Tales from the Body Box - WIA and CollectA

Some ideas for painting models roll around my mind for a lot longer than others. Back when I painted my first two WIA Gustav customs, I mentioned that I'd managed to get my hands on a couple more duplicate copies to plot new colours for. This week, about a year later, I got round to making one of these plans happen!

Meet Harecroft Rasmus, my first ever Jutland custom! 

I've always thought this mould would look good in a flaxen chestnut, and had a couple of nice reference photos picked out from my horse breed books. Although my dash of black in the mix - just to dull the paint less gingery - sent him far darker than I intended, I kind of liked the way his colour was going, and carried on with the more liver chestnut tones. Chestnut Jutlands vary in shade, some very sandy and pale, others even darker than mine turned out, so the accidental wandering off plan was fine, really!

 

Gustav never was released as any one particular breed, but a lot of the continental European drafters share a similar type, and he makes a perfectly respectable example of the Jutland breed : a compact broad build, deep chest and neck, convex profile, short stocky legs, and medium feathering - more there than the lightly tufted heels of, say, a Percheron or Belgian, but nowhere near the length of hair for a Shire or Clydesdale.

Of course, this excellent sculpt by Brigitte Eberl has so much personality and presence, you get the impression of a noble stallion in his proud pose, but with a calm attitude and gentle eye - the kind of horse who'd be easy to handle.

My reference photo was a little more dappled, but as always I got to a point where it looked ok, and thought I better stop before I ruined it! He certainly looks content with his new coat of colour, after a year spent in the body box.

There's still one more of this plastic mini Gustav in my body box, and I do have a colour in mind, but it's a much more daunting one than Rasmus ended up with, so who knows how much longer it'll take me to work myself up toward tackling him!

Having ticked one long-considered custom idea off my mental to-paint list, it was time to be brave and do another, one I've been putting off for almost as many months!

Another from a small bargain bundle of scuffed and dusty CollectA models I got on ebay, this time the mustang foal. Although I chose a spotted paintjob, I'll keep her as a mustang, rather than changing breed to appaloosa - her colour reminds me of one of my Stablemate customs, here.

You can't really see, but I went for a dun rather than a sooty buckskin this time. She does have a dorsal stripe, and a little bit of leg barring, but like most baby colours her points haven't fully developed yet - her dark legs would fade in gradually as she got older. I might go back and edit the tail colour a little bit more, though; I'd given it brown edges, but they don't stand out much at all in the pictures, so I think there needs to be a highlight of paler brown to bring out the contrast a bit more.

This is one of my favourite CollectA foal moulds, so I'm really glad that was the one I happened to get in my second hand batch - the pose is just so sweet and full of energy despite the standing pose, with the tucked head and flippy little short tail.

I'm definitely starting to feel more comfortable with these larger scale models, though confident would be pushing it - every paintjob still feels like a bit of a panicky rush to get past the possible disaster without ruining it entirely!

Tales from the Body Box - Marius Nero and Umberto

A while ago I introduced my original finish WIA Gustavs, a small plastic version of Brigitte Eberl's magnificent draft stallion. 

Back when I bought them, I kind of kicked myself for not snapping up the seller's third one as a duplicate to customise, but recently a hobby friend got an order shipped over from German retailer Modellpferdeversand, and what started as adding one extra Gustav for me, soon became two heading my way, and then because I am terrible and have no self restraint when it comes to stocking up my body box, a couple more!

After last weekend's venture smaller than Stablemate scale, this weekend it was time to be brave and try something bigger...

My first custom Gustav isn't all that different to his OF colour, but my own version of it - a dark bay with mealy highlights.

I love painting this sort of bay, starting with rich red-browns then adding deeper and deeper black tones to the mix til they're fading into a pure black topline and points, then with a clean brush I go back and add the tan and cream highlights. I know the standard advice, often quoted as a hard-and-fast unbreakable rule, seems to be to start with the lightest colour and work darker, but I've defied this ever since I first started painting : I find it much easier, quicker, and less paint-consuming to start somewhere in the middle then add both lighter and darker shading.

Trying a 1/18th scale version of that imposing, regal, looking down at you angle which makes real draft horses look so big and awe-inspiring! 

I've decided this one will be a Noriker, the same breed as my OF bay Maxim Nero, so I'm giving him a matching name - Marius Nero.

 

I can't say enough what a gorgeous little mould this is, the quality of the original resin sculpting carries over so well to a plastic edition; he's accurate, expressive, and handsome - what more could you want!

The second custom has changed nationality and breed, and become an Italian Heavy Draft Horse.

He's based on the photo example in the good old Ultimate Horse Book (a scan of the image, making a double-page spread in a similar book from the same publisher, can be seen here), a stunning liver chestnut roan which I've always wanted to paint, and knew at once that a Gustav would suit this colour so well, it had to be him.

 I finished him off with a star and a pink snip, this angle makes him look even more broad chested and chunky.

After some dithering over the nicest-sounding impressive names in Italian, I decided to go with something a bit simpler and more old-fashioned, his name is Umberto.

The roany colour was a lot of fun to create, usually when painting by hand with a brush the main aim is to totally avoid any scuffy brush marks and blend everything as smoothly as possible, so it's enjoyable to intentionally make a much more messy, patchy colour, while still aiming for a smooth sleek finish without any actual lumps or brushstrokes in the texture. 

The other side, showing his little brand, but I realised after finishing him that I actually need to add another one - stallions are branded on the quarters after passing a first grading inspection as youngsters, then again on the neck if they pass a second inspection as an adult.

 

That's all for now, but I do have another pair of these in the body box, and am at the colour plotting stage already, so hopefully it won't be too long before they get their new coats of paint and can join the little herd of Gustavs.

WIA Eberl Gustav x2

What to do when you see a gorgeous new model but can't decide which colour to buy? Get both!

These two models are the WIA plastic release of Brigitte Eberl's Mini Gustav. I've had a poke around and can't find out much about WIA to know what else their range includes - I haven't even been able to find a company homepage let alone a shop site - most of the search results are pages or quotes from random Google books, or other hobbyists' mentions of the WIA horses in their collection. So all I've seen are these, one other 1/18th scale horse, and some 1/9th scale resins, all on Modellpferdeversand, the multi-brand model horse retailer based in Germany.
If anyone knows where WIA are hiding their info, do let me know in the comments!

So, what are the horses like? In hand, they feel very much like a Collecta or Schleich model, to pick a couple of more familiar names compare to - a good solid plastic with a decent weight to it, very slightly flexible in that reassuring way which means they'll probably bounce entirely unharmed if you knock them over or drop them.
They're a slightly smaller scale than Collecta, but not enough that they couldn't join a mixed herd if you wanted them to pose in group scenes for photos or live showing. I've got one Gustav standing next to my Belgian mare to check, and she's maybe a touch over half an inch taller at the withers, which you could pass off as her being a 17hh example of her breed, and him being a 15.2hh example of his!
The sculpting is, of course, quite lovely, and the paintwork's a good bit over and above the typical standard for these OF middling-scale plastics - rather than being toys which some adults do collect, like the mass produced brands of Schleich, Safari, Bullyland, Papo, Mojo, and Collecta, these are aimed firmly at the adult collector, who appreciates an anatomically, conformationally accurate horse, with a realistic pose and expression.
I can't see any record of how many are made, so I've no idea if they're a small limited run or whether it went to a few hundred or thousand, but they seem to be an MPV exclusive (I got mine second hand on UK Ebay)

Here's a really lovely picture of the bay, he looks so warm and glowy in this light but it's actually just me forgetting to change my camera settings from a very cloudy previous day!

This is more accurate for his colouring, a beautifully rich bay with mealy shading and a hint of grey on his face, elbows, and stifles. He's even got some gentle dapples on his ginger belly and beside his tail. And look at his eyes, they're realistically painted in, and even glossed - this is OF paintwork that easily rivals some CM paintjobs in attention to detail, they've done a great job on him.

This might be my favourite angle for him, with that high head carriage and flash of eye-white as he looks at us. The original Gustav resin was a very big Traditional scale, this little guy has every bit the same amount of pride and presence!

Another angle which shows off his handsome and expressive head, I really like that roman nose!

And here's the leopard spotted edition, which I'm going to have as a Noriker horse - in fact, I'm calling them both Norikers; most horse books pick a spotted example to show, so that's the first thing I thought of when getting a spotted draft for my collection, but there's a lot of solid colours in the breed too. 

Much like the Lipizzaner, the Noriker has a particular naming system, where the horse's first name is what he's known as individually, and his second name is what stallion line he's from. My spotted one will be Julius Elmar (the Elmar line being the source of the spotted/tiger pattern), the bay will be called Maxim Nero.

You can't really see it too well in the photos, but his spots are nicely done, with faint mapping and layering of airbrushed colour, to make them more than just the usual stencilled or blobbed-on solid dots. 

I can't help thinking he'd look great dressed up in a traditional stallion set, with roller, side reins, and bridle, trimmed & decorated with different colours of leather (often red and white on black) which you often see on the continental draft breeds. But I've never made tack smaller than Julip/Classic scale, so I'm not sure how ready I am for that challenge!

Here's a little headshot. There were two of the spotted model on Ebay, I chose this one because I liked his face the most - the other had an almost solid black head, the shading on mine makes it look like he's got a lot of roaning with his appaloosa pattern. 

So that's my two Noriker boys, Julius and Maxim. Which colour do you like best? Or are you, like me, more of a 'both!' kind of collector? And oh but wouldn't it be great to get my hands on some custom bodies at some point, I could have a lot of fun with this mould if a nice cheap scuffed one ever needed a new coat of paint...