my only spare copy of the Mini Valegro mould to have a new coat of paint, meet Harecroft Valiant - one of my favourites of recent years, I love how he ended up!

He's been in the body box ever since the mould first came out and I bought a duplicate to customise, being saved until my painting was going well enough to do him justice! I went for a very shaded dark bay, I enjoy doing these and think they look more striking than a plain even-coloured bay when they're finished.

I tend to do quite small markings on my customs, a set of short socks and a stripe at most, 

so my idea this time was to paint one up with extensive white, and as the American breeders are often proud of what they call 'chrome' on the flashy gaited showring breeds, I chose the TWH mould.

She's also the result of trying to vary my chestnuts much more, with a paler paint mix, light shading, and a flaxen mane and tail. She's named Harecroft American Dream - I'm doing surprisingly well with naming them as I go along, there's not too many in my little book with a space beside their description!

Harecroft Mabel, repainted from a scuffed up foal with a damaged leg which came in a mixed lot of paint-rubbed bodies and good horses. Not the neatest of paintjobs as the body was rough, but broken horses make me sad so I just had to do something with the poor little thing!

This horse wasn't meant to be a bay! He was intended as the base for a tobiano skewbald, but as I went along I just got really attached to how he looked as a solid colour, and decided he wasn't getting partly painted over after all! He can be shown as a Welsh Cob now he isn't a pinto partbred, so I've called him Harecroft Gwydion.

I had to be a bit more firmly resolved to actually add the white for my next attempt at a tobiano skewbald, and although it's always a bit of a faff painting layers and layers on in such a specific pattern without ruining it or overlapping a bit that wasn't meant to be white marking, it's worth it in the end! This one was the WEG 'driving' stablemate I'd got a duplicate of years ago, I'd carved the legs down a bit to refine them, then left her languishing in the dusty bottom of my battered old body box. But now she finally has a fresh new coat of paint, I'm really pleased with how she turned out. I'll show her as an Irish sport horse, Harecroft Ballymena.

And finally, for now, one I've had in mind for months, Harecroft Silversmith, a dark rose grey on the G3 TB mould. I don't think I'll have him as a thoroughbred - a bit too chunky in the legs and wide in the shoulders, though both those seem to be a feature of this sculptor's style, rather than deliberate breed characteristics worked in to each model. He makes a much better hunter type, and I think this colour suits him.