I accidentally didn't paint any horses since April!
I'm not entirely sure how that happened, but the other week I picked up a couple of bargain bundles of used CollectA models on Ebay (three horses for the price of one, and then four more for just £5) and was plotting colours/breeds I could paint on them before they'd even arrived - this anticipation made me keen to get back in the painting habit, so I started while the inspiration was still fresh!
A while ago, a model-horsey friend asked me if I'd ever painted a Gotland pony, which made me realise I hadn't, and I wanted to!
Here's a page with a brief history and description of the Gotland Russ, for anyone who isn't familiar with them. Although I've never met one, I feel an affinity for these proper old native pony breeds from various countries, because they're so much like the natives I know well here the UK : true ancient ancestry, being tough and adaptable, some still living as feral herds or in common turnout in their natural habitat, others taken into domestic life, and many spread to other parts of the country.
The more I read about them, the more I liked them - there's just something very admirable about a hardy, outdoorsy pony breed which can manage just fine without people and often does, but can also be welcomed into the human world to find all sorts of useful jobs to do, the versatile sort which can show, work, excel in sports, or just provide a child with a pony to love!
CollectA have far more pony breed sculpts than Breyer Stablemates, so it was perhaps natural that I'd turn to this brand to supply the bodies for my Gotland project.
My breeds book says "a typical pony head with small alert ears, lively eyes and a straight profile. The neck is nearly always short and quite muscular and is set to reasonable withers for a pony breed[...]The legs are strong and tough with good joints[...]The feet are very tough and are a good shape"
From all the CollectA ponies, the one which stands out as having all these traits is the Dartmoor stallion, especially the tiny pricked ears, the good strong neck, and due to being one of the older moulds he pre-dates the brand's chunky-leg problem and has the crisply sculpted detail of hard limbs with good joints, and small pointed hooves.
I've already painted two in this mould, different shades of bay (one dappled as a Dartmoor, one dark as an Exmoor), so although bay is a very common coat colour for the Gotland breed, I really wanted to choose a different one just so I didn't have three bay CollectA Dartmoors in my herd - four if you count my original finish one as well!
In the Gotland Wikipedia page's example photo, there's a really bright and handsome buckskin, and a bit of Googling turned up several others this colour, so I decided to go for it - something a bit different to set the custom clearly aside from his original finish Dartmoor model and my other customs of it, and a colour I haven't painted very much, too.
Here he is!
I always find paler colours hard to give much depth to, creams especially can turn out very flat, so I've given him quite pale highlights and some golden warmth with peach and brown tones mixed in to the yellow paints, just so he doesn't look too monotone-with-a-black-trim!
This background wasn't really working with him, I could see on the camera's preview image that the pictures didn't have the same bright glow as he had in real life, posing there in the sun, so I went and grabbed a different backdrop with some brighter colour to see if that helped..
And I think it works! These are much more flattering and bring out the warmth of his colour - because he's so bright and golden, I've named him Solsken, which means 'sunshine'.
I think he looks a decent example of the breed, and I'm really happy with how he turned out. Although not a perfect match for the feral Gotland photos at all, if you look up pictures of the stallions in the show ring they often look a lot like this - much like Dartmoors, the ones living natural outdoor lives without much human contact look very different to those in show condition, all polished up and posed for the camera!
Having painted one, I couldn't help looking back in my box of bargain ponies, and noticing another which would make a nice matching partner for Solsken. The Dartmoor Hill Pony mare, if you ignore her pinto colour, is fairly similar to the stallion in conformation, with a thick muscular neck, ponyish face, and good fine hard-looking legs.
A moment to explain the breed/mould names here...
Dartmoor is the pure breed, ancient and with known pedigrees going a long way back.
Very few true purebred Dartmoors live in feral herds now, although they're still hardy and do fine living outdoors field-kept all year round, they've become a domesticated breed, kept on farms and yards, used for showing and as children's ponies. There are still some 'real' ones to be found on the moors, but you're far, far more likely to find them being selectively bred at normal studs, handled and trained just like any other show/riding pony.
Dartmoor Hill Pony isn't a breed, but a catch-all term for mixed or unregistered ponies born in the Dartmoor area.
They're much more likely to have been bred on the moors, by stallions running free with a feral herd. And they are varied, from good to bad to everything in between.
Sometimes they're Dartmoors but without the right paperwork, for example an unregistered mare and a registered stallion - the offspring is a Dartmoor Pony by blood, but isn't allowed to be on the breed society books cos it doesn't have fully documented parentage.
The majority have unknown or partbred ponies in their ancestry; some left to breed without any selection or control, others have deliberate crossing - Shetland was a popular addition to get more colour, and make the ponies smaller and cuter, so they stood a better chance of selling to decent homes.
As the Hill Ponies aren't an official breed, I'm surprised CollectA decided to make one, but then we know they do pick some more obscure horses to add to the range now they've ticked off most of the famous ones!
Having avoided bay for my Gotland stallion because it clashed with what I'd painted on the mould before, there was no such problem for the mare as this is my first custom on this mould. So I went back through the google image search, and picked out a good reference for the commonest variety of bay they seem to be - this shade, with the very pale pangare shading. Ignore the wibbly lines all over the pony, those aren't markings or part of the coat colour, I'm assuming it's had a bath and dried a bit crinkly!
And here she is! I think mine turned out a little bit darker than the one I was copying from, but that doesn't matter as it's not a portrait.
I looked through some real Gotland Russ pedigrees to see what kinds of names were given to them - often there's a rule, tradition, or type of name favoured by certain breeds and I like to stick to those, especially if the names are in languages I don't understand, there's a lot of running things through google translate or scrolling pedigree lists trying to pick up on patterns or trends.
I noticed in this case, a lot of mares are given human names, often two-part to give more variety down the generations. One line had a mare Lilli and many of her female foals were Lilli-something, I chose to borrow Lillimarlen from the list because it's fine to pronounce for me as an English-speaker too, some names are difficult but that's an easy one, with no complex meaning beyond being a girls' name (it would be Lili Marleen in German, Lily Marlene in English, and so on)
Again I swapped background after the first try, and I think she looks better against the green meadow, too. I don't know what Swedish countryside looks like, but a field with a bit of sky is pretty generic, so I don't think it stands out as definitely-not-Sweden either!
This mould has such a good face, the grumpy expression is very pony, and I think the turned back ears are a change when so many models are posed looking alert and cheerful. We also don't see too many in a walking pose, sculptors tend to favour trots for the stretch and symmetry, or canters/ gallops for the balanced action poses, walking is the boring pace! But this reminds me so much of a pony just mooching round in it's own time, looking for something to nibble or wandering over for a shade nap.
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