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.

2022 Breyer Stablemates

I've finally managed to find the rest of the 2022 single carded Stablemates. These were a batch of 2021 mid-year models for the USA, but only got a full global release with this year's regular runs - and it's been really hard to catch them all in stock in the UK ever since!

A slightly pearly finish, which as you know is not my usual cup of tea at all, but this one I couldn't resist : the colour is one of my favourites, on a mould I love - a beautiful mulberry grey mini Alborozo. A few years ago I painted one this colour, so it's amusing to have a matching original finish model!

I've named him Ferrando, a Medieval variation of the name Fernando. I bought two of these, so I'd have a spare to repaint, and I'm very glad I did give myself that chance to choose the best to keep, because the other one has a horrible overspray in the paint application - his ginger hair overlaps almost all the way up his neck to his ears, and he's got a ginger bum-cheek too!

This palomino pinto was probably my least favourite from the promotional photos, but is actually much nicer in hand. They're saying he's a Paint Horse on the packaging, but the mould looks much more like a partbred-TB riding horse type than a stock breed, so I've allocated mine as an Irish Sport Horse.

I've given him the name Firebrand, after one of the military horses leading the Queen's funeral procession, as he arrived that day.

This is the relatively new Morgan mould, and the first attainable release after club and exclusive runs only. A pity it's a plain un-shaded colour, but Morgans do come in black so there's nothing wrong with that.

Although I am pleased to have one in my collection at last, I'm not a huge fan of the mould - it looks very pulled-in to an unnaturally short outline, which might look less odd if you had it tacked up and ridden in a scene photo/class, but does look strange for a horse running loose!

Stormcloud, named not just for his colour, but the fact I grabbed these photos in a brief snippet of sunshine between two very low dark looming clouds!

Again Breyer allocated a breed which doesn't suit the mould, calling this one a Mustang despite it's draft horse legs! I've switched mine to being a US draft cross, these chunky lightly-feathered crossbreds are a fairly common type for leisure riders who want a casual easy-tempered and hardy family horse, much like the traditional cobs of the UK.

Along with the Alborozo, this was the release I was most eager to catch, and I had to be patient as those sold out very fast every time, so I think other people agreed with my taste in horses!

A lovely shade of dun on the gorgeous little 'Django' mould, which was sculpted as a Friesian, but they keep releasing him in non-Friesian colours and never got round to black yet - I think I'm going to have to paint one myself.

I think the colour does look nice on him though, and they do call the model 'Friesian Cross' on the packaging so at least they're being nicely accurate there. I've just added mine to my website as a Friesian x Saddlebred, a cross which can be known as a Georgian Grande, along with the bay in the same mould which I got a while ago. My older one is called Duststorm, so I've called the new dun Firestorm so they match.

I already had the Appaloosa Sporthorse, I managed to catch him earlier in the year and added him as an extra to come along with some blind bags to paint, but here's his picture again just to round this post out with the complete set.

Tales from the Body Box - four more

My painting spree continues without any sign of fizzling out just yet, this time there's four little Stablemates to share.

Last weekend I was just googling horse colours for the usual mixture of inspiration and entertainment, and it struck me that one of the commonest colours for the saddlebred breed is a solid liver chestnut, and I'd never painted one on the little G2 mould I have so many of, so it was off to the body box to get out one of my unpainted blanks and give her a coat of paint.

 I went for a flaxen chestnut cos the contrast of very pale mane would look so good against the dark coat colour, and I'm glad I did cos I really do like the way she turned out. I love the customising part of the model horse hobby for this reason, it's just so satisfying being able to have an idea then go off and create exactly the horse you want to own!

Despite not being as flashy as all her pinto sisters in my herd, a good solid colour makes a nice change and stands out in its own way, I think!

Her original moulded plastic braids I set upon with a scalpel to cut and carve them away, and gave her fine thread braids instead, I don't mind painting in the sculpted ones but I think the 3D effect of plaited thread really adds to the realism in photos, extra detail is always a good thing!

The next custom Stablemate was also a result of random colour googling for amusement one evening, the horse in the photo looked more like a riding pony type and didn't have any white on whatsoever, but I'd been waiting for inspiration for my final Django body and a bay roan pinto just clicked as yes, that'll suit him!

And having completed the paintjob, yes, I think it does - he looks just how I hoped he would! When the usual aim of applying paint with a brush is to get the colour as smooth and blended as possible, roans present a bit of a difficulty, especially the more mottled kind with patchier dark parts - it can be kind of hard to get your head round handling the brush in a way which will deliberatly leave a rougher shading, a suggestion of mixed white and brown hairs. This is why I paint so few of them, but I was determined this time it was the right colour for this horse to be.

I remember a long, long time ago having a discussion with other model horse hobbyists about the rarity of tobiano pintos with a totally solid leg and dark hoof : so many of them automatically come with four socks or stockings, we notice (and maybe try to get a handy reference photo!) when we spot one with a dark leg and black foot. There was even a website at the time, where somebody had collected all the pictures of dark-legged skewbalds and piebalds they could find. So I thought I'd paint one! 

The only thing is, I'm now out of Djangos, and that makes me sad cos I've enjoyed making three patchy little cobs out of them, and would happily do three more!

The next two horses are the really, have I never painted that before? batch! 

I was messing about amusing myself by making one of those horse colour charts you so often see with small drawings or photos of real horses, some pretty basic and intended for riding school and horse-mad-kids' walls, others more in depth and explaining the genetics for particular colour enthusiasts, breeders, artists, and painters. 

I was fitting in pictures of my models for the various basic, variant, and dilute colours, and realised I was actually missing some pretty standard colours in my herd of customs. For a start, I'd never painted a cremello! I thought I had, but when I went to fetch the photo of the one I had in mind to represent the colour on my little chart, he was actually a perlino - oops!

So, another trip to the body box, and I chose a mould that would both be a breed likely to have cremellos, and equally importantly, look good as one!

Another saddlebred! I'd done a dark golden palomino one on this mould, and I've got a much paler palomino my friend painted, but cremello looks easily different enough to warrant picking the mould again, with the cream colour against pink skin, and blue eyes.

Rather than a stripe or blaze which'd reach her nose, I stuck with a forehead star, so there'd be no need to figure out how to handle a face marking on skin which is already pink! 

This one has blue braids, to match her eyes. I know the real ribbon colours are chosen to co-ordinate with the browband and rider's outfit (just like some showing classes here use those ribbon browbands which come with a buttonhole or hair bow so the person matches the pony), but for my mini ones I always go for something different picked out to compliment the horse's colouring.

The next big glaring gap on my colour chart was a red dun. How?! Out of all the duns I've ever painted, not one!
So again, time to pick a relevant breed from the body box - this one was part of a batch of cheap Stablemates which I got on ebay, some perfect enough to fill OF gaps in my collection and others which had clearly been very played with, with a lot of scuffs and breaks, missing ears, and legs sellotaped to backs if they hadn't been lost entirely. A while ago I reattached the leg of this unlucky mare (or perhaps lucky, that she didn't just go in the child's bin!), and she's been waiting for a new colour ever since.

I think the colour suits her, it was a toss-up between a stock horse type and a highland when picking what breed body to go with, but I decided to start with this one and I can always do another for my dun highland conga next time. And look, she got the pink nose I avoided on the cremello!

I can tell which leg's been off, but hopefully the milliput join is strong enough that it won't happen again, and neat enough that it's not immediately obvious she had to be reassembled!

Because there was a danger of red dun looking like a bit of a wishy-washy attempt at a chestnut roan, I made sure to give her full-on dun markings, with a barred dorsal stripe, zebra striping to the legs, and frosting along the mane and at the top of her tail. As with the others, she got photographed before getting named, I haven't managed to think of anything to call any of this batch yet!

I need to have another look at my colour chart in progress to see if there's any more glaring omissions, quite how I painted for over a decade without reaching cremello or red dun is beyond me, so who knows what else got missed!

Tales from the Body Box - the first 2020s

Here's my first batch of mini customs painted in 2020. I had a little lull for a few weeks at the start of the year, then picked up the paintbrushes again and it seems I'm back on a roll!

First up we have a brother for Billy Ruffian, the skewbald I painted last year. I always planned he'd be darker and with more white on, and that's exactly how he turned out - I don't like using reference photos for my little herd of tobiano cobs as it's so much harder to copy the white in place from a picture than to make it up as I go along, I feel like I know the pattern type well enough to invent something realistic.

The other side, showing his half-and-half mane and how the patches are never the same on both sides.

I've named this one The Artful Dodger, just because it goes so well with Billy Ruffian (which was a ship, not a character, but doesn't it sound like a Dickensian street urchin's nickname!), and I really am pleased with him - this mould is so nice to paint with so much detail and a real noble, proud look in his pose and attitude. I imagine he'd be a horse who does a bit of showing in the Coloured Horse and Pony classes and very often comes home with a rosette and some new admirers.

Whereas this looks like a cob which has never seen the show ring in his life! I'd had a little idea about how nice it would be to paint a scruffy, muddy custom, maybe a family pet pony, or a competition horse enjoying the field life in his winter off, and then I happened to rummage through my body box and picked up the cob mould, and it clicked : the kind of horse I see most often being all laid back and happily filthy is a hairy cob. 

While I wanted the horse to look muddy, I didn't want him to come across as neglected and unloved, so I painted him clean first, then added the dirt - he's been groomed, and brought in at night when the weather's worst, and has his mane and tail combed out regularly, he just also really loves a good roll and picks up mud.

As this one was painted in February, I did briefly consider using actual horse-field mud from my boots to get the dirt the right colour, but went with paint in the end because I didn't want it to rub off when it dried out!

And here they are together, to really contrast the difference in stature, character, and cleanliness!

Next after the cobs came a mustang in wild bay...

...just because I realised I'd only ever painted my own horse's colour on portait models of my horse! It was about time I used wild bay on something else, with the distinctive pale legs, lack of full black points, and ginger highlights to the tips of the mane and tail. I didn't like this mustang mould when we first saw it, thinking it looked too disjointed and awkward, but changed my mind as soon as I got one OF release, and now I enjoy painting them too. Not naming them, though, like Muddy Cob this one is still nameless.

Having said how much I dislike copying reference photos for my piebald and skewbald cobs, I then promptly did exactly that for a different breed entirely!

This little shetland pony was inspired by a photo which cropped up in a news article about Storm Ciara! I did think I'd name it Ciara, then realised this is actually a stallion mould so gave that name away to an OF SM mare who arrived the same day as the storm hit here, so it fitted her just as well!

I think what I liked so much about this colour is the way the roaning fades the markings out, so you can barely see the patch on the flank, and the 'join' between the coloured shoulders and the white barrel is sort of softened. I haven't painted many roans, I think this is my first chestnut one, so it was interesting and a bit challenging working out how to make my paint do that without the usual hobby methods of airbrushing or pastels.

Last one for now, my first custom on the hanoverian dressage horse mould. I was going to paint a minimal tobiano when I set out my paints this day, but in typical fashion my plan changed along the way because I liked how he looked as a bay! Some big socks and some dappling stopped the bay being too plain, I really need to get better at resisting doing everything pinto so this was a good decision, actually. I've named this one Five Star.

I may not have painted quite what I originally planned, but I'm so pleased with the result anyway, and I'm getting more confident in my dappling now - I still don't think dapples and brush painted acrylics mix, but I'm way more horrified by the thought of pastels and sealant, or the technology and expense and waste of an airbrush, so I'm sticking firmly in the realm of tiny paint pots and trashing endless brushes!

There's a few more 2020 customs to come, but the most recent aren't photographed yet so they'll make the next post.