Harecroft Horse Breeds - my brand new website

Allow me to introduce my brand new website!

https://harecrofthorsebreeds.weebly.com/

I already have one website for my collection, here, where the models are divided by brand, scale, and finish; I find it a very handy way to record, organise and display them for my own reference, and I know a lot of people might enjoy browsing by brand, too. Maybe you only really like Julips and have no interest in other brands, or perhaps you're a fan of Breyer Trads and don't care much for minis. Toy-type brands might be your thing, or you could prefer artist resins. Or maybe you just love seeing what custom models others have painted up. 

Just as my blog here has tags to let you focus on a brand or scale or finish you want to see more of, that's how my website has worked for years.

It all started when, one evening, I happened wonder how many different breeds I'd got. Were there any famous and important breeds I'd somehow never ticked off? And which did I have most of?

I thought the easiest way to answer all this - rather than to go and stand in front of my actual collection with a notebook - would be to sort the photos on my computer. So I began : flip through the photos, and each time I got to a new breed, I'd create a new folder, and drop the picture into it. Slowly the horses, ponies, and other equines started to shuffle into place. At a glance, I could see what I'd got, in what numbers.

And there I could've left it. Neatly sorted, on my laptop.

But then an even better idea started to form. Why not make a website to display them this way? 

A lot of collectors have their model horse websites tallied up by breed as a show string, custom portfolio gallery, or pedigree-assignation project; I've spent hours over the years, browsing through collections of hobby friends, vague acquaintances, and total strangers, just enjoying all the photos and seeing what other people own.

So I set up a new account, and started uploading my horses, one breed at a time.

I had to be even more specific now, with my 'warmblood' and 'sporthorse' folders divided into pure named breeds and nationalities, my hunters and cobs pulled out of 'partbred' and filed into types, and so on. 

I admit it took a while. Months, even, from the easy beginning of the alphabet at Akhal-Teke all the way through to Welsh A B C and D, and then the difficult final fiddlings with tricky warmbloods and what to do about all the nondescript partbreds.

But finally, it's done. And it's ready to go public : I've proof-read all the captions, checked all the photos really do open bigger when you click them, added in my most recent arrivals and fresh repaints - there's even a couple on there who are so new they haven't been introduced on the blog yet!

Harecroft Horse Breeds

Tales from the Body Box - Brown Jack

Every now and then, I like paint a portrait model of a famous racehorse. Usually, they're current stars from the UK/Ireland racing scene, horses which have caught my attention for their talent and character, and painted either during their career, or shortly after retirement. You can see them all on this tag.

But recently, I read a book written in the 1930s, about one of the most famous horses in his own day - Brown Jack. His Wikipedia entry is very dry reading, listing his racing achievements without touching on why he was so loved in his own time, or remains famous for racing fans today. This biography page does a much better job of it - this is a horse who famously liked cheese sandwiches and would receive parcels of cheese in the post from young fans. A horse who'd make guest appearances at the racetrack - not only the days when he was racing, but to hang out in a fenced off playpen, so the people could meet him and give him a pat. 

He was one of those oddly beloved equine 'celebrities', whose fame and popularity make them as important in racing history as any prolific stallion, Triple Crown champion, or Grand National winner.

So I decided he thoroughly deserved to join my little herd of racehorses, and got to work...

Here he is, with my own copy of his biography forming the perfect caption!

Because of his era, all Brown Jack's photos are in black and white, so I based his colouring on this portrait by famous English artist Alfred Munnings. I tried to incorporate the art style a little bit, too, without letting it look too messy on the model, as brushstrokey impressionist colouring would just look like bad painting out of context, and I really wanted him to work as a model in his own right.

There's another painting of him inside the book, a portrait by Lionel Edwards this time.

And here he is with one of the photographs. I chose the mould which looked most like him anyway, but it did have some extensive modification for a better match : profile tweaked, mane plaited, tail shortened, shoulder muscles filled, topline adjusted along the spine and rump, belly enlarged, gelding operation, knee adjusted, hooves larger and longer. Quite a lot of work before I could even get started painting!

I did the standard fake-scenery photoshoot with him as well, here he is from several different angles...

Harecroft Galaktika

This week sees the arrival of one of my most-wanted Breyer models.

A couple of years ago, I'd bought and paid for him on Ebay, only to be told the seller didn't have the horse any more, and although I was given a full refund, I've always regretted the failed purchase. To have decided, and paid, and be waiting a few days, then find out it's not coming after all, was a big disappointment, and every time I saw the same model afterwards, I'd feel frustrated and sad - I should've had that one in my collection, and didn't.

So when the same model came up on UK Ebay this month, I made up my mind to try again, and this time all went well; a few days later I had a very exciting parcel to unwrap.

Allow me to introduce Harecroft Galaktika, the newest Akhal-Teke stallion for my herd! His mould was sculpted as a lean racing-fit thoroughbred, but in this lovely buckskin colouring, I always thought he'd make a pretty good Teke.

He was one of 1695 made for 2019's Breyerfest, and his original release name was Rocket, after the character in Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy films - that year, Breyerfest had a horse heroes and superheroes theme. The name I've given him is the Turkmen word for 'galaxy', so it's appropriate to his change of breed and nationality, but with a nod to his original theme.

Some of these photos were taken before I'd finished making the little ornamental collars for him to wear, but I didn't re-take all the angles I wanted to show here, so the final collar vanishes and reappears a few times through this post!

He looks a bit less Akhal-Teke from the other side, with this much mane, but as I'll only be using the display-side photos on my websites and for any future showing I might do with him, the off side doesn't matter!

There, see, the collar's come back again, hah. I love his markings, especially the blaze; emphasising his nose with a wide white marking really seems to change the shape of his face.

Some Breyerfest runs are given brown or blue eye colours, but he only has the little sliver of pink eye-white, which makes him seem to be peering at you.

Laying down you can see his shading and dapples more clearly, here's a stock photo reference I found showing a real Akhal-Teke in pale dappled buckskin, with about the same amount of white on.

And finally, in dramatic lighting, just because the raking light was pretty the first time I tried to take his pictures too late one evening in the last patch of sunlight.

I'm very happy to have added this handsome chap to my herd at long last; one model I can tick off the wishlist, and no longer have any regrets about!

A Harecroft Fox

The red fox has been one of my favourite animals since childhood, rare sightings of a quick bright animal dashing away, and starring in some of my favourite wild-animal-themed books, including Colin Dann's Farthing Wood series. In that pre-internet era of library books and buying wildlife magazines when they had the right animal on the cover, I read everything I could find about foxes!

Later, when I had my first job, I got to meet and make almost-friends with the foxes which called the same farm home. The adults got used to me, and would calmly glance up and wander off rather than running, and later in each summer, bring their babies into the paddocks to play in broad daylight, while I worked on weeding, or watched them alongside the horses. And when I stayed there overnight to mind the place while the owner was away, I'd wait up in the evenings (in the conservatory with the lights off) to watch the foxes hunting and interacting, all round the yard and fields I could see from where I sat.

A couple of weeks ago, I watched a really good red fox documentary on tv, and that was the final push which inspired me to buy a model to paint. After a couple of quick Ebay orders - one for the fox himself, one for some paints in appropriately gingery colours - I was ready to have a go!

Here's my little fox beforehand. He's not got a bad paintjob at all, with a nicely chosen shade of reddish brown, given some texture with the thin paint over the plastic so it settles into the detail of the sculpt, and his markings are pretty good, with white and black in the right places. This isn't one of those 'It was so terrible I HAD to repaint it!' moments at all, and if I was going to start collecting original finish animals, I'd have been perfectly happy to keep this fox as he was. But this is a project to make myself a custom fox, so he had to be transformed...

And here he is! I'm very pleased with how he turned out, considering this was a bit of an experimental venture into a whole new order of mammals!

I tried to give his coat as much variety in shading as I could, without going too exaggerated as I wanted him to be an 'average' kind of fox colour, a typical mid-reddish shade, rather than the very grey-backed, or very black-tinged, individuals. This was the reference photo I used, for the front half shading especially, and applying white in the right places, but deliberately didn't include so much of the blond/black on his back half, just to keep him more like the foxes I used to see.

This was my first time painting with some of these colours, usually I work my bright chestnutty horse colours from a very minimalist selection of one orangey brown, one burgundy, and one sandy tan, but to bring out the redder and more gingery fox colours, I had to buy a deep orange, a bright golden brown, and a paler reddish brown, too. The three extra paints cost more than the Papo fox did!

His other side - I find that, just as with my equine models, the fox has a 'good side' for photos and display, so this other side feels very much like the back of him - I think it's the position of his legs which does it.

I love his long, low running pose - you can just imagine him making his way along the edge of a field keeping by the hedge, or using a grass track between standing crops. 

This Papo sculpt reminds me most of the foxes I see here in the UK; a lot of model brands seem to be based on photos of American or far-northern-European foxes, very thick-winter-coat fluffy and looking short and stocky in the leg and neck, where our locals have a shorter coat, a longer leaner more athletic look.

Not a great picture but here's a view of the white markings underneath, and how they wrap round the limbs - a lot more complicated than just the white neck and chest his original paintjob had. The white underside, and the black leg/ear colour, do vary hugely from fox to fox, with some having entirely red legs with no dark points, and others somewhere in between. They can also have a dark or white tail tip. I copied the markings on mine from that good clear reference picture, apart from the tail tip, which I made whiter because I really do remember seeing that feature clearly on the foxes I used to watch at work.

With my model horse customs, the last part of creating them is usually to think of a name, so it makes a refreshing change to do a wild animal, who doesn't need one!

Breyerfest 'Dani' - Danash's Northern Tempest

When, back in July, I compiled a Breyerfest Special blog post to show all the Breyerfest horses I've collected over the years, I was sitting on an exciting secret!

I'd already secured a pre-sale reservation from another collector who was taking part in this year's online Breyerfest. By paying up front, I could relax and not worry about whether I'd ever get the horse I wanted most from this year's exclusive releases : one was earmarked to be mine, however long it took for them to arrive after the event.

Over the last couple of weeks, Breyerfest models have started to appear on UK Ebay, so I knew I wouldn't have too much longer to wait, and today was the day : I got back from my real horses to find a parcel hidden carefully behind the bins. So which horse was it, who'd earnt a place at the top of my wishlist?

Yes, she may 'only' be the Celebration Model, but what a Celebration Model she is! Let's have a look at her out of the box...

I think they've done a fantastic job with her, the detailed spot masking is a bit more complex than they tend to give us for regular runs, so she's got a bit of a 'wow' effect when you see and handle her. She does look more bay than her official publicity photo, which was quite light, roany and speckled - but perhaps that's just variation between individuals, and I got a darker one.

As I said when I got regular run Catch Me, this mould is a lovely big chunky warmblood horse. The real Danash's Northern Tempest, known as Dani, is a friesian/appaloosa cross, but I've decided to have mine as a knabstrupper. Unless it's a horse or pony I know personally, I'd rather go for a pure breed compatible with the mould/colour combination, than stick faithfully to the breeding of the real horses behind the portrait models, especially if it'd mean adding yet more partbreds and crosses to my herd!

The other side, showing off more of that fantastic detailed pattern - doesn't it suit the mould so well! I've got her up on the mantelpiece and keep glancing up for another look, she's a really striking model which will stand out on my shelves.

I haven't come up with a name for her yet, I was thinking of going on the 'Tempest' theme and calling her Miranda after the female lead in Shakespeare's play, but I already have two model horse Mirandas (not deliberately - I named one myself, then bought the second from a friend!), so I'm still thinking.

Just a couple more shots from unusual angles - when a paintjob is this detailed, I always want to take extra photos to show it from every direction!

I'd seen a few people saying there were a lot of quality issues with the Dani models, with smudged or broken-up spots where the masking was badly applied, but I checked mine all over and can only find the smallest area of slight blur on one spot, on her stifle on the non-display side, and even that is so faint I wouldn't have noticed it without close scrutiny.

There were a couple of places where the masking hadn't fully peeled away, but it's a matter of seconds to rub those off with a thumb and reveal the intended pattern, and you'd never know the factory missed a bit.

Well worth the wait, and I'm really glad I got that early buy secured back at the beginning of the summer - I can only imagine how stressful it would've been waiting and hoping that I'd get chance to grab one on UK Ebay when they started to appear over here. As it happens, there have been quite a few, and at reasonable prices - being the Celebration Model, she's the commonest of all releases this year - so if you have Dani on your wishlist too, keep looking, and good luck!