Tales from the Body Box - A tour of Europe

I've already got on with the next batch of projects from my wishlist - to paint some breeds I've never done before.

First off, a Haflinger, a very pretty Austrian breed which I've always known about and liked, but somehow never got round to painting myself - though I did have a few original finish examples in my herd.

In real life they're quite a small breed, either a large pony or a small horse depending which side of 14.2hh they happen to be, so I chose the Highland Pony mould as the closest match for scale, build, and looks. They both have that cute, friendly, alert little face! I did carve away some of the leg feathering, and filled the profile a little, but other than that it's a pretty good resemblance already.

And here she is! It was quite an odd colour to paint, I'm used to doing mostly darker coats with various shades of orange, red, brown, and black, so this time it was all the paint colours I usually only use for highlights and blonde hair!

Their shade of chestnut does vary, with some being quite tan-coloured while others are nearly cream - I went toward the lighter end this time thinking that if I ever paint another, I could go darker, and that would give the maximum variation, rather than if I went for the exact middle average shade first time.

I haven't picked a name for her yet, my usual tactic with horses from countries I know little about is to look up some real pedigrees of the right breed and choose a name from there, that way I'm sure to get one which is the right language and an appropriate kind of thing people would call a horse there!

Her background is a little bit of genuine Austria, a souvenir calendar from the 1970s which my grandparents found when they were clearing out to move home about 10 years ago - I remember saving it from the bin incase the landscapey pictures ever came in handy as photo backgrounds, and now eventually have a horse to suit it!

I gave her a little face stripe and pink nose, most Haflingers seem to have some white on the head, and it can be anything from a small star to a wide blaze.

I'm really pleased to have painted this appealing and popular breed at long last, without meaning to avoid it I somehow took a really long time to notice it was even a gap in my collection. So I scribbled a little list of the other most famous breeds I'd never done a custom of, and the next one is another horse to cross off!

This is CollectA's mini Thoroughbred mould, but I just didn't like it as a TB, too chunky in the leg and sloping at the rump, with kind of awkward conformation, so I allocated it a breed which is known for it's rather unconventional looks, proportions and features which in any other horse would be regarded as flaws - the Nonius from Hungary.

They only come in black, so it didn't take many seconds to decide how to paint her, and with black being easily the simplest colour to paint, it wasn't many minutes from start to finish, either.

The final breed in this tour of Europe is from Norway, the Døle Gudbrandsdal. The Døle is the commonest of the native Norwegian breeds, though you'd never know that from the model horse world, which seems intently focused on the Fjord to the exclusion of all other breeds from the country! They're a small draft-type horse, kind of the equivalent to a welsh cob or traditional cob over here - stocky and strong, with feathered legs and a fairly high knee action, used for riding, driving, showing, and occasionally working draft duty like logging.

There's two kinds, the original Døle Gudbrandsdal, and the Døle Trotter, a flashier spin-off breed with longer slimmer legs and neck. I have my G3 Friesians in non-friesian colours as Døle Trotters instead, so in theory I could've just painted that mould unadjusted and counted it as a Døle custom to tick off the breed list. But I really wanted to go for the original heavier version of the breed, which meant thickening up the legs, and in every picture I could find for a Døle Gudbrandsdal in action, no matter how fast they trot their head seems to be held lower, on an arched neck. So it was time to get out the hacksaw as well as the filler...

Here's how the mould looks in the original black :

(Don't worry, this perfect-condition horse is unharmed, I customised a scuffed second-hand duplicate from my body box!)

Here he is through two progress stages. 

On the left; with the thicker legs, the head removed, and the altered neck roughed in with milliput. You can see I re-used a chunk of the original neck and mane to save having to make the whole thing from scratch, that's how much I hate resculpting!

On the right; with the head glued back on, the set-hard milliput sanded and carved down to shape, and some more added to fill the throat, extend the mane, and smooth over any unwanted gaps or grooves.

Now ready to paint!

Even though this was my favourite reference photo example, it's very similar to other bays I've painted recently, so I went with a slightly different shade instead, and copied this one.

And here he is! I'm so pleased with how he turned out, especially as I really, really dislike resculpting anything more than simple tweaks like mane braids or hooves or adjusting a head shape, and would normally avoid it to the point of just not doing any custom idea which needed repositioning work.

I think the colour came out pretty close to the reference I was using; not how I usually paint a bay, having higher black on the legs and more variation between the darkest brown on the shoulder and the lightest creamy shading inside the elbows and thighs. I find copying a picture, either for a portrait model or just a breed example, can often push me to venture outside my usual paint palette, and abandon the mental 'pattern' for where shading goes - if I'm trying to duplicate a real horse, I'm having to paint what I see, not what I imagine is 'normal'!

This isn't going to convince me to do any more drastic customs, or even any others with this much repositioning, but I'm glad to have managed it once!

Now, what breeds can I tick off that painting list next..?