Tales from the Body Box - Danny Whizzbang

One of my main aims in my own customising lately has been to push myself to tackle some of the bodies I've had hidden away safely for a very long time. We're talking a decade's worth of dust, at least! 

At live shows, and on ebay, through the mid to late 2000s, I managed to pick up quite a selection of broken resins, and seconds, for really good prices, plus the occasional charity purchase in perfect condition. I bought them with all good intentions to give them a colour coat quickly; I had ideas, and enthusiasm to turn each blank horse into a little character for my collection. So it wasn't indifference, or not liking or wanting them after all, which meant they never got beyond blank stage.

Over time, I had to admit that my comfort zone for painting was really mini scale models. Anything bigger was daunting, too difficult to spread and shade paint smoothly & well blended with my old fashioned brush-and-pots-of-paint technique. 

So I stuck to SMs, and gradually the larger resins became the section of the body box I determinedly ignored. Tucked in safety in an inaccessible corner of the room, they wouldn't get broken - and I couldn't see them, so I didn't feel guilty about abandoning them there!

Last year as a turning point, broadening my range, working my way up through the easy, textured finish of Schleich horses, to smoother CollectA, I finally got as far as painting one of the long-lost resins. This week, I went back to the hidden corner, and rubbed the dust off another horse I felt ready to tackle at long last. 

I knew what colour he was going to be. I'd known that for ten years. It was just time to make it happen.

And here he is! Meet my latest little skewbald cob, Harecroft Danny Whizzbang - named for the character in Peaky Blinders.

Danny is the HA Fritz resin sculpted by Tina Lamport, as a Friesian stallion. I picked him up from the Horsing Around stall as an extremely cheap second, with several moulding flaws and bubble holes, around 2008 or 2009. I just knew he'd make a stunning little coloured cob, and despite the long long long delay, he's turned out exactly as I'd imagined!

Looking bright and lovely in this light, and his shadow against the fence makes his feathery white legs stand out better, so I'm torn which to use as his main display/show photograph.

Although I'm delighted with him, and the fact I finally got the poor neglected boy painted up, I do have one confession to make - he isn't finished! 

You probably noticed I've got him posing for his photoshoot in a sand-school set-up : that's because he's moulded attached to his 'grass' resin base, and I haven't got any green to paint it...

But I don't think that matters, certainly not enough to put off sharing him til whenever I buy some green. I prefer taking pictures with bases hidden anyway (under a grass sheet if they're detachable, with sand if they're not), so it's really just for shelf display that it matters about finishing off the little patch of grass for him to trot across.