First of all, here's take two on the bay skewbald G3 warmblood - last time I tried I ended up liking the look with a lot less white on, even though this is the pattern I'd originally had in mind, so I had a second attempt and this one's more or less exactly how I'd pictured my idea in the first place!
I've called this one Harecroft Corncrake, a name I'd had on my list for a long while but seemed to suit her halfway through painting, so by the time she was finished she was already named!
Here's a horse who already comes with a name - he's a portrait of the National Hunt racing star Sprinter Sacre. I'd wanted to do a mini version of this much-loved horse back when he retired, but only got as far as picking out the body and sculpting the plaits on, and now I've finally got round to giving him his coat of paint.
I like doing a custom from photos now and then, because it does make me paint what I'm seeing, rather than how I imagine a bay usually is - the shading becomes more individual and not just the way I like to do them.
A grey. I mean, look, a white grey! One of the most basic of all horse colours, and yet somehow this is the first time I've painted a plain grey model. I think the tendancy in customising is to go for the interesting, the challenging, the unusual, the decorative - while ignoring the simplest plainest colours like black or white-grey. But I've got four of these little Spanish-walk Andalusians to work with, so one of them gets to be the pure white so common (and so handsome!) in the breed; I've named him Harecroft Palomo, the male variant of 'paloma', meaning dove.
When I came to file his picture in the right place on my laptop, I realised I'd somehow missed out photographing another custom, one I painted way back in the summer!
Romanesque, so named because one of my first ever customs was a mulberry grey andalusian called Picaresque. With a lot more colour to him than the pure white grey, this one was a great deal more fiddly and looks a little messy, but as greys do fade out in a rough and patchy way, I'm ok with that!
The next one had to have a swift change of scenery, because I realised I couldn't have a horse doing a sliding stop up my 'tarmac road' base - I did once have to do very much that kind of manouver to stop a runaway pony heading toward a main road junction, but it's not the kind of scene you'd set up for a photo!
This was the result of me not being overly keen on the reiner mould, and thinking maybe if I paint one a really good colour, I'll like it as much as a less interesting colour on a mould I like more. And yes, it worked! I'm so happy with how this one turned out in a flashy pintaloosa pattern, he's well up there among my favourites. I might go with solid but even spottier appaloosa for the last reiner in my body box.
Harecroft Tullius, inspired by a horse I've seen out eventing this summer - he's got the marking more usually known as a 'bloody shoulder' on one side of his face! This combined with the dark legs, faint dappling, and softer fleabite speckles over the rest of his body made him a really striking horse to look at, and I made sure to get a few good reference pictures so I could paint up something similar. I swapped his face marking to the opposite cheek so it'd be on the display side of the model, and gave him a couple of socks so he wasn't a direct portrait of someobody else's horse.
Another clipped model here, this time a cob. At times I think I really do need to paint less bay skewbalds, but then I tell myself I like my bay skewbalds, and may as well keep doing a colour I know I enjoy and can do a decent job with! I've trailed a tiny line of dark paint along the join between clipped and unclipped colour this time, to pick out the little shadow you get where the thickness of the coat has some depth to it.
A slighty angled photo makes the cob mould look a bit less flimsy through the chest and neck, it's a bit more flattering than directly side-on, and his clip shows up lovely here, too!
This boy had a lucky escape when he fell off the board I was carrying him on, bounced off the doorstep, skittered across the concrete path hitting it at least three times, before stopping in a pile of wet leaves. All this, and he got away with only the tiniest of ear-tip rubs - I just had to name him something good luck related, then remembered riding a bay skewbald cob called Felix years ago, and because that name comes from the Latin meaning 'lucky', he can have it!
Last one for now...
I was able to get my hands on one more Alborozo body, and did him the third colour on my wishlist - here's how he turned out! Really pleased with him, I do always find pale colours harder but as long as the paints co-operate and the brushes are just right for the smudgey shading, I can often end up with something I love just as much as any of my darker colours, it just takes a little bit more care and stress to get there!
I think he stands out better on the green background, although the paler one does look pretty, so I'm not sure which I should use as his showing/website photo?
And here's a bonus shot for you - the lengths I go to for photographing models in winter when most of the garden is in shade! First raise the scenery as high as possible using a selection of boxes on a bin on a chair, then arrange the background and base at peculiar angles so the light is on the right parts of the horse without shadows on the backdrop, with help from the bird table to prop it up, and finally, stand off to the left somewhere in among the bushes just to be lined up right for some shots before the sun moves too far and the whole garden is dark again!
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