After a couple of weeks off painting, I'm back!
One of my favourite horse books is the good old Dorling Kindersley 'Ultimate Horse Book' from the 1990s - a precious (and to our family, very expensive!) gift from my grandad, the year I started riding lessons. It was the first time I'd ever seen or heard of most of the horse and pony breeds shown inside, and the photos in there are now so, so familiar, like I learnt them off by heart from all the times I flipped through the pages - they're ingrained in my mind to the point where they're often the first mental image I get when I think of any particular breed I haven't known personally.
So occasionally, when I want to paint a custom model of a breed, I decide to copy not just any random reference photo from the internet, but the exact horse or pony who was photographed as the example for this book.
Here's my first repaint back after my break, CollectA's lovely Norwegian Fjord, and the real pony he's copied from...
You can see he's quite a deep golden colour, a much stronger shade than I'd have gone for if picking a more average example of their famous yellow dun colouration, but I think I did a pretty good job of matching the book pony! I can always do a pale one next time a CollectA Fjord model comes my way, it'd be fun to have a little herd of the different shades of dun they come in!
Here he is in full detail, I enjoyed doing the primitive zebra striping on the legs and need to find some more breeds I can scatter wibbly lines on!
And a 'before and after' shot to compare the original paintwork - the one on the right is my original finish Fjord posing with his repainted pal, proving this is another of my Paint A CollectA The Colour It Was Anyway habit!
I've called him Gyllir, the name of a horse mentioned in the Norse sagas, it means 'golden' so it suits his national heritage and his colour nicely.
Sorry some of these pictures are really dark, I was taking them indoors in a patch of sun by the window cos it's been really rough and windy outside even when the sun's out, and I knew the entire set-up of scenery and horse would end up bouncing all round the garden if I tried for my usual outdoor photography!
You can see his two-tone mane better in these shots, it's a shame the black doesn't show from the side but his haircut isn't sculpted with the longer-in-the-middle trim some real fjords are given, so I couldn't really do anything with paint to make it look that way.
The dorsal stripe was the most nerve-wracking bit of the entire paintjob, as it has to go on in one single steady stoke of the brush, with no wobbles or shakes and no second chances. It's bad enough on the tiny Stablemate scale models, but this was three times further to hold my breath and keep my hand steady!
After finishing my Fjord, I carried on with more ponies from The Ultimate Horse Book, this time both British native breeds, and both 'Mountain & Moorland' breeds from the south of England.
I'll let the book pages do the captioning, although I mostly took these to show the model ponies against their reference photos (because it's rather a novelty to have them in print, the vast majority of my refs are on a computer screen), the title text in the top left is readable even at this size!
Let's meet them up close, firstly, the Exmoor pony...
I absolutely love him, not just as a successful paintjob I'm pleased with, but as an adorable little pony I'll enjoy having in my collection. I know that sounds a bit silly, about a model I painted myself, but he's just so sweet and full of character. The mould as sculpted as a Dartmoor, but I just couldn't resist doing a repaint to this breed I'm such a fan of.
I had a half-exmoor on loan for a few years (his other half was TB, a cross which used to be known as a 'Devon Cob'), so back then I did a lot of reading up on the exmoor ponies, their history, and collected some early 20th century novels telling stories from their life on the moors.
I've named him Harecroft Kestrel, a nature-themed name seemed ideal for a pony so rooted in a natural wild life, and when I noticed a hovering kestrel the morning after finishing the painting session, it just clicked as the perfect choice.
Although real exmoors are a bit wider and more compact in the leg than dartmoors, in miniature scales it doesn't seem too much of a difference in proportion, and I just like this mould better than the more recent sculpt they released as an exmoor stallion, the style has a spirited sparkiness and nicer balance, with the slim legs and sharp contours for the joints and hooves.
Here you can see his brand marking more clearly, copied from the photo example in the book - a star and herd number on the shoulder, then the individual herd's symbol and registered number within that herd on the hindquarters.
Looking at the camera, with that pure exmoor glint in his eye. The old books say 'If you can ride an exmoor, you can ride anything', they're just so opinionated and can be very unpredictable no matter how long they've been in from the moor.
My boy was 14 and written off as 'unrideable' when I took him on loan, and even after spending a while to get his trust and let me on board, he was a challenge. You never knew whether you were going to have a steady plodding day, or some rattling ten-in-a-row bucking fits cos he didn't want to go anticlockwise, mid-air jumps over nothing which landed at 90 degrees to the direction we'd been heading in, putting his head between his knees and tanking off til he stumbled or just plain fell over because he was too busy fighting about not wanting to go the way I suggested. You really do have to out-stubborn an exmoor, and need an old fashioned defensive seat (backward balance, strong legs, grim determination!) to stay on! When he eventually went back to his real owner and was sold on, he ended up with someone just as devoted to helping him carry on improving, and after a rough start while he pushed and tested her, they even went on to compete in some local amateur showjumping, so it worked.
I've done a portrait mini of him on a Stablemate mould before, and as he was half TB this pony mould doesn't even remotely suit being a lookalike of him, so I stuck to making a purebred this time, like my book example.
One of the nicest things about the exmoor colouring is the 'mealy muzzle', said to look like they've had their face in a bucket of oatmeal, with the soft dusty shading through pale tan to grey.
Love the lightly windswept mane and tail, not too ratty and tangled but not too perfectly smoothed either - this way it works equally well as a figure of a tame pony or a semi-feral one.
Slightly different lighting, trying to catch the sun on his coat in the most flattering way.
Now, on to the next pony, the Dartmoor. Dartmoor ponies aren't quite so primitive in type, they've had other breeds mixed in over the years to try to create a slightly more 'quality' riding pony, moving a bit away from the ancient native type without losing the toughness which lets them do well on scruffy pasture, or grow a thick winter coat and live out in all weathers. They tend to be raised in a normal domestic setting rather than loose on the moors, and that upbringing difference is probably why they have a reputation as less wild-minded and easier to ride than exmoors.
I rode one in at the riding school years ago, and he was very sharp and intelligent, and despite a few short battle-of-wills disputes when he first arrived, he was easy to reason with, learnt new things in a flash, and was very loyal and honest once you got him on side. With a rider he didn't like or didn't trust, he could rebel to the point of spinning on the spot or bolting - out on a group hack once I had to chase him down and ride my own horse into his shoulder at a gallop to turn him away from falling in a river ditch with a rider who'd had a crisis of confidence. I told her to get off and swap ponies - my mare carried her home safe and sound, and I rode Mr Difficult Dartmoor all the way back with loose reins in one hand, my feet out of the stirrups, and his nose nearly on the ground, cos he instantly relaxed once he knew he was back with someone he knew and trusted! He ended up being sold to a private owner, and last I heard, ten years on, he was still with her, relaxed and lazy, which meant he was happy.
Of course, my CollectA custom isn't a portrait of this pony, either (I've already done a Peter Stone pony like him), but the one in the Ultimate Horse Book, so here he is...
I tried to get his shading as different to the exmoor as possible, with that high smoothing of gingery belly into dappling, rather than the contrast of chocolately brown and mealy shading on the other breed.
Now, I have to admit, it took two tries to get the colour to a match I was happy with. I'd already thought I'd finished him once, and even took photos on the same day as the exmoor pony Kestrel, but the more I saw him over the next couple of days, the more I realsed I'd not really captured that photo ref properly. Although it didn't strictly matter, cos it wasn't as if this was copying a pony I knew and needed an accurate mini version of a real-life friend, it was still intended as a portrait of the book example, and not looking correct just bothered me.
Here's how he looked to start with, and after adding the golden lift of lighter colour under the belly and around the front legs :
Much better! Sticking with the native-species nature theme, I've called this one Harecroft Roebuck.
Again the flicking sweep of the tail to one side, just as appreciated a second time round. In a way it's a shame they're both bays, as it would've been fun to paint a grey or blond or ginger tail rather than two black ones, but I'm not averse to getting some more of this mould at some point, it's one of my favourites from the whole range and I'd love to have some more colours.
Again, different lighting and angle, trying to show his coat colour as the sun shines on it.
Looking every bit as cheeky, with less shading to play with his face risked looking a bit plain, especially as I didn't have the option of adding in a white face marking for more interest (my usual trick to lift a simple colour, invent some fiddly markings!), but the eyes on CollectA models are so well sculpted in, you can really get a lifelike expression when there's so much 3D detail to work on to.
They look like they're whispering secrets, or maybe plotting - I dread to think what would happen if you combined exmoor aptitude for destructive trouble with dartmoor intelligence!
Exmoor and Dartmoor together - normally I wouldn't paint two bays on the same mould, especially not immediately one after the other like this, but by having the aim of creating two different breeds, there was the challenge of making two ponies the same colour, look as different as possible. And I think it was a success, I'm really pleased with the results. Which one do you like best?
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