So I'm trying to make sure everything I painted in 2020 is posted neatly inside 2020, with no overlapping into the new year - for that reason this post is a gathered together collection of three customs with no breed, colour, or career in common; just the last few models I painted this year!
First we have Harecroft Bluebell, painted as a suffolk mare. This is my first ever custom on the G1 draft mould; they used to be quite hard to get hold of on the second hand market, with no regular run since 1997, but with the Best of British SM set including one a couple of years ago, there's now a few recent bodies kicking around, and I was lucky enough to get mine in a mixed lot on Ebay.
I find the G1 moulds quite nice to paint, just because they're something different - I came into model collecting properly in the early 2000s, when G2 had taken over, so these were never familiar to me in the same way as to people who started their Stablemate collection with the first generation of moulds.
The sculpting style might not be so sharp as the later models in the range, but they're good and smooth with solid conformation and typey breeds, so it's a shame we don't see more releases, really!
I decided to do a suffolk just because I have so few of them in my collection, and their big broad barrelly shape suits this chunky mould so nicely. I have considered 'dressing' Bluebell like I did for my first couple of Britains shires, but Suffolks are braided with raffia not coloured wool, and I've yet to figure out what would make a good 36th-scale stand-in for raffia!
While I was painting my mini tributes to Quevega and Annie Power, it struck me that I'd never done a single G2 TB custom which wasn't a racehorse portrait! Really, in all the years I've been painting, I've saved all those bodies to become famous horses, but now we have the Walking TB mould as well, I've got two different racehorsey moulds to choose from, and that means I can use up some of those G2s for non-portrait ideas!
My first idea was one which'd been simmering away in my mind for ages, a young dark grey who was just starting to go paler round the face; often there's quite a contrast between the head and the rest of the horse, especially in flat racing where they start young.
She ended up a little lighter in the body colour than I'd intended, but because she was looking so pretty anyway, I didn't try to correct it with more layers of dark shading - often a paintjob goes a little off target and I just let it for fear of ruining what looked ok even if it wasn't exactly how I pictured it!
I've named her Isle of Avalon.
And now, my final custom of 2020.
A few days ago I'd been mulling over ideas and colours I thought would look good on certain moulds, and the thought which settled as one of those 'I must paint that one day' ideas, was a liver chestnut skewbald using the Friesian mould as a cob. I had the specific shade of dark liver chestnut in mind, faded blonde highlights to the mane and near-black tipped tail, and a big flash of white over the shoulders, tapering out with pointed ends to four socks and a blaze.
But I didn't have a G3 Friesian in the body box, so the idea was doomed to be put aside for months or more. Or so I thought! One of my model horsey friends always sends me a little christmas parcel, and the morning after my colour plotting I unwrapped it to discover one of the things inside was a Friesian!
Highly amused at this co-incidence, I set to work getting him painted up straight away, and here he is.
I love how he turned out, he's almost identical to my mental-image 'design' (aside from gaining an unintended extra white patch on his neck thanks to a slip of the brush which had to be improvised over to look deliberate because it wouldn't wipe off!), and it's just so funny that I randomly got sent the exact mould I'd wished I had just a few hours beforehand!
My first custom this year, way back in the spring (and doesn't that feel like a very, very long time ago!), was a skewbald cob which I named Artful Dodger, so when my final custom of the year turned out to be another skewbald cob, I thought it fitting to call this one Oliver Twist, so they match.
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