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.

Tales from the Body Box - experiments with Flow Aid have varying results.

Earlier this year, I'd been talking about painting techniques with a hobby friend of mine, Chloe at Henhafod. Check out the Henhafod Instagram or Facebook pages for some lovely custom work! Both of us are handpaint-with-a-brush painters, rather than the airbrushing and pastelling favoured by most model horse artists, and the subject of Liquitex Flow Aid came up, a clear thin liquid which looks just like water but works in a much more technical way to push pigment molecules apart in water-based paints. It's supposed to make painting easier, and Chloe swears by it while I'd never even heard of it, so we agreed to seal some up in a little pot and pop it in with a parcel of bodies I'd bought.

So next time I'd got a colour idea and a body it'd suit, I decided to try the Flow Aid, and...

...it was almost a disaster.

This stuff changed everything I thought I knew about paint, it was like having a first go at customising all over again, I really struggled.
It seemed to make smooth blending much, much harder rather than easier, cos I'm used to using a tiny amount of reasonably thick paint, undiluted, layered on thinly to build colour by smudging it firmly to spread it around, and letting the colour underneath show through. This flowing medium just made the paint swim around wet, leaving marks and blobs and not sticking where I wanted it, no matter how tiny a touch of the stuff I added in.
For the dappling, it was fine; in fact, it did much the same as my trusted old favourite - and vaguely disgusting - method of licking the brush before touching the paint, so it goes on with a little bit of sticky spit and can be teased into blurry dapples before it dries too much to move. Told you I'm disgusting. 
But this high-tech additive definitely didn't do my painting any favours for the base colour and shading- I had a huge amount of damage limitation to do by trying to cover up and smooth the worst of it, then add more normal, dry shading to hide the bad parts by turning him into a sooty buckskin instead.

I've named him El Cometa after the comet which was visible in the skies at the time I painted him. Well, some of him. Because the worst part is, I've only painted one side!

I found the paint with Flow Aid in just didn't want to dry, so I couldn't turn the horse over to paint the other side without it sticking to me and smearing the paint layers off faster than I could put them on! So he's strictly a photo show only model, cos the non-display side is just plain beigey tan all over - I know I can't just fill it in another day, there's no way I'd ever manage to make the same rescued mess of a paintjob twice, hahah! 

So, having discovered that it was a big hinderance to producing genuinely nice and non panicky paintwork, I made up my mind that I'd keep it just for dappling on my next attempt, which came along pretty quickly...

The August page of my horsey calendar had a beautiful dark dappled mulberry grey Iberian horse, and as soon as I'd turned that page, I'd had the idea of painting him. And in my most recent batch of bodies was a suitable mould, the new(ish) Mirado, which I'd given a little chunk of extra mane when I had some leftover mixed Milliput from fixing a dent in a different body! I just wasn't keen on the gap between the mane and the back on my OF one, so filling it in before painting seemed like the best way to go for my first custom on the mould.

Here he is, Harecroft Fénix (the Portuguese for 'phoenix', the mythical fire bird). 

All his base colour was done by hand brushing undiluted paint, then the dapples were added with Flow Aid in the mix, with a final layer of paler grey dry-brush shading over the top to lighten and soften the colour a little bit. The dapples do look ok, perhaps a little on the blobby, blotchy side, but then that's always an issue with painting by brush, and something I've always struggled with - I wouldn't say they look any worse than usual, though, which I'll call a resounding success after the terrible first attempt!

I do really like how he turned out, not just that he's a satisfyingly accurate match for the calendar horse, but that his colour looks perfectly fine from a distance - close up photos always seem to catch and accentuate every little flaw and weakness in the paintwork, which just don't look at all obvious when looking at them in-hand or on the shelf. 

The mould also seems a little deeper through the girth thanks to the addition of the extra mane, I think I'll be doing the same again if I end up with any more of these to customise in future.

And look, here's proof that I actually did paint this one just as well on the other side! 

It's an interesting mould for pictures, because both sides can be posed toward the camera without one shot looking awkward or facing away - I prefer the off side on this particular model because of the extra mane laying down behind that shoulder, but it's still a decent photograph from this 'wrong' side, too.

That's it for now, for my next custom I left the lid firmly shut on the Flow Aid and stuck to paint as I know and love it, with just a little lick of the brush if I needed it to flow! 

But don't let me put you off.

As I said, my friend absolutely loves this stuff and finds painting infinitely more difficult without it, so there's two sides to every experiment in such a creative and individual hobby as this : what I find to fall generally on the side of failure, and reach 'phew it's no worse than normal' at best, may well be your next big success!

Tales from the Body Box - seeing spots

Three little appaloosa patterned horses to introduce today, starting with one who was actually painted last year but I somehow forgot to ever get a picture of, so he's been delayed a bit!

He came about as a result of me thinking 'I have loads of this rearing mould, what could I do with it?', and also musing that I've hardly ever painted leopard appaloosas, most of mine have been blanket spotted, or roany semi-leopard. So it was a logical combination to put the appy paintjob on one of the rearing arabian bodies! He's buckskin, under his spotting pattern, so the spots on his body are a different colour to those on his legs.

Another colourful appaloosa, this time a flaxen chestnut with four long socks and a blaze, with my usual roany blanket type pattern. I'm getting much better at blonde manes and tails since I found the right creamy beige colour pre-mixed! 

I also found a really good method for getting the distinct sclera (eyewhites) that come with the appaloosa coat pattern : some very diluted pink paint touched against the eyeball while the horse is held on his side - the fluidity of the paint draws it right down into the crease between eye and lid all the way around, then once it's dried you can paint in the eye as usual.

And the final spotted horse is something of an oddity, being not quite an art portrait recreated with heavy resculpting of an existing mould (as I did for Whistlejacket and Cerbero), but inspired by an oil painting, anyway.

This is Landscape with Two Horses, by Nicolaes Berchem, dated to the second half of the 17th century. It's very often used as a perfect example of historic spotted Iberian horses, whether in the context of them existing in Europe (and oh, what a shame it is that they no longer do!) or as the source for the spotted genes which went to the Americas and carried on into new breeds developed there. Though there's several other good examples of spotted horses in artworks from that era, I've always had a fondness for the main horse in this painting, both for his lovely soft brown colour and detailed spots, and the way he turns just enough to look us in the eye, ears pricked and curious - he just leaps out at you as a real little character.
With no standing Iberian-type SM mould to work from, and being increasingly averse to major resculpting projects, I decided the only way I'd ever make a model version of him was to pick from what I'd got and go with it while I was in an enthusiastically painty mood, and so at last he's happened!

I'm extremely happy with how he turned out, roany smudgey mottled colours I find very stressful as there's so much opportunity to just make a blotchy mess when brush-painting by hand, it can go all wrong in one application of ever so slightly too much paint, or the wrong consistancy cos the air's drying it too much or you've tried to counteract that with a little too much licking of the brush...it's kind of scary, but super satisfying to relax when it's over. Maybe being glad it's over isn't really the same as enjoying painting and I'm in the wrong hobby, hahah.

Another angle, as well as attempting to get the spots in the same places I tried my hardest to get the shading just the same, with some more blended and some more speckled, and the deepest colour on the face, the front of the shoulders, and the legs.

I'm not entirely sure what to make of this colour, in technical specifics - my best guess is that his base colour is seal or sooty bay, or possibly a dark bay dun, with the leopard complex lightening and mottling it up, and also causing the pale mane and tail through roaning rather than any kind of additional silver gene on top. 

But the stand-out contradiction to this is that his spots are black, not bay/dun. Usually, an appaloosa's spots are whatever his solid base colour would've been. Sometimes they do look much darker, so you can see spots on the 'bay' front half of a bay blanket appaloosa, for example, but that's cos the appaloosa lightens the body colour with what can be subtle roaning of the coat even outside of the distinct white blanket area, and the true base colour is always what you're seeing in the spots. So really, this horse's spots should be painted in shades of brown, but to be true to the original oil painting, I stuck with black. 

This side is a mirror image of the other! Usually, if using a single photo reference for inspiration, I'd just make something up for the side I couldn't see, but this time it's complicated - I really wanted the clear side of his neck and shoulder to carry an exact copy of the pattern - his mane covers so much of this side I'd have lost the chance to recreate all that roaning and some of the spots, but of course the painting is of the left side, so if I invented some similar-but-different pattern, he wouldn't actually match the portrait when facing the same way. So he gets to be the only appaloosa in my herd who has the same spots on both sides!

The dubious joys of the Mystery Horse Surprise

When Breyer first announced that they'd be releasing blind bags with Stablemates inside, I described it as 'either brilliant fun, or really frustrating' - and wasn't sure which it'd end up! 

I'd already been introduced to the concept of blind bags for kids as this incredible, unbelievably popular craze, because my friends' child went through a phase of having to be practically dragged away from watching endless youtube videos of other children opening them. So it was probably only a matter of time before the fad reached out into the model horse world, where the majority of buyers especially for the smaller scales, are children wanting toys to play with, rather than hobbyist adults aiming to collect and display or show. 

So, seeing this from my thirty-something, long-term hobbyist's point of view, surely the idea of sealing them in bags and having to buy without knowing what you get is just annoying? A total waste of time? Horribly expensive if you spend ages chasing down the full set?
Well, no. I have to admit, I found it rather exciting to order a parcel of models and have the curious wait to find out what was in it! It helped a great deal that I liked all the models, so I really didn't mind which came out of the bags to start with, and it helped even more when I ended up with only one duplicate (and that had a paint flaw which meant I didn't mind repainting it!). Opening the bags gave me a little bit of a thrill each time, anticipation & nervousness as the packet peeled apart, and then happiness & relief that I'd got one I wanted not one I'd had before. Very much like the young target audience that Breyer would've had in mind!

All in all, I had good luck with series 1 of the Mystery Horse Surprise, and only had to buy one as an opened bag on ebay to complete the set.

This year, Breyer released a new set of blind bags, with a new batch of models inside, including the much sought-after Mini Alborozo mould. A couple of months ago they came into stock in the UK, and I found that I could order five for the same postage price as one - so of course that was what I did, and a few days later, a little box of mystery horses appeared on my doorstep.

And guess what - I was lucky again! Five bags, and five different models inside, hurrah!

This is one of the moulds I conga, so I was very glad to get him right away, and know there'd be no long struggle to find him by buying multiple bags! I like his simple pattern with a lot of white, I think he's my favourite of this year's batch. I've given him the name Harecoft Mister Trickster, because my solid chestnut one is called Mister Twister so it seemed a good opportunity for a matching name.

The good old G2 Andalusian mould, in a very different colour than we've seen him before, a red dun with a hint of metallic shine in the paint but not so much as to be overly irritating! I've named this one Harecroft Caracalla.

This is a really beautiful bay, the fiery red colour shades so nicely on the lighter parts, very much like the G3 warmblood which is one of my favourite OF SMs. I've called her Harecroft Sapphire Jubilee because I somehow ended up with a small sapphire theme in this mould conga!

Making mini versions of larger moulds seems to be something of a spreading trend these days, it started out in artist resins but Breyer have adopted the idea too, and I'm pleased because it means we're getting more and more stablemates! 

This appaloosa pattern is an odd choice (I'd have gone with a tobiano, or a solid bay/black/grey) and it's always tricky picking a breed assignment for a spotted heavy horse, but I like him well enough, and it's handy that the blind bags have this mould in as there's a chance I'll get some duplicates to paint in proper cob or heavy horse colours. I've named him Harecroft Spot of Trouble cos he does look like he might be a bit of a handful to handle!

And this one's probably my second favourite, the liver chestnut is really deeply shaded and a refreshing, striking change from the usual chestnut paint, and the white stripe is a nice sharp highlight. I've called this one Harecroft Willowcreek, after my amazing little liver chestnut AA welsh cob Willowood, who's done so well for himself in the photo showring.

This was a fair few weeks ago, but as I had no blog back then, I hadn't introduced them anywhere, and I've just ordered another parcel of series 2 blind bags, so we'll see what comes along next!