Two Julip Originals

Not one but two Julip horses to introduce today!

This lovely pair came from a friend of mine who was thinning down her herd. At first, I was struck by the tall red thoroughbred with long white socks, and knew I'd have to ask about him, but over the next few hours the roan kept on coming to mind as well, and in the end I decided that meant I should bring him into my herd, too, or I'd always regret it.

Let's meet them properly...

This handsome thoroughbred was one of the final batch of spares made when Annabel owned Julip. He'd been rehaired with soft natural mohair by his previous owner, and I gave him a little bit of muzzle shading and a pink nose when he got here.

He's not officially named yet, but I've been thinking of him with a nickname born from a discussion I had with his old owner about the high white markings : they reminded me of a now-retired racehorse I liked called Top Notch Tonto, they reminded her of one she knew called Pancake, so for now, just temporarily*, the poor boy's known as Top Notch Pancakes!

*This is exactly the sort of name which is going to stick and be on his show record forever, isn't it!

As well as the unusual markings, he has a totally adorable face - doesn't he just look like the softest, sweetest horse on the yard, the one who greets every passing human and horse and dog with a friendly face, and everybody says 'Aww, hello you'.

He may not have all the shading and dapples of newer Julips, but chestnut is one of those colours which suits being solid as well as it suits being detailed, and his flashy markings more than make up for an everyday kind of coat colour. I had a couple of chestnut hunters already, but no TB, so my herd easily has room for more big orange horses!

And here's his travelling companion, Robin. He came with this name, chosen by his previous owner as robins were nesting in her garden at the time he arrived. I only tend to rename Julips if I have one of the same name already (or if they've been given something truly obnoxious*, I'd consider it!), and technically I do have a new forest Robin Hood but he's after the folk hero rather than the bird, so they're different enough, I think!

*Something like, I don't know, 'Top Notch Pancakes', perhaps?!

Robin is a beautiful colour delicately painted, a very dark bay roan with a lovely varied and speckled effect on his pale parts, capturing the mixed dark-and-white hairs of a roany pony. I have got a couple of bay roans already, but very different to him - one's a reddish toned cob, the other a very smoothly shaded TB, so he fits in very nicely in between.

I had briefly considered redoing his mane in braids and tail plaited, to transform him into a properly turned out show pony, but once he got here I couldn't bring myself to do anything to his lovely hair aside from a parting and trim to give him a forelock, and combing a little bit of mousse through both mane and tail to calm and smooth it.

Whenever two Julips arrive together, whether new orders or second hand, I can't help thinking of them as field mates and friends forever after that, even making sure they get a spot to stand together on my shelf.
I think it's because Julips have that one-off nature which gives them more personality and individuality than mass produced models - it's more like adopting real little characters into the herd than simply ticking something off a wishlist or buying the latest release. They may be made of painted rubber, but somehow they're almost real!

Welcome to Harecroft Farm, dear Robin and...Top Notch Pancakes.

Mojo Fun variations

Yesterday I had some second hand Mojo Fun figures arrive - all models I had already got, but variations of paintwork rather than exact duplicates.

The cob mare in piebald. Curiously, this horse belonged to the friend of mine who introduced me to the Mojo brand in the first place, with the words 'Have you seen the Mojo cob mare? You NEED her!', and I had to go and look it up! I have ordered my own brand new copy in the meantime, but it amuses me that the original one we were talking about has now come to live with me too.

Why both? Look at them together!

The markings had a redesign somewhere between the production of these two mares, and although I liked the one I got, I'd always thought I wouldn't mind collecting the older versions as well if I happened to see them come up for sale.

As well as the patches, their feet are different - the older version has hand-painted dark hooves, the new one has sprayed pale beige instead.

Different face markings, too. My first one is named Precious, the new girl will be Pippi after a cob mare my horse made friends with over the fence this summer!

Along with her came a pair of ponies...

The shetland pony mare in a new shade of slightly brighter flaxen chestnut, and her matching foal.

They make a very sweet pair! Compare to the mare and foal I bought a while ago, in the old colour paintwork...

The foals are nothing alike, and although there's not a huge difference between two mares, it's enough that I'll keep both - besides, I'd feel terrible painting over either of them, leaving one foal without it's real mum any more!

Shetland family portrait time!

Tales from the Body Box - Ýruskjóttur

Icelandics are one of my favourite breeds to paint, partly because they come in such a wide range of colours. Many breeders have websites with accurate and well explained coat colour information, incidentally providing a handy wealth of knowledge and reference material for model painters, and proving that colour genetics are fully understood and rationally dealt with in the Icelandic horse world (unlike, for example, the stubbornness over incorrectly registering as 'dun' because 'buckskin is an Americanism' in some British breeds!)

A few years ago, one particularly unusual Icelandic stallion called Ellert hit the headlines - a new colour, never seen before in the breed! A foal from solid colour purebred parents, who should've been a plain bay dun, but came out with a wild white sabino pattern - genetic tests proved he had a unique variation linked to the dominant white gene. Icelandic horses are notoriously pure and ancient, with strict rules against importing or cross breeding since the 10th century, so there's no doubting it spontaneously and naturally occurred, without human interference.

You can read about him, and see plenty of photographs (from clear and steady standing poses, to artistic shots and fun candid snaps from his owners), in this excellent article from CNN.

He now has several offspring of his own which carry the same colour, and in future it'll be interesting to see how his genes spread through the population, giving the chance for more flashy patterns down the generations.

Ever since his photographs first did the rounds in the horsey corners of the internet, I've thought what a nice custom painting project he'd make - his historic new colour being a worthy subject to bring into the world of model horses too. 

I avoided definitively adding him to my to-paint list for a little while, just because complicated colours are, well, complicated to paint, but having mentioned it to a fellow collector and customiser, I felt like I was only delaying the inevitable, and would have paint him next time I got a Breyer Stablemate Icelandic body - which my friend then offered to sell me in a mixed bundle, and that was that - now I had to make it happen!

And here he is! Because his colour is so mixed up and roany, it was daunting - but not so tricky as the sabino patterns with distinct patches and sharp edges, and I'd had some experimental practice with my model of Paragon. Some fine-brush detailing and some soft smudging, dry brushing over the bay dun base coat, and a little reworking with the dark colour over the top.

You can also see he's got a single egg-shaped solid spot just below his hip, which was painted on last because I couldn't figure out any way to mask it without risking peeling the body colour underneath whatever I stuck on!

His head seems to have a more chunky speckling of colour than the rest of him, possibly because the coat is shorter there and the white blends less with the brown - a bit like how you can see the edges of face markings in more crisp detail than the edges of pinto patches, even if it's the same horse. 

I do think it looks like I painted his head a different day to his body and didn't manage to match my brushwork very well, but when you compare to the reference pictures you can see it's on purpose rather than heavy handedness!

Luckily, I managed to find nice clear photos of both sides, rather than just the famous side-on shot of him being held by his owner which appeared in most articles, so I didn't have to guess at what the markings of the 'wrong' side would look like!

As well as the roaning, he's got high white stockings and a very big white face marking, which just catches the corners of his eyes, causing a bright blue flash in each iris. I tried catching that in the photos, hoping this one with the blue sky behind him would bring out the eye colour, but it's more noticeable in hand than in pictures.

I've decided to call him Ýruskjóttur, the name given to his new colour in Icelandic : it translates to 'speckle'. Not only because the colour was the reason for painting this particular individual, but because many names Icelandic horses are given in real life translate as colour descriptions, things like 'palomino with a blaze', 'brown pinto', or 'yellow dun with a dorsal stripe', so there's nothing wrong with naming a speckled horse Speckle!

And finally, here he is joining my home-painted herd of Icelandics (click to see the photo larger)

From left to right : Gullinbursti, Falhófnir, Háfleygur, Jarpskoni, Tviserkur, Alsk​ær, Ýruskjóttur.

Breyer 2021 Stablemates

Back when I reviewed Breyer's 2021 regular runs, one release which went straight onto my wishlist was the Palominos and Pintos Stablemates set, and they did in fact end up being the first of this year's models I ordered.

Here's all the horses together - often the sets seem to include some horses I really admire, and others I'm not mad about, and occasionally one terrible paintjob I actively dislike, but this contains four good mould & colour combinations and all of them nicely done.

Let's have a closer look at them individually...

The chunky trotting warmblood, or 'driving' mould, in sooty palomino pinto. The patch markings are really neatly outlined, it's a shame the mane masking wasn't so carefully done, with quite a lot of the body colour overlapping the ends of the hair. It's the sort of thing to look out for if you get chance to pick your set in person, rather than shopping online - just be aware that's an area with varied quality control, and have a quick check of several boxes to pick the nicest one!

Darley in golden palomino - the metallic aspect of his paintjob isn't over-done, just enough that he looks like the palominos who carry a gold sheen on their summer coats, and the best thing is, it's only in the palomino colour paint, they didn't use a pearly base-coat to include his mane, tail, socks, and hooves in the metallic finish, as inflicted on some other unfortunate models!

This one looks like he has a strange mane masking glitch - below the obvious chunk of hair there appears to be a phantom outline of some extra mane, but if you look closely, there is a 3D layer of thin hair flat against the shoulder in the sculpt!

There he is from the other side, do you see what I mean about looking more like an American gaited cross than a pure old world arabian? Our arabs in Europe, both Britain and the continental mainland, tend to be short-coupled and deep and rounded, with an action more floaty than high and flashy. Darley may be a prime example of an arabian for the US show ring, and American Breyer fans might love it for that, but as a British horse fan and collector, I just can't take this mould as the arabian strains I'm familiar with, so I show all mine as National Show Horses (arab x saddlebred), and think them a very nice model of this breed instead!

In all the years I've been collecting Breyer Stablemates, I've never seen them do a really pale palomino before! This quarter horse mare is described as an Isabella palomino on the box, and her colour is very delicately done, with areas sprayed lightly or heavily to vary the shading, and a grey nose to make sure the creamy tone with white mane and tail doesn't misread as cremello.

One of my favourites done on this mould, there's a certain something about it when the paintwork suits the model and just works.

The last of the four, while at a glance he might look like a chestnut, he's actually described as a chocolate palomino, which I always thought was just a term for a really dark sooty palomino, but I've read recently that it's the result of a liver chestnut base plus a cream gene. Maybe a liver chestnut with sooty AND cream gets you this shade!

Whatever his fictional plastic genetics, he's a really adorable little model, the Darwin mould sculpted as a lipizzaner but suiting a wide range of colours. Pinto was found in the historical ancestors of today's modern lipizzaner breed, as seen in glorious 17th and 18th century oil paintings and engravings, so there's the option to show him as a historic model, or you could go with a partbred, or pick something else entirely. I'm currently constructing a 'Historical' page on my website for all the obsolete colours and customs painted from old artworks, so he'll find his home there shortly.

Another 2021 addition to the Stablemates range was a Horse Foal Surprise - not just strange grammar which I can't quite make a sensible sentence from in my mind, but a strange combination of re-release and brand new model. In each box you got the same adult and foal as last year's Stable Surprise set, plus one new adult to complete the family. But the new horses aren't available seperately, so you have three options : buy the set and end up with duplicates in you bought last year's batch; miss out on the new ones; or hope that someone might split sets and sell the models singly. Luckily, Chestnut Ridge do exactly that, selling out-of-box/bag models individually, so you can pick exactly which you like and leave those you don't need.

Of course, I picked out the three new horses for my herd.

The good old G3 mustang mould in a simple but effective chestnut, I like his snip and the fade out of his tail to flaxen. This one was paired with the dark bay tobiano paint horse mare from last year.

These paintjobs are nice enough that they'd sell as singles, but probably not exciting enough to go ahead and buy the whole set of three if you only lack the new horse from each family.

This quarter horse mare was paired with the...wait a minute, I think I've spotted a mistake, Breyer.

The dun warmblood mare. And these two females have somehow produced a foal. 

I wonder if this is linked to the fact the warmblood was initially named as the Warmblood Stallion mould on IdentifyYourBreyer - maybe a collector tip-off corrected that site's mistake, but Breyer themselves were still under the impression it's a stallion when compiling this family group? Oops!

Anyway, I do like this mare a lot, her faintly shaded black looks sleek and striking, and I just love the big chunky white snip on her nose, that design choice gives her so much character and was why I wanted her so much, I'm glad to be able to buy these singly.

The G3 warmblood in a nice mahogany bay, paired with the palomino walking TB, makes up the third and final set. For some reason, 2020's roan Icelandic wasn't re-used, and it can't be cos they only have one mould of that breed, as they rarely match breeds together in the mystery foal type sets anyway - last time the Icelandic was crossed with an Appaloosa!

And to finish on, a couple more of the 70th Anniversary Stablemates blind bags, each mould a mini version of a Traditional scale sculpt. These aren't 2021 releases but having taken a year to reach the UK stockists, they may as well be! 

The missouri fox trotter, not a mould I like enough to have ever bought a Trad size one, but the mini is a very sweet little horse indeed, and I can see myself ending up with several of these if they release them in more colours down the years.

I think I got a fairly dark variation here, a lot of the fox trotters have been a paler shade of grey with a lot less shading on the mane, but I really like this one's darker look, even if he was a bit of heavy-handed spraying compared to others!

And mini Emma, also known as the Fell Pony mould, though fells never come in chestnut so she'll have to be allocated something else in my collection!

She's an adorable little chunky pony, not far off the G3 Highland for size, she's so neat and small and light she feels like a half-size Stablemate in hand! It's unusual to see such a cobby type as a smaller model, but she makes a great addition to the range, I'd like to see them release her in black like the original large scale Fell Pony, but also in piebald and skewbald as the 'pony cobs' which are rapidly gaining popularity in the UK.

This mean there's only one 70th Anniversary model left for me to collect, excluding the chase pieces (I'm not into decorators to seek those out, though I'd keep them as colourful oddities if I happened on them by chance, like the copper filigree Django I got from the first series of blind bags). And I haven't painted any of these new mini moulds yet, so I'm not ruling out ordering another batch pot-luck or pick'n'mix at some point : Stablemates are addictive!