Most of the new additions to my collection lately have been filed under the Tales from the Body Box category, as they're newly finished customs rather than arrivals, but a little while ago my mum (having discovered online shopping, and particularly the joys of second hand stuff on Ebay!) offered to buy a model for my birthday.
It couldn't be a surprise, as she has no idea which ones I've got already or which were on my wishlist, but we browsed together so the choice could be one we both liked, and we settled on this lovely wildly-patterned spotted mule by Breyer.
His official name is Buckeye, and he was released a couple of years ago as a portrait of a real mule, who competes in dressage and with that flashy colour, gets attention wherever he goes. Seriously, a Google image search on 'buckeye dressage mule' supplies some amazing photos - he's got great paces, and he can't half jump!
The other side, which was harder to photograph cos I only had a very narrow sliver of sunlight to catch between the trees (and it's been raining every day since my birthday on thursday, so this was my first chance to get him out there in the sun at all!)
This sculpt is from the 1990s, a little rough round the edges compared to more recent Breyer models, but somehow on a mule it looks part of his charm, rather than a disappointing lack of polish as it would on a horse model. I have the previous spotted mule they made, too, but he's a very different colour and paintwork style, so they'll look great together on the shelf, rather than too similar to need both.
Look at those lonnnng ears! I've only ever met mules in passing, it's donkeys I've worked with, so I'm not really up on breeds or types, and have no idea about the genetics of their colouring when they're getting colours from two different species, so I need to read up a bit about that!
His masked markings are really nicely done, sometimes spots or intricate pinto patterns end up coming out flawed or smudged, but that's another advantage of buying second hand - you can be sure you're getting a really nice one with no quality control issues!
I don't have many mules in my collection, so he makes a very welcome addition to the Harecroft herd.
No comments:
Post a Comment