Tales from the Body Box - WIA and CollectA

Some ideas for painting models roll around my mind for a lot longer than others. Back when I painted my first two WIA Gustav customs, I mentioned that I'd managed to get my hands on a couple more duplicate copies to plot new colours for. This week, about a year later, I got round to making one of these plans happen!

Meet Harecroft Rasmus, my first ever Jutland custom! 

I've always thought this mould would look good in a flaxen chestnut, and had a couple of nice reference photos picked out from my horse breed books. Although my dash of black in the mix - just to dull the paint less gingery - sent him far darker than I intended, I kind of liked the way his colour was going, and carried on with the more liver chestnut tones. Chestnut Jutlands vary in shade, some very sandy and pale, others even darker than mine turned out, so the accidental wandering off plan was fine, really!

 

Gustav never was released as any one particular breed, but a lot of the continental European drafters share a similar type, and he makes a perfectly respectable example of the Jutland breed : a compact broad build, deep chest and neck, convex profile, short stocky legs, and medium feathering - more there than the lightly tufted heels of, say, a Percheron or Belgian, but nowhere near the length of hair for a Shire or Clydesdale.

Of course, this excellent sculpt by Brigitte Eberl has so much personality and presence, you get the impression of a noble stallion in his proud pose, but with a calm attitude and gentle eye - the kind of horse who'd be easy to handle.

My reference photo was a little more dappled, but as always I got to a point where it looked ok, and thought I better stop before I ruined it! He certainly looks content with his new coat of colour, after a year spent in the body box.

There's still one more of this plastic mini Gustav in my body box, and I do have a colour in mind, but it's a much more daunting one than Rasmus ended up with, so who knows how much longer it'll take me to work myself up toward tackling him!

Having ticked one long-considered custom idea off my mental to-paint list, it was time to be brave and do another, one I've been putting off for almost as many months!

Another from a small bargain bundle of scuffed and dusty CollectA models I got on ebay, this time the mustang foal. Although I chose a spotted paintjob, I'll keep her as a mustang, rather than changing breed to appaloosa - her colour reminds me of one of my Stablemate customs, here.

You can't really see, but I went for a dun rather than a sooty buckskin this time. She does have a dorsal stripe, and a little bit of leg barring, but like most baby colours her points haven't fully developed yet - her dark legs would fade in gradually as she got older. I might go back and edit the tail colour a little bit more, though; I'd given it brown edges, but they don't stand out much at all in the pictures, so I think there needs to be a highlight of paler brown to bring out the contrast a bit more.

This is one of my favourite CollectA foal moulds, so I'm really glad that was the one I happened to get in my second hand batch - the pose is just so sweet and full of energy despite the standing pose, with the tucked head and flippy little short tail.

I'm definitely starting to feel more comfortable with these larger scale models, though confident would be pushing it - every paintjob still feels like a bit of a panicky rush to get past the possible disaster without ruining it entirely!