Tales from the Body Box - the first 2020s

Here's my first batch of mini customs painted in 2020. I had a little lull for a few weeks at the start of the year, then picked up the paintbrushes again and it seems I'm back on a roll!

First up we have a brother for Billy Ruffian, the skewbald I painted last year. I always planned he'd be darker and with more white on, and that's exactly how he turned out - I don't like using reference photos for my little herd of tobiano cobs as it's so much harder to copy the white in place from a picture than to make it up as I go along, I feel like I know the pattern type well enough to invent something realistic.

The other side, showing his half-and-half mane and how the patches are never the same on both sides.

I've named this one The Artful Dodger, just because it goes so well with Billy Ruffian (which was a ship, not a character, but doesn't it sound like a Dickensian street urchin's nickname!), and I really am pleased with him - this mould is so nice to paint with so much detail and a real noble, proud look in his pose and attitude. I imagine he'd be a horse who does a bit of showing in the Coloured Horse and Pony classes and very often comes home with a rosette and some new admirers.

Whereas this looks like a cob which has never seen the show ring in his life! I'd had a little idea about how nice it would be to paint a scruffy, muddy custom, maybe a family pet pony, or a competition horse enjoying the field life in his winter off, and then I happened to rummage through my body box and picked up the cob mould, and it clicked : the kind of horse I see most often being all laid back and happily filthy is a hairy cob. 

While I wanted the horse to look muddy, I didn't want him to come across as neglected and unloved, so I painted him clean first, then added the dirt - he's been groomed, and brought in at night when the weather's worst, and has his mane and tail combed out regularly, he just also really loves a good roll and picks up mud.

As this one was painted in February, I did briefly consider using actual horse-field mud from my boots to get the dirt the right colour, but went with paint in the end because I didn't want it to rub off when it dried out!

And here they are together, to really contrast the difference in stature, character, and cleanliness!

Next after the cobs came a mustang in wild bay...

...just because I realised I'd only ever painted my own horse's colour on portait models of my horse! It was about time I used wild bay on something else, with the distinctive pale legs, lack of full black points, and ginger highlights to the tips of the mane and tail. I didn't like this mustang mould when we first saw it, thinking it looked too disjointed and awkward, but changed my mind as soon as I got one OF release, and now I enjoy painting them too. Not naming them, though, like Muddy Cob this one is still nameless.

Having said how much I dislike copying reference photos for my piebald and skewbald cobs, I then promptly did exactly that for a different breed entirely!

This little shetland pony was inspired by a photo which cropped up in a news article about Storm Ciara! I did think I'd name it Ciara, then realised this is actually a stallion mould so gave that name away to an OF SM mare who arrived the same day as the storm hit here, so it fitted her just as well!

I think what I liked so much about this colour is the way the roaning fades the markings out, so you can barely see the patch on the flank, and the 'join' between the coloured shoulders and the white barrel is sort of softened. I haven't painted many roans, I think this is my first chestnut one, so it was interesting and a bit challenging working out how to make my paint do that without the usual hobby methods of airbrushing or pastels.

Last one for now, my first custom on the hanoverian dressage horse mould. I was going to paint a minimal tobiano when I set out my paints this day, but in typical fashion my plan changed along the way because I liked how he looked as a bay! Some big socks and some dappling stopped the bay being too plain, I really need to get better at resisting doing everything pinto so this was a good decision, actually. I've named this one Five Star.

I may not have painted quite what I originally planned, but I'm so pleased with the result anyway, and I'm getting more confident in my dappling now - I still don't think dapples and brush painted acrylics mix, but I'm way more horrified by the thought of pastels and sealant, or the technology and expense and waste of an airbrush, so I'm sticking firmly in the realm of tiny paint pots and trashing endless brushes!

There's a few more 2020 customs to come, but the most recent aren't photographed yet so they'll make the next post.