A Classic and some Stablemates

A few new original finish additions this week, I have a little parcel of Breyers to introduce. Taking advantage of a 20% off offer from Chestnut Ridge, one of my favourite online sellers, I decided to go for a model I'd been dithering over for a while, some opened blind bag models, and finally (but not pictured here) a few unicorns to de-horn and paint up, because the moulds aren't available as normal horses yet.

Here's the first one, a Morgan in a simple but very effective bright bay colour.

I don't buy many at Classic scale (1:12), because I don't like all the moulds, and they do a lot of overly pearly or generally poorly designed colours in this range - and more often than not it happens that the good colours are on the moulds I'm not a fan of, and the bad colours spoil the sculpts I'd have happily owned otherwise! So when a mould I was keen to buy came out in a colour I liked, he went on my 'maybe' list...and then the special offer price made up my mind!

I like his flicked-back ear like he's paying attention toward the 'photographer' in pictures, it's a nice touch which gives him a little more life and realism.

He seems a pretty good rendition of his breed, with the typical compact, rounded body, deep neck, and handsome-looking head. Bay is also a very common colour for Morgans, and it's nice that they gave him nice bright highlights rather than flat plain brown, or the metallic reddish bay they use so often.

The rest of the parcel were Stablemates, here's the ones I'm keeping as they are - all three from the 2022 Mystery Horse blind bags, though I bought them already opened so I knew which horse I was getting. I'd have bought one of each to complete the set, but the others had sold out before I made my choices, so I just picked the best-painted example of each remaining horse.

This one's the Peruvian Paso mould, but I admit I'm not quite sure if they intend it to be chestnut or red dun! I assumed chestnut, in all the pictures it looks chestnut (the legs are no darker than the body, with is a bit too orange for a dun), but in person I discovered there's a dorsal stripe painted along the back in a darker shade of paint, so it's quite possible they mean it as a chestnut-based dun

A mould which looks good from either side, but I think I prefer the first picture with the gently windblown mane. I've given him the name El Ambajador.

The Loping Quarter Horse mould in chestnut, again a really typical colour for the breed and nicely done, with nice pale shading on the flanks, and just a hint of gold in the paint mix - this is when the metallic effect can work well, it's subtle enough to enhance the paintwork rather than making it look silly and plasticky, and on a horse breed which can have that subtle sheen on the coat in real life.

I've named her Rock And Roll, to match with my other solid chestnut QH mare, Cinnamon Roll. I do like picking themed or word-linking names for the breeds which do that in real life, it's kind of cheesy but quite fun!

The reiner in frame overo pinto, a neat combination really, as in this mould I've already got a solid coloured grulla and a frame overo chestnut, so if you take the base colour of one with the markings of the other, it's this result.

I wasn't too keen on this mould when it was first released, but I think that was just due to a lacklustre paintjob on the first one, as in good eyecatching colours like this it's just fine!

Hopefully at some point I'll be able to get hold of the other three blind bags from this series - there's a spotted dressage horse, the Valegro warmblood (which looks almost the same as the original Valegro portrait release, but perhaps in person they're a different shade of dark bay), and a gorgeous Icelandic which I really, really want!
If nobody else lists opened bags so I can choose my missing horses, I might just start buying a few unopened bags from wherever they're cheapest, as I wouldn't mind duplicates too much - more moulds for repainting is always a good thing!

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!

Breyer Stable Surprise sets

Another little parcel of horses I've had tucked away saved for a while, and opened this weekend - the full set of 2020's four Stable Surprise sets, each contaning one adult and one foal.

These were intended to be sold as a lucky dip sealed mystery box, kind of like the Stablemate blind bags, an idea I didn't mind when they announced it because retailing at about £9 per box, and me being into customising, it wasn't too great an expense if I ended up with duplicates - they were all moulds I like, I could happily repaint the doubles.
But a few weeks ago a seller listed opened boxes on Ebay, and I reasoned that by paying just £1 more per set, I'd know I was getting one of each, and not having to spend out on ordering multiple extra sets til I'd collected all four - especially as I'm minimising my buying while the pandemic continues, to avoid giving the postman too much unneccessary stuff to deal with. Oddly enough, the seller upped their price right after I'd bought and paid for my four, so perhaps they decided they weren't charging quite enough for the privilege of being able to choose your horses!

First up, the Icelandic horse set. Lovely speckly red-chestnut roan stallion, who comes with a solid black foal, which although nice, seems a bit of a mismatch as it's rather big for what is a pony sized breed, and the colour's not related in the slightest!

I've named the stallion Morgunroði, an Icelandic name meaning 'morning red' and referring to a brightly coloured dawn. I rememebered the Icelandic backdrop I've got, this was the inside of the box of my trad scale Elska and is just the right size for photographing SMs of the same breed.

The foal I've named Lina, which is picked from the Icelandic names list but chosen as something which doesn't stand out obviously, because of how she doesn't look very Icelandic - it can work just as a pretty filly name of any nationality!

Next we have the paint mare and foal, a much better pairing of moulds and colours here, I think!

A nice tobiano pattern on the loping quarter horse mould - admittedly I'd have preferred masked socks seeing as they were doing masking for the patches anyway, but I've long given up hope of regular run SMs going back to sharp socks and just had to get used to the annoying blurry ones if I wanted to keep collecting them!

Such a sweet foal - I really do like the smallness of the patches, which sounds a bit strange typed out but you know what I mean, it's always good to see a nice wide variety of markings on pinto models and we don't seem to get as many with this white to colour ratio!

Third set, the new standing warmblood mould with a trotting foal, another pair where the colours don't seem all that linked!

This is my first in this mould, and in general I like it, the head is lovely especially, and I like having another plain basic standing pose when so many moulds are sculpted in action. But I can't help thinking there's something off about the hind leg/pelvis proportion or angle? I just can't put my finger on what or even where and it niggles in a most annoying way that I ought to be able to tell what I don't quite like, but can't!

Lots of the SM trotting foal seem to be aggravatingly tippy, needing blue-tacking on the shelf to avoid initiating unwanted domino effect disasters among their foaly friends, but this is one of the lucky ones who's come out of the mould really steady on her tiny feet!

And the final set, the walking thoroughbred with a scrambling foal. Yet another where the colours aren't remotely related to each other! 

I started off photographing him on the scenery I'd got set up anyway, then had a better idea - not being a normal thoroughbred colour, he either needed to go partbred or have a change of breed entirely, so I switched the backdrop, flipped the base around to the side without the grass, and gave him a little braided collar : one akhal teke! 

Though not perfect, this mould is by far the nearest we have in the SM range to the akhal teke for conformation and light wiry build, here combined with the metallic golden colour the breed is famous for. I've named him Altyn Bürgüt, meaning 'golden eagle' - reading up on Turkmen naming traditions and fashions, the names often refer to the horses' coat colour, or liken them to birds, so this seemed ideal!

Of course that meant his little bright bay filly needed a matching picture, and she even got to borrow the collar (because I forgot to make her one of her own - I'll do that later!). I've named her Damouchka, because unlike the Icelandic foal not looking Icelandic, this one's long and leggy enough to work alone as an akhal teke baby.

(P. S. This is my first blog post compiled on the new Blogger format, forgive me if anything's a bit wonky or weird; some features are clearly redesigned to work better on phones and just don't on laptops!)