Although I can't travel around and see racing in person, I watch the coverage every time it's on tv, and get to know the horses through their careers. Every now and then a horse stands out with amazing performances and becomes deservedly famous, and those I like most tend to end up on my to-paint list, little portraits to honour them and give my custom collection a variety of real-life characters amongst the made up horses.
My last racehorse portrait was a flat racing star, Enable, the next lookalike on my list is one of the very best current chasers - Altior. The horse who beat Big Buck's winning streak of 18 by just one race, known for his awesome sprint finish and often leaving his rivals many lengths behind, he's a big handsome dark bay with a touch of rabicano ticking and a white top to his tail.
I had planned to use the G2 TB with a little resculpting to make it look more like him, but then I happened to get hold of a spare copy of the more recent walking thoroughbred mould, and all that needed to resemble him far better was an alteration of the loose mane into a row of neat little plaits, and it was ready to paint.
I really like the way he turned out, one of the browns I used in his paint blend has a tendancy to mix badly and cause roughness and mess, but I managed to tame it down with some much better behaved red-brown and tan, and of course being so dark there was a lot of black to smudge in and shade his coat, too.
Here's a link to one article about the real horse, with a nice photo to see his colour incase you're not familiar with him and wonder how well I've matched his model counterpart!
Because his rabicano white isn't nearly as heavy as the others I painted earlier this year (in some photos it barely shows at all), I just did a little faint paint-spatter from a toothbrush to give him a touch of ticking on his flanks, rather than painting in hair-direction roaning. And I'm especially pleased with his clip lines, because it's a sort of half-grown-out clip his body isn't all that much paler than his legs, so I ran a fine line of light brown along the joins to make them stand out, as the edge of long hair will on a real horse.
The other side, to show his modified mane, I hate resculpting in general but plaited manes are just about within my comfort zone - first I file off the old one, then using milliput I add a series of bumps along the top line for the roots of the hair, then stick little scrunched up blobs on to represent each rolled braid. Once it's all painted black it looks fine!
My Stablemate scale favourite racehorse collection now numbers five : Big Buck's, Sire De Grugy, Sprinter Sacre, Enable, and Altior. I have a couple more in mind, but now I've started on this new mould I want to use more of these in the mix, rather than go back to having the G2 TB for everyone again!
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