Tales from the Body Box - my first Orlov Trotter

Recently I've been comparing the list of breeds on my website with some of my horse books, and trying to figure out where the notable 'missing' gaps are. One breed I'd somehow managed to never get hold of is the Orlov Trotter, so I decided I needed to create one (though amusingly, this was one of the CollectA releases announced just a few days after my custom was finished and photographed!)

The mould I'd had in mind for this breed ever since it was released in mini plastic form was Breyer's 'Prince Charming' (originally released in porcelain) - the Stablemates version of the mould is a mare, though, so I'm not sure what we're supposed to call it - Princess Charming?

So I sneaked a unicorn version of this mould into my order along with the Icelandic model I already showed here - it's mildly annoying that they don't sell all the newest nicest sculpts without the added horns, but it's easy enough to snip those off and turn them back into horses!

I wanted to paint a dark dappled grey this time, so I found a helpful reference picture of the right breed and colour from a stock photos site (this horse here), and got to work...

She turned out more or less like I had in mind, the dapples could perhaps have gone a little paler but when a paintjob's looking nice enough as it is, it's always rather scary to push my luck too far and risk ruining it with any more layers of paint! But the colour and pose work well together, I think, she's looking like the breed I had in mind and does very nicely for filling that gap in my collection!

I've named her Babochka, which means butterfly in Russian (I really can't remember how I came to know this, I don't study or speak Russian at all - perhaps I learnt it from a song title, or it stuck in my mind from last time I was looking through potential names for a Russian horse breed?!)

It's a really nice little mould, with good slim legs and neat proportions, not too dramatically sculpted but not too simplified or stylised either. The two feet which touch are moulded together, which helps with stability and means they wouldn't easily get warped or misshapen in the manufacturing process - each one should be very steady on it's feet rather than a domino waiting to topple over like some of the other trotting moulds.

I don't know what breed the sculpt was intended to be, in the original larger porcelain form, but I think this mini mare would work well for a lot of light horse breeds - it's one of those which doesn't have strong conformation toward any type in particular, which rules out anything which does have distinctive features or body type, but leaves a multitude of other light breeds or crosses you could happily assign it!
I'd like to paint some more as Orlov Trotters in varying stages of greying out, but I could see her looking nice in many solid or pinto colours, too.