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, Alskær, Ýruskjóttur.
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