Tales from the Body Box - Stablemates and Mini Whinnies

Another catch-up post to squeeze these into the correct year, even though they were completed back in autumn customs done over the last couple of months, I've been better at painting than getting them posted on the blog!

I haven't ended up with many of this Peruvian Paso mould to repaint in the years since it was released, at least not til the 'Handful of Horses' blind bag series came along, and now suddenly I had two at once! So I consulted my horse books and Google, and found that chestnut is one of the commonest colours by far, so that's what I painted. I decided to go for a very dark shade for a change, cos I seem to have done a lot of light chestnuts when making my racehorse portraits, so with this one not having to look like any one real horse, I was free to choose a completely different end of the spectrum chestnuts can be!

I've named him Cascabel, picked from a real Paso's pedigree to make sure it's the sort of name a horse really would be given in Peru!

This one was a bit more experimental, I originally set out to make him a custom of one of the Balearic breeds, either Mallorcan or Minorcan, which are typically black, leaner-limbed than the mainland Iberian breeds, with a narrow roman nose, and much shorter mane and tail. his mould seemed the best match for the physique, and the mane was easy to trim' down by carving the end into the curve of the neck. Because I'd already painted an almost-black Andalusian on the same mould, I decided the best way to make him look more different was to add the ribbon decorations which are added to the horses' manes for showing, parades, and special occasions.
It was only afterwards that I realised the Balearic breeds seem to have slightly different turnout traditions, and their decorative ribbons are attached as separate rosettes, not one long running line of loops. So I've accidentally done a custom of one breed, but dressed it as another!

I'm undecided on the best course of action here, just accept that he's an Andalusian after all, or peel off the wrong ribbon and dress him with a different set of ribbons arranged the correct way so he can stay Mallorcan/Minorcan. Either way, his name would be in Spanish, so I called him Fiesta and will figure out what to do about his breed later on!

This one's a much easier breed allocation - I set out to paint a palomino Welsh Cob cos I realised I didn't have one, and now I have a palomino Welsh Cob, so that's just what I wanted to happen! I've named him Gold Star.

I think the G3 Friesian makes quite a good cob, even though in real life Friesians are much leggier-looking and longer in the back than a Welsh Cob, the model here is a little chunky in the leg (this sculptor has a tendency to give all her Stablemates thicker solid limbs, even on light breeds), so it's perfect for having a change of nationality! And the flying Friesian trot also works well as the notoriously fast and floaty Welsh trot (hard to keep up with on foot, but a delight to ride!)

Another model which had me reaching for my breed books, I've already painted two of this mould as grey Orlov Trotters, but wondered if any of the other trotter breeds from around the world would make a nice alternative so I didn't just keep doing the exact same thing with them, only varying the amount of dappling! I settled on the French Trotter as both a good match, and also an interesting breed to add to my collection. Chestnut is a common colour for them, and the breed example in one of my books was this gorgeous bright shade with a metallic sheen, so I decided to copy him.

I picked the name Gericault, purely cos I heard someone say it on an art documentary I had on in the background while painting, and it seemed as good a name as any!

Down a scale now, for a Mini Whinnies model, the smallest size I paint at the moment. I got a mixed lot of bodies (someone selling their duplicates from blind bags, there were multiples of many of them!), and this one I thought would make a nice Akhal-Teke, a little bit too much mane but the rest of him is fine!

I used a lot more of the gold paint than usual, brushed on in light layers over the top of a matte basecoat til he looked about as shiny as I thought I could take him without starting to look decorator-ish! I named him Guneshli, which I need to check the meaning of cos I can't remember what it means now!

My first custom on this mould, I've been wanting to get one for years but somehow they never came my way in body batches til now. And I'd already had the idea for what I'd paint when I did get one - a Sorraia.

Trying to get the light to show his colour better, my first custom of this breed (on the CollectA Lusitano mould) was a very dark greyish grulla so I wanted to go the opposite way this time and paint a lighter one with a much browner tone to it. I've named him Altamira, and I'm pleased with how he turned out.

And the final one for now, I found one of these little Highlands I didn't know I had left, and rather than paint her as yet another of her own breed (I have a LOT of Highlands from that time I set out to paint every possible shade and genetic combination of dun in the breed, hahah!), I did a bit of researching what other small chunky ponies there were with a bit of heel feather and a lot of mane. And the main candidate seemed to be the Kerry Bog Pony, so that's what she became!

They can be a lot of colours but because I was avoiding any of the ones I'd painted on this mould already, she ended up being the most common colour of all, bay! But I don't mind, cos I do love painting bays, and they can vary so much from gingery with a black trim, to deep mahogany brown with darker shading, so they never get boring. Again, no name yet, apart from the unflattering nickname of Bog which might end up sticking if I don't hurry up and choose her something nicer!

Another of the Mini Whinnies body batch I got cheap, they're such tiny little models but I don't find them too small to paint, just have to find a small enough brush! These more recent moulds are a lot more precise and realistic than the early ones, most of the newer horses are shrunken-down versions of larger models, so their proportions and poses tend to be a lot better, even if some of the detail is lost in the miniaturisation process. And I even managed to give this one tiny thread braids, just like I do for my Stablemate scale Saddlebreds.

My first repaint on this relatively recent Cantering Morgan mould, and I chose a colour I've had saved in my photo reference folder for a very long time, this beautiful shade of sooty palomino! I find this colour very hard to mix paints to match, and to blend the shading, but he turned out very similar to how I wanted, so I count that as a success!

It's always fun to work with a new sculpt, especially one which I'm not all that familiar with as it's mostly been used for club exclusives and rare special runs - aside from this custom, I only own the black regular run.

Another tiny little custom, but of a much bigger breed! I'm not sure if this Mini Whinnies mould has ever been issued with an official breed designation, but I'd already painted a skewbald cob so I decided to go for a solid coloured Clydesdale for more contrast than just painting a piebald one, hah.

And finally, the Standing Stock Horse mould, repainted as a very loud red bay appaloosa. Although, I find this mould doesn't make a very good true-type Appaloosa, so I've been allocating mine the Colorado Ranger breed instead.

Even though the finish on my spotted paintjobs isn't ever quite as neat as I'd like, at least not at this small scale, it's still fun to paint one now and then! I've named her Red Stars.

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 - a busy weekend

Last week, I bought a nice little parcel of bodies from a hobby friend, and included were a couple of moulds I'd been hoping to get hold of. I always have a little mental list of ideas to paint, but til now I hadn't got the breeds I wanted for the colours I had in mind.

First up, Alskær Fra Harecroft, an Icelandic in a gorgeous shade of dun inspired by this reference photo. The horse is described as a bay dun on Pinterest and other image-collecting pages, and annoyingly I can't find an original source, but I'm wondering if perhaps he isn't just an unusually light bay dun, but rather a dunskin - buckskin plus dun.

This photo was taken in the shade with the camera's cloudy day white balance setting, in reality he's somewhere between the two pictures. His name translates as 'most bright' cos he's just about as bright as a dun colour can be, and my prefix becomes a suffix in the Icelandic naming tradition.

A high angle to show his dorsal stripe, the most nerve-wracking bit of any dun paintjob!

Making use of my free bit of Icelandic scenery from the Breyer Elska box - it's such a shame they've abandoned these attractive and useful photo backdrops in the boxes' bland new redesign. 

I do love this Icelandic mould, and still have plenty more colour ideas I'd really like to paint, whenever more of them come my way.

This one was the result of a bit of recent reminiscing with another Breyer collector online - she loves her Llanarth True Briton model just like I love my Danaway Tango on the same mould, and remembering his wild patchy roany sabino paintjob inspired me to finally get round to the sabino SM welshie I'd had in mind for years. 

I didn't base him on Danaway Tango himself, just used made up markings over a similar bright chestnut shade. I find messy smudgey roaning on bays tends to get worryingly pinkish, so the more gingery tones in this colour prevented that from happening.

He isn't quite how I intended, the white softer than my original plan to flick it on as speckles with a toothbrush - in the end I chickened out of such a haphazard method in case I lost control and got more paint where I didn't want roaning than where I did. I've named him Harecroft Baledwr, the welsh for balladeer, as in writer and singer of folk songs.

Finally, not just another clipped bay thoroughbred, which I know I've painted several times already, but one more for my line-up of famous racehorses in miniature - Faugheen!

One of those horses who made a big initial impression and went on to live up to the hype, Faugheen always stood out as full of character and enjoyment of the game, and in return I enjoyed following his career over hurdles and then over fences. 

He retired safe and sound at the beginning of the month, and the very same day I picked out one of the G2 TB models I've been saving specially for portraits. Something about it just didn't seem quite right for him, and when I was looking for reference photos to properly copy his distinctively shaped stripe, I realised what it was - he seems to have his ears pricked so often, I just had to resculpt his mini self to match!

The new ears really change the expression of the mould, while it didn't look unhappy before, just concentrating and running hard, with them pricked up it's got that look of a horse who thoroughly enjoys his job!

Tales from the Body Box - December roundup!

I find it rather satisfying organising my models properly, whether that's the horses on the shelves, their photos in computer folders split by brand and finish, or posts here on the blog where each one's tagged with maker, scale, finish, and a selection of other labels to make it easy to sort them.
So I'm trying to make sure everything I painted in 2020 is posted neatly inside 2020, with no overlapping into the new year - for that reason this post is a gathered together collection of three customs with no breed, colour, or career in common; just the last few models I painted this year!

First we have Harecroft Bluebell, painted as a suffolk mare. This is my first ever custom on the G1 draft mould; they used to be quite hard to get hold of on the second hand market, with no regular run since 1997, but with the Best of British SM set including one a couple of years ago, there's now a few recent bodies kicking around, and I was lucky enough to get mine in a mixed lot on Ebay.

 

I find the G1 moulds quite nice to paint, just because they're something different - I came into model collecting properly in the early 2000s, when G2 had taken over, so these were never familiar to me in the same way as to people who started their Stablemate collection with the first generation of moulds.

The sculpting style might not be so sharp as the later models in the range, but they're good and smooth with solid conformation and typey breeds, so it's a shame we don't see more releases, really!

I decided to do a suffolk just because I have so few of them in my collection, and their big broad barrelly shape suits this chunky mould so nicely. I have considered 'dressing' Bluebell like I did for my first couple of Britains shires, but Suffolks are braided with raffia not coloured wool, and I've yet to figure out what would make a good 36th-scale stand-in for raffia!

While I was painting my mini tributes to Quevega and Annie Power, it struck me that I'd never done a single G2 TB custom which wasn't a racehorse portrait! Really, in all the years I've been painting, I've saved all those bodies to become famous horses, but now we have the Walking TB mould as well, I've got two different racehorsey moulds to choose from, and that means I can use up some of those G2s for non-portrait ideas!

My first idea was one which'd been simmering away in my mind for ages, a young dark grey who was just starting to go paler round the face; often there's quite a contrast between the head and the rest of the horse, especially in flat racing where they start young.

She ended up a little lighter in the body colour than I'd intended, but because she was looking so pretty anyway, I didn't try to correct it with more layers of dark shading - often a paintjob goes a little off target and I just let it for fear of ruining what looked ok even if it wasn't exactly how I pictured it!

I've named her Isle of Avalon.

And now, my final custom of 2020.

A few days ago I'd been mulling over ideas and colours I thought would look good on certain moulds, and the thought which settled as one of those 'I must paint that one day' ideas, was a liver chestnut skewbald using the Friesian mould as a cob. I had the specific shade of dark liver chestnut in mind, faded blonde highlights to the mane and near-black tipped tail, and a big flash of white over the shoulders, tapering out with pointed ends to four socks and a blaze.

But I didn't have a G3 Friesian in the body box, so the idea was doomed to be put aside for months or more. Or so I thought! One of my model horsey friends always sends me a little christmas parcel, and the morning after my colour plotting I unwrapped it to discover one of the things inside was a Friesian!

Highly amused at this co-incidence, I set to work getting him painted up straight away, and here he is.

I love how he turned out, he's almost identical to my mental-image 'design' (aside from gaining an unintended extra white patch on his neck thanks to a slip of the brush which had to be improvised over to look deliberate because it wouldn't wipe off!), and it's just so funny that I randomly got sent the exact mould I'd wished I had just a few hours beforehand!

My first custom this year, way back in the spring (and doesn't that feel like a very, very long time ago!), was a skewbald cob which I named Artful Dodger, so when my final custom of the year turned out to be another skewbald cob, I thought it fitting to call this one Oliver Twist, so they match.

Tales from the Body Box - four skewbalds and a grey

Today's batch contains a bit of a catch-up from all October so far, as the weather's not been co-operative in getting the pictures taken.

First up, a chestnut overo on my favourite of all the Stablemate foal moulds. Not only is it a fun playful pose, with a sweet face, but it's the most steady on those little feet, less likely to topple over and damage paintwork or set off a domino trail along the shelf!

I've named her Harecroft Red Horizon, here's a couple more shots of this very photogenic little one!

Next to be completed, the final G2 paso fino in my body box - this mould I never really clicked with, knowing very little about the breed (not to be confused with the peruvian paso), til I read up more about their history and watched some Youtube videos of their unusual running-walk gait. Do look them up if you've only ever seen still photos, it's quite something to see in action!
Despite not being one of my favourite moulds, in certain colours I do really like it, and luckily I struck on a colour I'm very happy with, here. She looks a very soft and gentle mare, so I've named her Pachamama, after the mother earth goddess of the Inca.

Something much much more familiar, next, my own local 'native breed' in the form of a coloured traditional cob. Ever since I got this body (as a free gift with an order from the much-missed Utterly Horses online model shop), I've had a skewbald cob in mind, and at long last I fished him from the body box and got painting! He turned out pretty much exactly as I'd planned, with a typical tobiano pattern and fluffily feathered edges to contrast with the sharper style I usually use.

I didn't have to wait long to think of a fitting name for him, while I was still finishing off his paintwork I happened to hear mention of the pirate Calico Jack on tv, and it seemed perfect - a calico cat is one with a tri-coloured patchy coat, and another of my recent cob customs was named Pirate, so this suits him very nicely indeed.

Here's another colour idea which has been hovering in the back of my mind for years rather than days before actually happening on a model! She's inspired by a couple of grey skewbalds I've seen out on the cross country course, horses which would have started out dark with white markings, but the greying process has taken away their colour little by little, til they're left as a pale or fleabitten grey with markings almost lost as white on white at first glance. When they're clipped, the grey stands out a little more, as the contrast of black skin or pink can be seen clearly - especially after they've been through the water jump! I've named this one Bluebird, and with those chunky legs and dinnerplate feet, I imagine her as a partbred heavy horse with the feather clipped off!

And here's the last of this batch, Valparaiso, one more mini Alborozo for my herd. He was from the unicorn suncatchers paint set, but once the horn's carved away and the clear plastic is painted over, you'd never know - it's quite a handy and good-value way to get hold of four nice newish moulds to customise!

I'd been trying to pin down colours for my last two Alborozos for a while - being a harder-to-get mould, it does take careful consideration to make the most of the bodies which come my way. Having done a bay, a dark rose grey, and a mulberry grey, a pure pale white-grey seemed tempting next, or perhaps fleabites or some faint dappling for a little more interest than a plain one? Then I turned the page of my calendar to see a fleabitten, faintly dappley grey with a blonde-and-grey mixed mane, and ah, there was my colour.

It was only after finishing him that I realised how much he reminded me of this grey version of Napoleon Crossing the Alps - mine has shorter socks but the likeness is there, especially in this sidelong lighting!