Julip Spares Night, 2022

As an alternative to the annual Julip live show when we could buy brand new one-off Julips in person, the company now runs a photoshow, along with a big Spares Night with lots of horses prepared specially to sell online, on the weekend the show would've been held, toward the end of September each year. 

There's strict one-per-customer and first-bid-claims-the-horse rules, but there's always more people than there are horses to go round, so there's a huge amount of competition for every model, as we each to try to be first on the ones we like best.

This year, I thought I'd been unlucky on two in a row, with someone else getting in before me both times. But while I was waiting for more chances as the evening progressed, a couple of friends pointed out that they thought I had got one - I checked and it turned out that the person who beat me retracted their bid, leaving me as the 'winner' after all, and I did get to buy the exact horse I'd tried for first!

Here he is straight from the wrapping, with his mane and tail all fluffy. With just a little mousse to tame it he would've looked fine, and I was really tempted to do exactly that and leave it, but that keeps on happening : I have ideas for plaiting a new Julip I'm waiting for, then can't go through with it cos the loose mane is so nice. So I decided to at least try this time!

After all, I could always undo it if it didn't look like I hoped, and cos the style I had in mind didn't need any cutting, or gluing, the long hair would all still be in there - there's nothing stopping me unpicking the braid in years to come if I ever do decide to go back to loose again.

And here he is! I think it looks fine, just like I'd hoped and the braids are really firm and tight so they lie nicely on the neck, and shouldn't ever start coming undone. The bows are silk ribbon I had left over from another project, it's very fine and thin, and looks less plasticky against the natural hair than synthetic satin ribbon.

The tail went curly on it's own, all I did was comb it through, add some mouse to stop the flyaway fluffiness, and left it it dry.

This is my first time seeing this mould in person, it was sculpted as a Lipizzaner and that meant I never really thought about the possibility of wanting it in any colour other than grey! I think it makes a lovely historical/Iberian horse, and would even work as a dressage warmblood. The face shape is lovely too, very kind and gentle-looking.

I knew he wasn't going to stay as a Lipizzaner cos of his dun colouring, but it took me a while to decide whether he'd be the Spanish PRE (Andalusian), or the Portuguese Lusitano. In the end I decided to go for Lusitano, as he isn't quite so chunky in the neck as a typical PRE stallion. I haven't entirely settled on a name yet but I'm considering Próspero or Valério; I think the latter suits him better, and I already have a Prospero without the accent.

Here's the other side, you can see how his forelock's tucked to one side, I tied it to the mane braid to keep it from hanging down in front of him, in real life they're usually tucked into the bridle or halter.

I was planning to make a bridle, but I got halfway then had all sorts of issues! My glue wouldn't stick unless I held each join together for ages, the paperclip I'd found to make the bit cheeks with was too hard to bend properly, the beaded tassel idea I'd got for the browband wouldn't work when I tried it, and I couldn't even touch the horse to try for size cos his mousse wasn't dry yet - so that hasn't happened!

As well as horses, ponies, and donkeys, the Spares concept also applies to the other, smaller animals which Julip make to go with their equine models, and we get the chance to buy all kinds of dogs, cats, rabbits and guinea pigs, foxes, and even some domestic and wild birds.

New this for this year was the dachshund mould, just like the horses they're hand made in latex and each one is slightly different. Competition for the Dachshunds was fierce, so I was very pleased to manage to catch one of the very first batch made!

I've named him Henry, after one this colour I only met once - he started chasing me up the lane while I was biking home, and it took quite some effort and multiple attempts to return him cos he was so determined this cyclist had to be thoroughly chased off (in the end his owner's neighbour picked him up and held him til I was out of sight, so he wouldn't wriggle out under the fence again, and they were going to Henry-proof the gap once the owner got home!)

A second photo cos I made him a little collar. Even though all the dachshunds in the group were slightly different anyway (he has more brown than some, less than others, and little anxious eyebrows!) I always like to give my Julip dogs collars, just for a bit of extra individuality.

And finally, my second cockerel. I had plenty of hens, and two henhouses, so I decided it was time to add another cockerel, cos in real life once they think they have 'enough' girls each, they'll live happily without fighting. And this was the exact colour I had in mind, the bright multi-coloured sort, to contrast with my original grey one. So when he came up in the Spares I decided to ignore all the other chickens this time, and focus on trying for this one, so I was delighted to get him!

Tales from the Body Box - An autumn assortment

Let me start by explaining I haven't been suddenly incredibly productive over a couple of days and created all these customs in one big batch - it's more a case of getting myself ridiculously left behind in compiling blog posts, so there was an ever-growing waiting list of painted and photographed horses ready to be shown here, and now I'm making them all share one big post to catch up!

The first one, you could say, came to me in a dream!

Normally, any model-related dreams seem to be about finding models for sale somewhere and either not being able to buy them, not being able to carry as many as I want to take home, or somehow managing to go through with the purchase then being mildly disappointed to wake up and realise I haven't added those ones to my collection after all, hahah! But this time, the dream was about painting : I picked out a pearly blue unicorn on the Breyer Stablemate walking thoroughbred, which was exactly the one I really did have in my body box, and painted it to match this reference photo. And in my dream, it turned out really, really nicely, just like the picture, a very striking little horse with super-flashy markings.

So I decided this meant I needed to make it happen in real life!

I found a photo of the same horse from the other side, then picked out the Stablemate from the body box - a very tricky pattern to match, eeek!

The mould looks much better without the unicorn horn, and it's not too bad for the Akhal-Teke breed either. Despite being sculpted as a Thoroughbred, it's very much the extreme end of the long-and-lean variety (many TBs these days are either much more compact and muscular as sprint distances are most popular, or else more chunky and solid-looking if they're jumps-bred to be tough and sound), so it gets away with being re-purposed as a 'Teke without much work. All I did was carve off the mane and forelock, and take a bit of the thickness out of the tail so it's more tapered toward the end.

Something about his attitude also helps capture the Akhal-Teke breed, I've added in a line of eye-white like he's giving us a bit of a wild look. But none of my lush leafy green backdrops look remotely like the middle-eastern homelands of this breed, so rather than post him in front of something inappropriately British-looking I've used a plain fence which could be anywhere, hah!

Unfortunately I haven't been able to find out the name of the real horse which inspired him, so I've picked a name myself and called him Menekli, which means 'spotted' or 'colourful' depending on which Turkmen translator I run it through - either way is very fitting for his wild splashy pattern!

I think I'd like to paint more of this mould in Akhal-Teke coat colours, there's nothing else in the Stablemate range which would be a better fit, and I doubt there will be unless they ever decide to shrink down the large scale Altynai/Adamek sculpt to mini size!

So I'm plotting this one in perlino, and golden palomino, and metallic sooty buckskin, whenever I eventually get my hands on more, of course! At the moment they're only available as unicorns in painting kits, in horse/unicorn family sets, or annoyingly in those lucky-dip blind bags where you've far more chance of getting a different mould, so it's a case of fingers crossed for a normal 'single' release at some point soon, so they're easier to stock up on for the body box!

Next, a Stablemate 'Prince charming' I fished out of the body box and gave the colour I'd had in mind ever since I ordered it - a second Orlov Trotter for my herd.

The first one I painted was a very dark dappled grey, but in researching her I'd seen quite a lot of photos showing older horses, a few years further along in the greying process, with the remains of dapples shading into dark legs. And they looked very striking, so I decided back then that next time I got one of this mould (known as Prince Charming, but actually a mare) that's what it would be set aside for.

I used an off-white base coat, lightly shaded just to give the hints of dark skin showing through to capture that typical faint greyishness which remains even in a white horse, then added all the dappling and leg shading using pencil.

I've tried paint over pencilled dappled to shade the legs before, and it seems to somehow not take properly, like the pencil graphite layer is water-repellent and argues with my water-based paints, so this time I just went with lots and lots of determined scribbling to fill in the legs with the pencil too.

The reason she has white socks on all four feet is so I didn't have to scribble all the way down, it's hard to get proper coverage in the tendon grooves so I image the tricky bits behind the ankle joints would be even more inaccessible!

I've named her Strekoza, which means dragonfly, because my first one is Babochka, or butterfly. If I ever paint up any more of this beed, I'm going to be googling the words for bee or hoverfly or moth, to keep the theme going!

The Django mould was sculpted as a Friesian, in fact it's alternative name is the Standing Friesian. But Breyer have been selling him in lots of incorrect colours for that breed - so far we've had just one regular run (if you can call that dratted blind bag system a 'regular' run when you can't decide which model you're getting), a spotted dun. There's also been a pinto and a palomino as club-member-only exclusives, a Breyerfest grey, a bay only sold in US Walmart shops, and a couple of clear/metallic decorator colours.

So we've had the mould since 2016, and they still haven't released it in black?!

I got fed up waiting for them to get round it, and painted my own black one!

Black might sound like a really easy colour to paint, and it's certainly easier than fiddly colours like roany appaloosas or intricate pintos, but it's getting some sort of depth and warmth to it which is the tricky part. I used some chocolate brown in the mix for the belly and flanks, and a hint of beigey grey dotted into the black paint to give the face some shading where the skin would show.

The main body of the horse is polished with a bit of fleece to give the paint finish a natural shine, then the mane and tail I gave a coat of varnish followed by a very thin wash of dilute black just to take the edge off the gloss and soften it slightly. The hooves have two coats of clear nail varnish to capture the look of blacked and oiled hooves, the traditional turnout fashion for Friesians.

This angle shows the brilliant upright alert posture, so typical of the breed. I do like Breyer's trotting Friesian mould, but I prefer this one - the proportions and pose are perfect, the head is more detailed, and the sculpting style is more my taste too.

I've named him Adarik, cos my G2 Friesian is Alaric and matching names do amuse me!

Next, my first ever custom on this mould, and my first ever custom of this breed...

Introducing Harecroft Shakespeare, the Cleveland Bay.

This mould was sculpted as an Irish Draft (again, we haven't had a regular run in any right colour for the breed - only a spotted one!) but ever since it was first announced, I thought it would be perfect for a Cleveland Bay. The roman nose, the chunky legs, the big deep rounded body, and the kind placid look of him.

Bay is a fairly straightforward colour to paint, I went for a dark shade with less of the pale highlights than I'd usually put on, this one has more reddish undertones but all toned down with plenty of black. The only issue I had was the spots from the factory paintwork - being slightly thick they showed through my experimental first layer of paint, so I had to scratch them all off with a scalpel blade and start again on a smoothed surface!

At some point I might do another Cleveland in a lighter bay, they do come in many varied shades despite being a single-colour breed, but this was the colour of the one I rode in lessons for a little while, so it's how I always think of them.

She was an ex hunter and rather difficult for a riding school, leapt everything as though it was a five foot wide hedge, which took some getting used to, as a lightweight kid who'd only ever jumped low heights with ponies and cobs! I also took her to a gymkhana once and got scolded for 'bombing about on that great big horse' cos I had very little control and she was enjoying herself a bit too much. But we came home with a string of five rosettes (which I still have, with her name written on the back), so we did ok despite me being little more than a passenger!

I credit many different horses with teaching me different aspects of horsemanship and riding over the years - she was the one who taught me the art of pretending I really did want to go that fast!

Another first for me, though not a new mould it's the first time I've painted one as an Altér Real, a strain developed and preserved at the Portuguese royal stud. They're a little bit deeper in the neck and chest than the usual modern Lusitano's build, due to crossing with Andalusian and Carthusian stallions to bring the breed back to it's old type after they'd been spoilt with too much TB and Arabian crossing during Napoleon's era. So their typical shape is rather like a halfway point between the Lusitano and Andalusian, meaning I can use an Andalusian sculpt to represent one.

They're a breed which is almost entirely bay in colour, but through various shades from deep dark-chocolate brown right through to a gingery tan colour, always with black points. I picked a shade I don't paint very often, a medium bright bay, with just a little bit of dappling and shading to give him some depth. 

I'm not sure which photo I like best as his main shot! I was really pleased I'd got a background of the right country, most of them are just fields or fenced paddocks with some green countryside behind, but when I searched through the stack of pictures I found this one, which shows the landscape around the stud where they're bred.

I've picked a name from a real pedigree, he's called Maravilha (but that's Harecroft Maravilha AR, to give him his full title with my show prefix and his breed suffix).

 

Bright Lights, my first custom on the Missouri Fox Trotter mould. It's not a breed I know a great deal about, this is only my third model of one (after the CollectA chestnut mare, and the grey on this Stablemates mould). I looked up colours and while solid coats are the most common, there was also a really lovely example of a purebred in this bay pinto with quite subtle pinto patterning - just very high socks, a flash of white on the neck, and a mostly white tail.

It's always fun painting a new mould for the first time, and this one has only been available in the 70th Anniversary blind bags, so I've not been able to buy them by choice, just by random luck. I'm kind of hoping a lot of these more recent moulds will make it to the next batch of 12 single horses sold on cards so you can see what you're getting. But knowing Breyer they'll probably just do more unicorns and blind bags (or blind bags that contain unicorns, haha!)

Yet another first, this time my first ever Pony of the Americas custom, though the sculpt is one I've painted before. The 'POA' was developed by breeding small Appaloosas with Shetlands, to get the Pony size and tough nature combined with the flashy colour, they're quite a new breed compared to either of their contributing halves, but seem to be popular and much liked.

They come in all variations of appaloosa pattern, but leopard and near-leopard seem to be the commonest, and I paint more roany blanket patterns normally, so I decided to go for full-body spotting this time! His base colour is bay, so the spots vary in colour from light brown to dark brown to black.

Adding in the spots is always the most fun part of the process, making up a pattern and filling it in til there's just the right amount. Of course the number of spots any one horse will have varies hugely, from just a couple to hundred upon hundred, so that leaves me plenty of leeway for making up a realistic design!

Another of the 70th Anniversary moulds, this is the Fighting Stallion - no breed given but I think he's usually regarded as a Mustang. I've called mine Daredevil. As I said before, the glossy finish had me a bit worried that my paint wouldn't stick or cover as well as usual, but it was just fine.

I've got some white paint which is rapidly trying to set solid, so I'm trying to use it up by doing horses which have layers of solid white as base coat and then smaller markings like patches or spots added, rather than applying just a bit of white over a painted colour! That does make it tricky to get the patches on smoothly, the result always looks a little bit water-colour and tends toward messiness.

This is Harecroft Reckless, yet another tobiano cob on the mini Vanner mould. I have about eight of these to paint so there's bound to be a lot of different pintos!

I decided to do a dun/buckskin base colour this time, to use my golden shades of paint - not quite sure which he'd end up as I went along, in the end I settled on buckskin so didn't give him a dorsal stripe or leg barring.

The last painted custom is based on a fascinating reference picture I found online, here. I've tried to figure out what colour that horse is, genetically speaking, and the best I can come up with is that he's a sooty buckskin, going grey, but then also clipped, which really changes the look of the coat by taking off the coloured tips of the hairs. It especially messes with the look of dapples and greying, both of which this horse seems to have, so it's no wonder he's ended up all blotchy and mottled!

It was a very hard colour to replicate, and I think mine does have less contrast between the dark and light because I was scared of spoiling it and stopped at a point which looked reasonably neat and nice, rather than adding more layers and risking ruining it into a paintstrokey blobby bit of impressionist art!

He looks quite a bit darker in the shade, but when it's such a weird colour anyway I don't think any lighting would really flatter it - I doubt I'll ever enter this one in photo shows cos 'Sooty buckskin going grey but also clipped' isn't a colour there's ever a class for, and judges might just take one look and think I'm a messy painter!

I haven't chosen him a name yet, but the mould was sculpted as an Irish Draft, and as both buckskin and grey are found in that breed, there's no need to change it. The original horse in the reference picture has 'Galway' in his name, so I suspect he's either pure ID or at least a partbred one and from Ireland.

And finally (phew!), an attempt at etching, taking the factory paint off with a knife point or scraper, leaving the original colour behind only where you want it - usually in a pinto or appaloosa pattern, as that looks more dramatically different than just extending the white socks or giving it a new face marking.

It's very fiddly and time-consuming (getting both sides of this small foal mould to the amount I wanted took nearly two hours!) but looks quite fun when finished, and it made a change from painting.

There is a little bit of my own paint applied here, to give the hooves some colour and add the pink speckling on the face, but other than that it's just white plastic revealed by scratching off the black paint finish.

Tales from the Body Box - a CollectA custom catch-up!

I've got terribly behind on blog posts, time to catch up a bit!

This summer I painted a few more CollectA horses and ponies, the Gotlands got their introduction but the rest haven't appeared here yet. 

The adorable little Falabella mould, now in pintaloosa. This flashy colour happens when you get pinto white markings over the top of an existing appaloosa pattern - in this case, a roany blanket one, where the blanket rather blends into the pinto patch across her back, and it's hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. But the spots are definitely all within the appaloosa part, never in the white pinto patches.

She looks very cheerful and alert, I've read that Falabellas are easy to train and enjoy learning, and can be taught tricks and games to play, and you can just imagine this one pricking up her ears and waiting for whatever instruction is coming next!

I've never met a Falabella in person, but they're always included in breed books so they're quite well known in the horsey world. Developed by one family in Argentina, with every possible colour brought in to make them even more coveted, they were bred smaller and smaller on purpose, specifically as pets and companion animals. It sounds like they're mostly popular in the US these days, probably cos the UK's got such a tradition of having Shetland ponies already, with plenty of mini Shetlands to fill that I-want-a-tiny-pony gap in the pet market, and only specialist showing/breeding homes going for the Falabella instead.

Even in a static pose, the CollectA hair sculpting is nice, with a fluid softness to the way it hangs and curls.

Next, another pony breed, this time one I'm much, much more familiar with - the Exmoor.

I've painted a couple of purebred Exmoors before, but always a lighter, redder brown, and I really do like this deep dark chocolatey shade they can be, so I decided to go for the darkest I could make it without losing the brownishness!

Exmoors always have the pale highlights, traditionally known as mealy (as in 'had it's face in a bucket of oatmeal' ) but properly termed pangare when we're talking equine colour genetics. It's a really fun colour to paint, with so much contrast to add in - a lot of painters insist you do the lightest colour first and go darker, but I like to start mid way then add the paler shading and the darker over the top of that.

I've named him Whirlaway, something to suit their semi-wild lifestyle and temperamental natures - there's a saying that if you can ride an exmoor you can ride anything

I still prefer CollectA's Dartmoor sculpt to their Exmoor, although the windblown mane is nicely done and a nod to their rough natural habitat, the lack of detail in the legs is a bit of a let-down, and I kind of wish they'd released the Exmoor many years ago, back when all the moulds were fine and crisp!

The next two are co-incidentally very, very similar looking horses, despite being genetically different colours, different breeds, from different continents!

On the left, a Rocky Mountain Horse, and on the right, a Black Forest Horse

The Black Forest first, here he is again. Their colour does vary, from an average shade of orangey chestnut right through to very nearly black, but always with this bright flaxen mane and tail. This is the reference picture I chose, cos it's got more variety of brown across the coat, which is more interesting to paint than when they're more or less the same all over

The pose isn't really very typical for the breed, I'm not sure why they went for this rather than a simple standing or walking, but it does give the long mane opportunity to swinging forward into view so that's a good thing!

Schleich have made a couple of Black Forest families, I quite like the first sculpts but every example I ever saw had a terribly badly painted mane with the blonde splashed about across the face and ears as well, so I never bought those, and the second family has the company's rather lapsed attention to anatomical accuracy, so those are out as well.

That leaves only CollectA's in my herd right now, one kept as he was and now a repaint to stand beside him. I'd like to do a Breyer Stablemate custom, but none of the sculpts really feel right for the breed, all the drafters are too blocky and compact. The G2 Clydesdale is the only one I could possibly see working, but I'd need to carve off most of the leg feather and add a big new mane and tail, and while I don't mind filing bits off moulds, I don't think my sculpting is up to rendering the volume and movement the new hair would need!

I wasn't going to give him a face marking, to make him more different to the original finish paintwork, but I managed to smudge his colour off with my thumb while painting the mane in, and covering it with a marking was much easier than trying to match the shading I'd spoilt

The Rocky Mountain Horse is a gaited breed, American as the name suggests, but don't take it at all literally - they're actually from Kentucky rather than the Rocky Mountains!

This colour is known as 'chocolate' within the breed, genetically it's black with the silver gene, which lightens the coat to brown and gives the blonde mane and tail. So it might look pretty similar to the dark flaxen chestnut, but it's a whole different set of genes causing the colouration - horse colour is complicated

I can't link my exact painting reference for this one, cos it's in a book rather than online, but this is about the nearest I can see from a quick google-search.

I tried to use slightly different paint mixing to make sure she didn't turn out just the same as the Black Forest I'd completed earlier the same evening. The company don't sell a dark brown, I always have to mix it by adding black to brighter red and orange based browns, so I this time I avoided the redder pot of paint entirely and relied on the chocolate and sandy shades, with black to darken them down.

She isn't quite as I was hoping, but cos it was so tricky getting the colour at all, I stopped while it was looking pretty and even and nice-despite-not-being-what-I-aimed-for, rather than risking ruining her with more layers!

The side without the mane isn't as good, some models photograph far better with the neck-side showing but with the graduated fade-out blonde of this breed being one of their key features, I much prefer the photo showing it.

I've named her Serenity, mainly cos I started rewatching Firefly the other day and thought it'd be a good horse name, but I gave it to her in particular cos my original CollectA Rocky Mountain mare is Sundowner and her foal is Silhouette, so they match by all being S's!

And here's the most recent repaint, the first ever Sorraia for my collection, either OF or CM.

I've been reading lots about them lately (from both points of view : there's a side which says they're just one man's created breed made from local farm horses the right colour, and a side which says they're ancient natives and have always been there). Reading more made me want to do a custom, but I haven't got any Stablemate bodies which would suit, so I thought it would have to wait.

Then I found that I'd already got one in my body box which would be an ideal match for the conformation and characteristics, just a bit bigger than I'd been considering so far : the CollectA Lusitano stallion! I think the colour really suits the mould, and the pose works really well for a horse said to have come from a free-ranging herd, and currently living that way again in a nature reserve.

All Sorraia horses are dun, and they're all one of two kinds - either what's known as grulla (dun gene acting on a black coat), or occasionally bay dun. There's no red duns meaning there's no chestnut gene in there at all, no non-dun colours ever happen, and they don't have any white markings either. This very specific narrow colour range is cos all Sorraias come from the same handful of horses used at the start of the breeding project in the 1930s, and no crossing from other breeds has been done within the European herds, only in the USA - and those partbred individuals wouldn't be re-absorbed as purebred Sorraia if they ever came back to Europe, so any colours that crop up from their added Mustang ancestry won't change the breed standard.

The only down side is that my paint which would've been the right shade for their commonest colour had set solid in the pot, so I had to go for a slightly darker slate-grey colour, which is fine for the breed, just not the one we see most often in the example pictures (although having said that, I went to get a link and the main image on their Wikipedia page is one of the darker horses!)

It's not a colour I paint very often, when I do a dun I usually go browner or more golden-coloured, but I enjoyed making it greyish without looking like an actual grey, and of course all the primitive zebra-markings were a lot of fun to detail in at the end. The back view shows the markings well; you can see the stripes on the legs but also the dorsal stripe down the middle of his back, and the faint shadows of striping coming from either side of it on his rump (also on the neck and shoulder, but his mane hides most of that!)

Usually I know at once which is the 'good side' for my models to display and be photographed, and with my factory finish CollectA Lusitanos it's always been with them facing left, but on this one I'm kind of tempted to use this side instead! I love the big flying mane, and the two-tone colouring shows a lot better on this side than the other, the pale hairs giving a streaky effect along the outside edges is typical of the Sorraia and I think it would be best to display that feature when he goes on my website.

His face also looks equally nice from either way, and even though his neck is turned a bit you can catch him in profile or near-profile with the right camera angle, so I think I will use this 'wrong' side as his right side!

I've named him Temerário, which means someone reckless or a daredevil (I've already got a Julip called Temeraire, but that's the French equivalent and he's named after a ship, and as he's a different brand as well as a different breed and colour, I won't ever get them muddled up!)