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 - lots and lots of spots

What do you do with an aging pot of white paint which is getting rather too solid for easy application or mixing? Smudgey appaloosa time!

This is my first go at a roany white-over-dark appaloosa pattern; usually I add the white markings sharp with brushstroke-detailed edges if I'm working over the top of a colour, or do roaned ones by adding the colour paint over a white base coat. 

It wasn't quite as successful as I'd hoped, possibly because I picked a fairly light and neutral base colour in the first place, so the roaning has got a bit lost and faint - don't get me wrong, I like how she turned out, she just doesn't quite match what I had in mind, and it's always frustrating when a paintjob goes off at a tangent - I feel I should be able to just think of a colour and paint it, not paint something different accidentally!

I have several OF models in this loping QH mould already, and still don't know which is their 'good side'!

Look what happened next! My body box contains a little selection of very scuffed foal moulds which came from ebay last year, and every now and then I paint a mare who seems to need a foal at foot, so I choose one which suits her and paint up a matching colour baby.

It's always fun doing paintwork at half the size, foals are a bit like changing scale to something mid way between SM and Micro size. I seem to have missed roaning the inside of that hind leg though, oops!

Having created a pretty but not-quite-what-I-wanted-to-happen appaloosa mare, the only logical next custom was the try again for the look I'd intended in the first place, so it was back to the body box to rummage for another stock-breed type mould...

And that's much better! I used a lot more black and red to make an almost plum-colour base before the dry-brushed roaning went on top, and this makes it stand out a lot more. I think the two socks set her off perfectly, too - just as some paintjobs are disappointing by going off target, others are immediately satisfying cos they turn out so right!

And co-incidentally this is another mare mould, which was an ideal excuse to do another matching appaloosa foal!

The soft roaned pattern looks so nice on this little one - even though I only ended up trying smudgey blankets and roaning because my paint was too solid for applying them normally, I'm really glad this has pushed me to have a go with a new technique.

While I was thoroughly in spotted mode, I really wanted to tackle a custom I've had in mind for ages, based on a glorious reference picture of a very hairy leopard pattern pony (here - it took me forever to find this photo on a proper credited link which wasn't on flipping Pinterest!)

I've gone with quite a deliberately brushstrokey hairy-coated look, and really do love how it worked out, I'm thrilled to bits with him. Again, like the smudgey appaloosas, this layering of brush strokes is very different to how I usually add colour and shading, and it took some getting used to but was worth the effort, I think.

Although the Breyer Shetland mould isn't quite the same type of pony as the photo, it's the closest I've got, and handily a couple of them were base-coated with a plain pure white undercoat, which helped skirt round my white-paint's-almost-solid problem, too!

What a lot of attitude - that's a pony who knows he'll be the centre of attention anywhere he goes, and thinks he deserves every bit of it!

Tales from the Body Box - the day of the Akhal-Teke

One of my favourite more unusual horse breeds is the ancient and striking Akhal-Teke, there's just something about their beauty and strangeness which is fascinating. Last year, I treated myself to a copy of Golden Horse : The legendary Akhal-Teke, a huge, beautiful thing to be read slowly and savoured, as much a work of art as it is of information, full of stunning photography by Artur Baboev - chances are, if you've spent any time looking at pictures of this glorious breed online, you'll have seen a lot of his.

Inspired by the book, I really wanted to make myself a custom Breyer Akhal-Teke. I've got models of them already (two resins and a Collecta), but in my Breyer herd there was only the OF metallic dun on the Lonesome Glory mould (I won him in a raffle!), and I really wanted to make a model look more Teke than just a thoroughbred mould in a metallic paintjob!

First things first, I'll admit it : I'm not the biggest fan of resculpting. I usually regard it as something to tackle if it absolutely unavoidably has to be done, like a damaged body which needs repairing, or a portrait custom which needs a different mane to look like the real horse. All other customs just get painted as they come, with just some craft-knife carving now and then to sort out seams and occasionally refine legs or jawlines. But it was clear that this time, I was going to have to get out the knife and milliput if I wanted the model to look right.
Back then I didn't have the new walking TB which would probably have been a far better starting point, but this project began last summer and moulds which've come my way since just weren't in the body box at the time - the only one I had with potential was the dressage/hanoverian, so that's what I picked out. 
Now, I did intend to take photos as I went along, and I'm certain I took at least two stages, but seem to have lost them entirely since then, so you don't get step-by-step pictures, and I'll just list what happened to the poor horse...

Plaited mane and forelock removed. 

Neck and topline reshaped.

Throat cut almost all the way through to lift the chin without detaching the head.

Ears filed pointier.

Shoulders and hips filed to remove warmbloody bulk and roundness.

Belly filed to 'lose weight' along flanks and underneath.

Legs carved thinner, especially thighs and cannons.

Raised foreleg sliced and bent at knee and fetlock.

Tail filed away so it hangs to a point, not a thick tail cut straight across.

Ribs scored in with the edge of the file.

Milliput added along spine to sharpen & straighten back and add the prominent withers & hip.

New throat filled in.

Eyelid and profile slightly resculpted.

Horse set aside because intended colour is difficult and painter is better at delaying than getting on with things.

Over a year goes by.

Dust gathers.

Last week, I finally got myself into the right frame of mind (you know, the paint this while you're still painting at all cos once you stop it'll be years again one), and it was time to tackle the Teke...

He's done! And, amazingly, he looks more or less exactly how I hoped. Perhaps my mental image was a little bit darker, more layers of the sooty shading, but I reached this stage and somehow he just looked like the colour he was meant to be, so I stopped the shading layers before I ruined him! 

I've named him Mele Bürgüt, 'brown eagle' in the Turkmen language, as many Akhal-Tekes are given names which reference their colour or liken their speed and character to birds.

I had a tube of gold paint (just a pound shop metallic acrylic, bought years ago for a Household Cavalry tack project), which I started off mixing into the tan and sandy shades, but found two problems with this - a) the paint took forever to dry and felt sticky, and b) you couldn't see the gold. I think the normal paint was coating the fine metallic specks so much it was lost in the mixture, and adding more just made it all the stickier. So I abandoned the gold paint, concentrated on getting the colour I wanted, then once he was done, dry-brushed the gold lightly over the top to give the metallic sheen I'd been trying for. It's there, but it's subtle, and looks more noticeable in person than in static photos.

Here he is with some dramatic low-sun lighting, in tribute to the Baboev photography which inspired his creation!

And then I washed my brushes, braided him a little colourful collar, and sat him on the mantelpiece, enjoying that moment of satisfaction and relief that the paintjob had worked. At long last, a custom project which'd been sitting half-finished for over a year, all done.
Now what?
Start another straight away, of course, one Akhal-Teke wasn't enough!

There in the body box was a mare mould who had the basics of Teke conformation - deep chest, high withers, long flat back, slim legs, fine long ears, and a flighty, spirited pose to suit the character just fine. Sure, she had way too much mane and tail, but that was nothing a sharp knife and a metal file couldn't fix...

Meet Roksolana, palomino mare on the Magnolia mould. Her colour's based on the gorgeous palomino on the Golden Horse book's front cover, a slightly greyed-down shade rather than the famously 'new penny' kind, again with the metallic paint gently smudged on as a thinly applied dry top coat (actually, I took the worst of each brush-dab off on the back of my hand before it touched the horse, so I ended up almost as shiny as she did!)

 

Another traditonal neck collar, and I think she looks just typey enough to say 'akhal-teke' at a glance, even without having had all the resculpting work the stallion did. Have a look for the little black spot inside her stripe - I didn't mean to put one there, but a slip of the hand while detailing her nostrils and she gained a marking which looks like it was designed on purpose!

And the painting didn't end there, either - having made myself a pair, it only seemed right to give them a matching foal, and there was a good mould for that in my body box, too...

 

I had a think about what colour babies would be possible for a buckskin and palomino bred together, and rather than have to paint the same as either adult, I went with a double cream dilution and made her a cremello. Akhal-Teke foals are traditionally named with the same letter as a parent - colts to match the stallion, fillies the mare, so this little one is Roxana to go with her mum.

Here they are together, and below, the whole family of three. That's enough painting for one day, I'm happy now!

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!