Tales from the Body Box - A tour of Europe

I've already got on with the next batch of projects from my wishlist - to paint some breeds I've never done before.

First off, a Haflinger, a very pretty Austrian breed which I've always known about and liked, but somehow never got round to painting myself - though I did have a few original finish examples in my herd.

In real life they're quite a small breed, either a large pony or a small horse depending which side of 14.2hh they happen to be, so I chose the Highland Pony mould as the closest match for scale, build, and looks. They both have that cute, friendly, alert little face! I did carve away some of the leg feathering, and filled the profile a little, but other than that it's a pretty good resemblance already.

And here she is! It was quite an odd colour to paint, I'm used to doing mostly darker coats with various shades of orange, red, brown, and black, so this time it was all the paint colours I usually only use for highlights and blonde hair!

Their shade of chestnut does vary, with some being quite tan-coloured while others are nearly cream - I went toward the lighter end this time thinking that if I ever paint another, I could go darker, and that would give the maximum variation, rather than if I went for the exact middle average shade first time.

I haven't picked a name for her yet, my usual tactic with horses from countries I know little about is to look up some real pedigrees of the right breed and choose a name from there, that way I'm sure to get one which is the right language and an appropriate kind of thing people would call a horse there!

Her background is a little bit of genuine Austria, a souvenir calendar from the 1970s which my grandparents found when they were clearing out to move home about 10 years ago - I remember saving it from the bin incase the landscapey pictures ever came in handy as photo backgrounds, and now eventually have a horse to suit it!

I gave her a little face stripe and pink nose, most Haflingers seem to have some white on the head, and it can be anything from a small star to a wide blaze.

I'm really pleased to have painted this appealing and popular breed at long last, without meaning to avoid it I somehow took a really long time to notice it was even a gap in my collection. So I scribbled a little list of the other most famous breeds I'd never done a custom of, and the next one is another horse to cross off!

This is CollectA's mini Thoroughbred mould, but I just didn't like it as a TB, too chunky in the leg and sloping at the rump, with kind of awkward conformation, so I allocated it a breed which is known for it's rather unconventional looks, proportions and features which in any other horse would be regarded as flaws - the Nonius from Hungary.

They only come in black, so it didn't take many seconds to decide how to paint her, and with black being easily the simplest colour to paint, it wasn't many minutes from start to finish, either.

The final breed in this tour of Europe is from Norway, the Døle Gudbrandsdal. The Døle is the commonest of the native Norwegian breeds, though you'd never know that from the model horse world, which seems intently focused on the Fjord to the exclusion of all other breeds from the country! They're a small draft-type horse, kind of the equivalent to a welsh cob or traditional cob over here - stocky and strong, with feathered legs and a fairly high knee action, used for riding, driving, showing, and occasionally working draft duty like logging.

There's two kinds, the original Døle Gudbrandsdal, and the Døle Trotter, a flashier spin-off breed with longer slimmer legs and neck. I have my G3 Friesians in non-friesian colours as Døle Trotters instead, so in theory I could've just painted that mould unadjusted and counted it as a Døle custom to tick off the breed list. But I really wanted to go for the original heavier version of the breed, which meant thickening up the legs, and in every picture I could find for a Døle Gudbrandsdal in action, no matter how fast they trot their head seems to be held lower, on an arched neck. So it was time to get out the hacksaw as well as the filler...

Here's how the mould looks in the original black :

(Don't worry, this perfect-condition horse is unharmed, I customised a scuffed second-hand duplicate from my body box!)

Here he is through two progress stages. 

On the left; with the thicker legs, the head removed, and the altered neck roughed in with milliput. You can see I re-used a chunk of the original neck and mane to save having to make the whole thing from scratch, that's how much I hate resculpting!

On the right; with the head glued back on, the set-hard milliput sanded and carved down to shape, and some more added to fill the throat, extend the mane, and smooth over any unwanted gaps or grooves.

Now ready to paint!

Even though this was my favourite reference photo example, it's very similar to other bays I've painted recently, so I went with a slightly different shade instead, and copied this one.

And here he is! I'm so pleased with how he turned out, especially as I really, really dislike resculpting anything more than simple tweaks like mane braids or hooves or adjusting a head shape, and would normally avoid it to the point of just not doing any custom idea which needed repositioning work.

I think the colour came out pretty close to the reference I was using; not how I usually paint a bay, having higher black on the legs and more variation between the darkest brown on the shoulder and the lightest creamy shading inside the elbows and thighs. I find copying a picture, either for a portrait model or just a breed example, can often push me to venture outside my usual paint palette, and abandon the mental 'pattern' for where shading goes - if I'm trying to duplicate a real horse, I'm having to paint what I see, not what I imagine is 'normal'!

This isn't going to convince me to do any more drastic customs, or even any others with this much repositioning, but I'm glad to have managed it once!

Now, what breeds can I tick off that painting list next..?

Tales from the Body Box - CollectA Minis

A while back I bought a partial set of CollectA's mini horses from a friend, scaled down versions of the standard (1:20) or deluxe (1:12) moulds we're already familiar with. I've gradually been painting my way through them, taking their pictures as I went, and just now realised I hadn't posted any yet! I'd like to keep the blog neatly organised by making sure all the customs go up within the year they were painted, so here's all the minis in their new colours.

First up, the appaloosa stallion, one of the nicest renditions of this breed among all the mid-scale plastics (not an officially agreed hobby term, just my own invention because I wanted a collective term to call, and tag, all my Schleich, CollectA, Safari, WIA, Bullyland and Papo)

I've named this one Harecroft Sunset Over The Sea, and he's one of my favourites from all I've painted at this smaller scale.

 

Here he is with a penny, so you can see just how small these miniature versions are! It made the detailed paintjob a little bit fiddlier than on a Stablemate, but with a tiny brush and carefully steadied hand, it wasn't too bad - being able to make up the spot placement as I went along made it a lot easier than if I'd been trying to match them for a portrait!

Harecroft Firestone - a bit of teamwork here, as this one had been started in his last home, but needed finishing with a couple more coats of white, as well as feet and a face! The original mould is a Hanoverian, but in shrinking he's got noticeably chunkier legs, so I think I'll probably file him as an Irish Sport Horse on my site. 

Perhaps a bit predictable, going for a white-grey on the lipizzaner mould, but for my first I wanted to stick to their typical colour, then if I ever buy another set of these, I'll go a bit more obscure! I've called him Neapolitano Romana - all my grey lipizzaners are given the Neapolitano line, while I chose the Siglavy line for my first (and so far, only) black coated stallion.

Two different views, it's a very narrow mould for a breed which is very compact, rounded, and muscular in build, but the pose is great and the head is handsome, so I'll forgive it that!

Harecroft Commander, the clydesdale mould which works beautifully in miniature as the legs were already chunky, just as the breed is meant to be. I always imagine this one in varying shades of bay and different amounts of sabino marking, so it was inevitable mine would end up this colour (I've got a big one in the body box, too, he may well end up looking very similar!)

I don't know why the paints seem to end up more shiny on my CollectA repaints than something like Breyer's plastic, I don't ever use any sealant or varnish over the top, so you'd expect them to have the same semi-gloss smoothness as any of my other customs, but as you can see from the light catching him here, he has a very glossy coat.

I don't usually do duplicates from the same reference, but I really loved the shade of chestnut I used for my Stablemate custom of Blazin' Chic Olena, and wanted to play with it again at a different scale and pose, so here we have Harecroft Blazin' Rebel.

 

A fun little action pose, I don't have many reining or cutting models among my collection, as it's very much outside the disciplines I usually see on tv or in person over here, so it makes sense to paint this little one like the only real horse I've ever seen doing these moves!

The Shire mare, in a different shade of bay so she doesn't look too similar to the Clydesdale, with a sunbleached mane and tail and a bit more sabino marking. Lovely little mould, I think I like it even more in miniature than the usual size!

I've named her Matilda - after the Medieval queen, not the Roald Dahl character!

And the last one, Harecroft Aberama Gold, the friesian mould repainted as a partbred cob in buckskin tobiano. I've always had my eye on this mould to use for a possible cob custom, I just expected it would be the standard scale I got my hands on, not his tiny counterpart!

I would've taken a final catch-up shot of the whole batch together, but the middle of winter just isn't favourable for photography in my garden - the entire space is cast in deep shadow because the sun, even at midday, doesn't get high enough to reach over the roof or the wall. I've also got a recently painted resin, and a brand new and exciting Traditional scale arrival, neither of which I can post about yet as there's no patch of sunshine for a photoshoot! 

CollectA customs little & large

This week I had two new custom CollectA arrivals, co-incidentally both painted by the same hobby friend of mine - Chloe at Henhafod. One was a newly finished piece straight from the artist's studio, the other second hand from Ebay, having lived with someone else for a few years in between.

This mould is intended as a pure arabian, but the legs are rather chunky for that, so I think I'll be having him as a Tersk instead. The Tersk (or Tersky) is a Russian breed, based on European arab stallions but with a mix of thoroughbred and hunter-type blood. They do vary, from what I've read, with some lines looking almost purebred arabian, while many would make a good hunter, jumper or eventer type - an all-round riding horse with more height and bone.

He's my first of the small scale Mini CollectA models, shrunk-down versions of their Standard 20th and Deluxe 12th scale moulds. They're a bit bigger than Breyer Mini Whinnies, so I took a picture to show the size (for any international readers, a UK penny is the same as a US one, the Euro cent, and matches the penny/cent coin in a lot of other places, too!)

 

I think I'll call him Pascha, another of those names I've had on my list for ages but never had a horse to suit it - apparently it means 'small' and is of Russian origin, so it's ideal for this tiny little chap!

Although I like the photos with my smallest-scale trees in, he does stand out really nicely against the open sky, and I'm undecided which to use as his show and website image. Note the extra small white paddock fence, hastily made from sliced up packaging box last time I had some micro-mini scale models to photograph!

And here's his wrong side : I always try to find the 'right' angle to show off a horse to the most flattering advantage, and like many, this mould's posed on a slight bend, with his head turned, making this the non-display side.

The second of Chloe's customs was painted a few years ago, when he popped up on Ebay my first reaction was just 'ooh, pretty!' cos I liked his colour. I clicked for a closer look at the photos, because I do love my CollectA models and this is such a friendly-looking mould I'd decided I might have to try for him. But once I saw I knew his painter (and we've been friends for well over a decade now), I was even more determined to get him for my herd, and was delighted to be the winning bidder by the end.

He's a lovely toned-down smoky palomino colour, a really soft and pleasant variation on the usual copper-penny bright tones. Even though I paint lots of models myself, I always think it's well worth adding other artists' work when they've done something I know I couldn't just do for myself. And these gentle pale dilutes are the ones I've always struggled with, to the point of avoiding cos I know how rarely they go well for me. So I buy other people's instead!

I love the expression on so many of the Debra McDermott CollectA sculpt's faces - that head-turn with an alert prick of the ears, like you've just made a click of the tongue or jingle of keys to get the horse's attention for a photograph.