Tales from the Body Box - Harpley Red Queen

Back after nearly a month break from painting - with something very big and precious to share!

Normally, I don't paint many resin models, they're a bit beyond my budget. And I don't paint anything larger than CollectA, as they're too big for me. So a large scale resin? Not something I've ever tackled before!

But recently, one of my long-time friends contacted me with a wonderfully generous offer I couldn't refuse - would I like one of his resin sculptures to paint? No charge, just that he'd really like to see one in colour, and thought my painting style and area of interest would suit the horse in question so well - a historical hunter.

Years ago, we got to know each other not only though the model horse world where we collected the same brand and met at the company's live show, but also a shared interest in horsey art and writing online - we often drew things for the same community events, and got to know each other's fictional horse and rider characters. So with the resin in question being a portrayal of a hunter from 'my' era, and me being known for drawing historical hunters, it was a perfect match.

I just had to be brave and scale up my painting by quite a lot, as this mare is the size of a small Traditional scale Breyer (those are 1:9 scale, she'd be a little less) You can see her on the official shop page here.

I waited til Tomas had seen and had chance to talk about the photos of the finished horse before posting her here, as it seemed a bit rude to go showing other people before her creator got 'first look'. And then I wanted to hang on til I'd got some sunnier photos cos I wasn't too happy with the first batch. And then I just ran out of mental energy and couldn't make myself catch up on blogging, so what with one thing and another she's waited a little longer than she should've. But now it's time to introduce her : meet Red Queen!

Red Queen is one of the fictional horses I made up a few years ago - there used to be regular community art events where lots of people drew their horses doing the same thing, for sharing together on a certain deadline - maybe showing, or jumping, or in this case, hunting. The other artists taking part drew modern scenes, so a lot of events I couldn't take part in. But I could get away with virtually sending my historical characters along to hunt meets, as hunting hasn't changed very much over the generations (no foxes now, but I never did put foxes or hounds in my pictures anyway), so they didn't look out of place at all.

The drawn version was a rather chunkier horse than the resin, which is very long and lean-legged, but it doesn't matter too much - it's more the colour, the markings, and the personality of the horse which I'm translating across to 3D form.

Here she is the first time I drew her, making on her first appearance on the hunting field - Aubrey is a hopelessly ineffective rider, but doesn't like to admit weakness, and will insist on hiring a horse which is far too much for him to handle, for the sake of trying to look good on something impressive. Usually they sneak along slowly at the back for a bit, then take a detour to the pub, where he'll tie the horse up outside and spend the rest of the day seeing how much he can drink. Sometimes he doesn't even remember to return the horse, and most of the dealers hiring them out have started to refuse him.

Red Queen is far too keen on bombing along toward the front of the field to go steady or wander off part way through - she's really going for it, and Aubrey's hanging on for dear life - but for how long can he stay in the saddle?

Not for long, it turns out!
Red Queen's still jumping with enthusiasm, but she's lost her passenger somewhere along the way. Val, in the green coat, is hunt staff and planning on catching the loose horse he's spotted as soon as they move onto level ground. Iris, on the chestnut horse, is thinking it looks quite the powerful jumper, with attitude and bravery, and might go and try it out another day, if the dealer's open to selling rather than hiring.

And here she is with Iris on their first hunt after the sale went through. With a more effective rider and a change of tack, Red Queen is much more under control and enjoying her job.

Now, on to the creation of her model counterpart. I took some progress stages to show Tomas the way the paintjob developed, and thought they might be of interest here too.

And then a photoshoot all finished -

But I was never happy with these pictures, cos the light in my garden is so terrible at this time of year, with the sun low near the horizon it barely clears the roof and wall, what does reach in is streaked with tree shadows, and the models themselves cast a shadow on the backdrop if it's held at anything but this awkward angle, which doesn't flatter the horse well.

So, finally fed up with not being able to take pictures of any of my other recent arrivals or repaints, I convinced my mum to drive me and a box of towel-wrapped model horses into the open landscape outside the village, so I could take photos without the problem of catching small patches of light, or shadows on backgrounds!
Red Queen went along too, to see if I could get some nicer pictures than first time round.

And here she is, looking a lot brighter against a beautiful blue sky! It was -4 so the ground was icy under foot (you can see the frozen stripes in the ditch water), I held her up with one hand and the camera in the other and tried not to blur the shots by shivering, or breathe condensation into the scene like fog!

The winter scenery is a bit bleak and grim round here, I don't live in a pretty landscape, but it does look quite like some of the backgrounds I used to draw for my hunting scenes, I even had a few ditches to play with. Imagine how good this would look with tack and rider as a performance photo!

In the end, painting a much bigger horse wasn't too scary, but I think it helped that I was so grateful for the gift, and determined to do justice to the sculptor's trust in my ability, which made me motivated to hurry along and get her painted up. I couldn't have left this one gathering dust for ten years like the others! I love her already.