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!
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!)
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!)
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