Tales from the Body Box - Native River and Might Bite

First customs of 2022! 

A few days ago one of my favourite racehorses, Native River, was retired after a long and successful career. A gorgeous bright chestnut with a lot of white markings, and a very likeable character, I always thought he'd make a nice model horse, but Breyer being a US company almost always make portraits of the racing stars on their side of the world, so when I want a British or Irish one - the horses I actually see racing over here - I make my own.

His biggest win was the Cheltenham Gold Cup a few years ago (the best of all long races over jumps in this country, for those who don't follow racing), where he had a brilliant finish just in front of one of my other favourites, Might Bite, a truly quirky individual with a mind of his own, who I'd always thought would make a very handsome model, and had long had a blank Stablemate set aside for in my body box as I liked him so much, but hadn't ever got round to painting. 

So with both of them now retired from the racecourse, I decided it was time to finally get on with making their mini portraits.

I only have the older of Breyer's Thoroughbred moulds in my body box (the newer walking TB is a fraction nicer, but hard to buy cos it's only been sold in sets or as blind bag unicorns), but there was a little resculpting to do on each. Firstly, it's a mare, where both my racehorses to copy are geldings. I also gave them bigger hooves, as the mould's got very tiny narrow feet. Finally, there were the hairstyles to match, because the original mould has no forelock, and a clipped patch at the top of the neck - mostly seen on US racehorses - so for mine I added in a bit of extra hair at the front for the one who always ran with his mane loose, while the other was always plaited up to race, so I cut off the plastic mane and resculpted the top line of his neck with tiny rolled-in-a-ball braids.

Here's a couple of Racing Post photos of the real horses together, over the final jump and on the run to the line.

And here they are in miniature...

Native River first, his really bright colour was fun to match - I re-used some of the orange and ginger paints I bought for my fox custom here! 

He was always a great one to watch in action, his colour made him stand out in the field and he was a tough and sparky racehorse, hard to beat when he got in front. And he sounds like such a nice personality, too, his jockeys and yard staff are always full of praise for how lovely and gentlemanly and friendly he's been at home, and those are always the horses I connect with most, not just famous winners but ones with a stand-out character to match their talent.

I also had fun with his white markings, using photos from different angles, and a couple of head shots to get a better view of the pink shape on his nose. His legs and feet are a bit muddy in the racing shots, but I found a nice clean one taken on his yard at home where I could see the stripes on his hooves!

And now his rival Might Bite - they came from different yards so they didn't know each other apart from when they met on the course, so they were neither friends nor enemies, but I'll think of them as a pair because I painted their models together.

Another one who was a fun colour to paint - getting the shading just right is always challenging on a horse which has been clipped, since the colour's different when the hairs have all been trimmed short, but because this race was run in march, the coat's had time to grow back quite a bit, so the contrast isn't as noticeable. You can see the join most clearly on the back leg where the clipped body meets the unclipped coat colour.

Although he has a lot less white on, there's still enough to make him unique and interesting, and careful copying makes him look like who he's meant to be.

Might Bite was rather infamous for running off in the wrong direction, veering across the track and almost losing his races, and being generally quirky and unpredictable - he was very fast and talented, and an amazing jumper, and did win some very high class prestigious races, but he had moods and if he didn't have his sensible head on the day, you'd know about it. They tried him over different types of jump, even cross-country, to see if finding him a slightly different kind of race would get him concentrating, but nothing worked and eventually he was retired to a more casual home life where his weirdness wouldn't matter!

And here they are together, although I can't set up racing scenes cos I don't have riders or make tack at this scale, I thought it'd be nice to photograph them side by side!