Breyer Traditional mid-year 2022 - Get Rowdy

Let me start with my apologies for posting several blog updates all at once, but I'm trying to make sure all my arrivals have the right year on their posts, even though I'm days or even weeks behind on getting them uploaded here.

A very beautiful and exciting arrival to introduce, first - one of the 2022 'mid year' releases, although that term is a little bit laughable when they arrive right at the end of the year (or sometimes into the following year) in my country! But this is one I've been looking forward to ever since I first saw it!

His official name is Get Rowdy, and he's a portrait model of a horse who started out as an eventer then switched to hunter classes (which are nothing to do with actual hunting, although we don't have it over here I gather it's more like a combination of showing and showjumping, with judging as well as jumping score counting toward who wins)

The sculpt is a really beautiful and technically impressive one, with really great anatomical correctness in a tricky but dynamic pose, and a realistic art style. I especially like the flick of the tail, and the way the whole thing looks so harmonious and balanced. He was sculpted by Morgen Kilbourn, who did the recent 'Erren' criollo for WIA, although that wasn't a factor in deciding to buy him - I either didn't know at all, or knew once but had completely forgotten, cos I only just now went to find out so I could write the artist in this post.

I don't celebrate christmas but still wanted to give him some sort of seasonal themed name cos of when he arrived, then had an inspired moment during the photoshoot, and realised I already had the perfect name in mind!

There's a big annual horse show in London which is always dressed up all festive, with themed decorations around the jumps, and riders plaiting tinsel into horses manes, and fake snow sprinkled around the arena, and it's always televised - the only time we ever see showjumping competition on a normal free tv channel outside the Olympics.

One of the classes is Puissance, a high-jump contest, and one of the horses who always does well in it is a big pale nearly-white grey with darker grey legs, named Mr Blue Sky. He won again this year (well, it was a draw between the top two who both cleared the same height, but that counts as a win too!), and at the time I'd thought to myself 'It would be nice to name a model after him', cos the name is cool, reminds me of a fun song, and I've always enjoyed watching the real horse.

So now I'm standing in a field and I have in my hand a pale grey horse, in a jumping pose, arriving round christmas time just after this competition, being photographed against a bright blue sky...and yeah, he's got to be my Mr Blue Sky!

I wasn't sure if I preferred the photos with a bit of landscape behind him, or against only sky, so I took a few of each. Of course in real life a horse would only be jumping like this with tack and a rider on, so no photo is ever going to be realistic as such, but from an aesthetic point of view, does he look better with open sky, or a bit of the horizon and field too? I'm still undecided.

One fun thing I could do with a plain-sky picture, though, was edit out the stand so he looks like he's really floating in mid air...