Painted in 2023

Another year gone by, and it's time for my annual recap of all the custom horses I've painted...

28 this year, a much lower total but I'm still pleased - there were a couple of long pauses where I didn't paint any at all, so I'm just happy that I didn't stop entirely, and picked up the paintbrushes again after the months when nothing happened!

There's also a few scattered through here which haven't actually been introduced and explained on the blog yet, but I'll get round to writing about them and sharing bigger pictures eventually.

24 solid colours, one spotted, and just three pintos this year, I'm finally getting out of the habit of wanting to paint every pony patchy!

None are colours I'd never painted before, though quite a few are different variations or shades, or experimental paint application techniques, which make them still slightly different to my previous interpretations of coat colours. There's a fleabitten grey speckled with pencils rather than just paint, a couple of metallic chestnuts, and one where the customising project included a whole new hairstyle and show tack too.

And, like last year, I've managed to add quite a few 'firsts' to the list of breeds I've painted : Sorraia, Welsh Sec C, French Trotter, Kerry Bog Pony, Kabardin, Don, Chincoteague, Sandalwood, Muraközi, and Gelderlander.

Unfortunately, not all of them have names yet, but really I wanted to post my recap on the final day of the year, and will fill in all those blank spaces later as I think of them!

Tales from the Body Box - The CollectA Megabox, part 1

As I said in my earlier blog post, here, I recently ended up with a big box of second hand CollectA models, the cost of each duplicate to repaint being entirely absorbed by the total value of the models I'm keeping as they are - effectively these are free 'bodies' for my customising hobby!

Here's the first few breeds I've given their new lease of life as unique custom repaints...

The lovely little Campolina sculpt, it's so nice to have a rare breed so well-represented, and this handsome horse is the third of his breed to join my herd, after the original finish red dun, and my grulla repaint. This time I went for a different shade, a bay dun, with heavy primitive markings just like some of the best-known reference pics of this Brazilian breed. I'm really happy with how he turned out, I always find the paler colours more difficult to get looking really good, but I think the amount of darker detailing on this one stops him from being too washed-out and bland. I've named him Caldeirão, which taken literally means 'cauldron' but actually refers to a volcano's crater!

A second Brazilian breed (I didn't do this on purpose!), and it's the Mangalarga Marchador now in chestnut. In fact, I've named this one Castanhiero, which means 'chestnut'!

I copied his deep shade somewhere between red and liver from the reference photo in one of my horse breed books, his high white socks and quirky face marking are inspired by that one too - not a direct portrait, but I really liked the way the rich colour combined with so much white detail.

The Shetland pony is also a sort of semi-portrait idea - my own Shetland's father was written down as cremello on his pedigree, and though I've never managed to find any photos of him online, I decided to paint one of my CollectA ponies to match roughly like he would have looked. She doesn't have any white socks, and just a tiny few-hairs white marking on her forehead, so I went with the same for this mini model of her sire. His name is Snap Dragon, after the real pony I never met.

Another notoriously cute pony breed, the Chincoteague, a hardy native island pony with a tough nature and a sweet face! Though they do come in solid colours too, pinto is common - and the best-known pattern for the breed, after the much-loved Misty of Chincoteague came to fame. I decided to go for a buckskin pinto, just cos it's one of the colours I paint least often - again, I often struggle with giving the light yellowy brown enough depth, and getting the contrasting dark paints applied evenly enough to not look messy. This time I bypassed a lot of that trouble by having the legs be white rather than black!

One of my favourite CollectA moulds for her simple expressive calm - the twitched back ear, the passive face, the steady still pose. The Don was famously the horse of the Cossacks, and a huge influence on a lot of breeds from Central Asia into Eastern Europe. While chestnut might not be too far from the original finish paintwork of this model, I really wanted to have a go at my own version of this typical colour for the breed. Mine's turned out a lot more muted, tending toward brownish rather than orange, and I've gone a bit lightly with the metallic sheen - it's there, but I didn't want the gold to overwhelm the paint itself!

Next, the Nonius sculpt repainted as a Kabardin, an ancient breed from the Caucasus. Why the change? All Nonius horses are black, and I already had the black original finish model, and it's not a colour I could really add much variation to - not like my new chestnut Don being different enough to my other chestnut Don!

So I got out my breed books and hunted through for one which made the best match to CollectA's Nonius mould, with his sloping hindquarters, slim shoulders, and lonnng convex profile - and this was it! The example in the photos had a particularly nice pale nose, too, which settled it - I do love a mealy muzzle on a very dark bay!

Much like with the Nonius-to-Kabardin, I picked the CollectA Friesian from the box of duplicates to repaint, and thought 'now what am I going to do with you?'. My existing one in original finish is already a well-painted black, with some nice warm tones in his paint and a sleek semi-glossy finish, so if I painted a black custom it wouldn't really be that much different to the one I already had, only in the eyes and feet would I be able to show any more detail. And the breed is almost entirely black.

So, any other breeds it looks like? Not with that body type and that much feathering, combined with the typical upright pose - it's pretty much only Friesians which have the exact same outline as Friesians!

Then I had an idea which solved this dilemma - the breed is almost entirely black, but not 100%. Purebred chestnuts exist! Sadly they're deeply unpopular in the show ring, and chestnut stallions can't be approved as breeding studs. The vast majority of breeders from the post-war period onwards have been trying to eliminate them in preference for all black, and these days they're all DNA tested - any stallion which even carries the red gene (despite being black!) cannot be registered with the international breed society either.

We may well end up losing the red gene from all continuing stallion lines in future - except in the USA, where a second spin-off unaffiliated breed association allows chestnuts. So I've painted a specifically American chestnut Friesian, to create a little model character who can be appreciated for what he is, and not treated like a rule-break or a mistake!

I think the mould looks great in a different colour to usual, the lighter paint brings out a lot of the sculpting detail which is hidden in a plain black. CollectAs always have such beautifully expressive faces, too!

He looks like he's a bit of a lively one, on full alert and ready to spring into action!

I still have one more duplicate Friesian to paint, so I'm going to have to think even harder to come up with another colour, or a different breed he could switch to be instead! May have to go partbred in the end...

Here's another pony who changed breeds significantly! To me, the Haflinger sculpt never really looked like the breed she was designed as, too light in the body, too long and lean in the leg - more like a lightweight riding pony cross, than the mini-draft build of the true Haflingers which are like big chunky barrels of blonde pony! But the head is too large and long for a really refined show pony type, so I spent ages sifting through all my various horse books to try to find something which has both the small elegant build, and the larger head.

Eventually settled on Indonesia, and the similar Java and Sandalwood ponies, which seemed to be the closest match - they look small and pretty, with the heavy head being noted as a negative 'flaw' in the text description. The Sandalwood seems to be a little bit finer in the leg, a couple of books mention imported Arabians and small Thoroughbreds being used in the colonial era to refine them and make them more a riding-pony type, than a practical tough working animal - the Java is still truer to old type.

One of the Sandalwood pony photos showed a very-speckled fleabitten grey, and I decided that was the one I'd copy for my first repaint of this breed - I actually found the exact same photo online, though it's very tiny : here

And here's my model version! Not a colour I've painted very often, even though my first real-life horse was a speckly grey, it's very fiddly at this scale where using the toothbrush-paint-spatter technique wouldn't look quite so good as it does at Stablemate scale - on a horse this big, the specks look better if they're slightly elongated to follow the direction of the hair. I used a combination of two methods this time, firstly a lot of little paint strokes applied with a tiny brush, then over the top of that I added more detail (and more darkness to the most heavily speckled areas) with a normal writing pencil. I think it's quite effective, she looks as speckly as the reference picture!

Another angle, which doesn't flatter the proportions of head to body in the slightest, but shows her face well! I do have one other Haflinger body, not from this boxful but from an earlier purchase of play-worn models which needed a new lease of life, so I think she'll be getting a friend of the same breed at some point soon - they come in plenty of colours!

Next up in this batch, and yet again, this was the result of flipping through several different breed books to pick a best-match to a model I didn't really want to repaint as it's original all-one-colour breed! This time was the American Cream Draft, a sculpt with a hefty neck, long back, chunky leg, and not a lot of feather, so I looked through the pages til one jumped out as a good likeness - the Muraközi. A draft breed from Hungary, they're mostly black and grey but the example in one of my books was such a stunning dappled chestnut that I knew that was the colour I wanted to paint!

Here he is, I'm really pleased with how he turned out - the dappling was a bit nerve-wracking to paint cos there's always the feeling that I'm potentially ruining a paintjob which was working out fine and would've been best left well alone without the dapples, but they were worth the scary stage cos they look nice in the end!

It's always satisfying to make a brand new breed page on my website and expand my collection's range, but I think researching and painting them myself is even more fun than just buying one! I've named him Király, which means King.

And here he is with his book self, so you can see the beautiful photo which inspired my breed choice!

The Tennessee Walking Horse is one of my favourite CollectA moulds, showing the breed's very interesting gait in a natural flat-shod style, without the artificial wedged and weighted shoes and long-toed trimming which were the showring standard for many decades. It's nice to see model companies deciding not to favour the exaggerated Big Lick style any more.
I painted a bay sabino once before, so this time I decided to go for a different white pattern, and make him a seal brown tobiano pinto - love how he turned out! His name is Diamond Dreamer.

A second Haflinger, became a second Sandalwood pony! While looking up the breed for painting my first one, I was struck by the huge variety of colours they come in - dun in all its forms seemed to be fairly common, as do flashy white markings. This one wasn't copied from any one pony, just me combining the coat colour from one with the idea of long white stockings from another.

And the last, for now - the Hackney has had a makeover from chestnut to...chestnut!

I always found the mould far, far too chunky to be a decent representation of a very fine-boned delicate and elegant breed, so one more time I flicked through my little collection of horse breed books, on the hunt for a tall carriage horse of a more warmblood-type. The Gelderland seemed the best match of all for the model I had in hand, so that's what I went with. Most of the example photos showed vivid bright gingery or red chestnuts, all with extensive white markings on the legs, and the faces too.

There's many many more to come, I wonder what breeds I'll be painting next year...

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 - Peter Stone Trotting Drafter

This episode of 'Tales from the Body Box' features a horse who's been in that not-quite-literally-a-box storage space for a very, very long time!

My Stablemate bodies are kept in an actual cardboard box, but the few big models I bought while under the impression I'd ever dare handle painting something massive, are hidden behind the tv. Not quite as strange as it sounds - my tv isn't one of those modern ones which hang on a wall, it has to stand on a little unit of it's own, and cos I've got it pushed diagonally into the corner of the room, there's a triangular bit of dead space back there, for the wires, and the daddylonglegs spiders, and the dust, and the horses I'm putting off even THINKING about maybe painting one day!

Most of them have been in there for over a decade, that's how much I procrastinate when it comes to painting big models. I'm not quite sure which year I bought the horse in question, but he was released in 2002, and I checked out old photos and I definitely already had him in 2006.

He was a duplicate in my collection, a Peter Stone mid year release called Romi-o, bought extremely cheap as a damaged 'second' in the sale with a snapped-off bow from his mane, some serious paint scuffing on his rump and shoulder, as well as rubs to his ears and nostrils : one very beaten-up looking horse, who had been a lovely colour but wasn't nice enough to keep Original Finish any more.

And because I already had one of him (and the matching mare Juliet), I had a plan in mind for this boy - rather than just attempting invisible fixes to fill in the paint loss and replace the broken bow. Instead, I'd give him new white markings, extended and elaborated from the original shapes to cover every little scuff and scratch, and take off all the rest of the plastic bows to give him more realistic little ribbon ones instead. With a new sculpted tail, he could even return to his breeds' roots and become a Scottish Clydesdale rather than an American one (tail docking has been illegal in Britain since the 1920s).

Only it never happened.

All that time passed, and the poor horse sat behind the tv, gathering a coating of dust, mostly forgotten apart from the occasional times I'd remember I used to buy big horses and then not feel up to painting them.

Last week, I happened to lean over the tv to wriggle a wire cos the signal was being weird, and saw this horse again. Ok, he was still as big as I remembered, and I'm still not any good at painting wide expanses of smooth plastic with my little brushes and sticky paint and shaky hands, but... that one doesn't need much painting? Just the white, right? So I picked him up, wiped off all the dust and bits of dead fly, and had a look at him. Sure, I'd forgotten about the ear rubs, but those were even easier than the markings, cos it's just running a line of black along the edges. And it wouldn't take too long to cut off the old bows, and give him that new tail I'd thought of at the time. Then, at least, there'd be ONE less horse in waiting behind the tv, and I'd feel like I'd worked a little bit on this ongoing problem of not being able to deal with the big models back there.

Stupidly, I forgot all about taking a 'before' photo, but here's one from the internet!

And here he is, after his partial makeover!

All the body colour paint is original, I didn't even try to alter or restore it - every bit of damage on him is hidden with the white markings, the the hair-by-hair ticking, the new pink and grey skin of the muzzle, and the little bit of black on the edges of his ears. It as that lovely rich and dappled bay colour which made me buy him in the first place, knowing I'd be keeping that no matter what else I did around it.

He looked a bit weird with his mane and tail all plaited up, trotting along, but with no halter or bridle on - a horse would only have the braid and flights done for showing, and he'd always have tack on at the same time, so I decided I just HAD to make him a bridle too. I had a look back through some pictures of the Clydesdale classes at a local heavy horse show I went to last month, to make sure I was getting it correct and within the turnout rules. Geldings all wear a bridle with a bit, it doesn't always have a noseband but often does just cos that's a good place to put more decoration in the form of metal bosses, studs, or coloured patent leather to match the owner's colours seen in the mane bows and tail braid. The cheeks also have this little inset of co-ordinated colour, and many of the browbands too. So I got out my fake leather and some glossy red card from a biscuit box, and then he was all dressed up for the show ring, and not looking like he'd somehow got loose and run away without his halter on!

The bridle in closeup - I might replace the gold paint on the buckle keepers with actual gold foil strips, once I've got hold of some stickier superglue - the one I was using was awful and everything fell apart and had to be re-stuck multiple times!

And here's a full view, all finished!

The back view, showing the new tail. It might look odd, but this is how their tails are treated for showing (which is itself linked back to the working days, when a flowing loose tail would be a risk for getting caught up in harness or machinery). The lower two thirds are clipped to remove the long hair, leaving just the fleshy tail with a spiky stubble, while the upper third is left to grow long, braided, rolled back on itself, then secured with ribbons, like a little bun. When the horse isn't in the show ring, the tail then has enough hair to hang down, working naturally as a fly whisk and to be used in normal body language when interacting with other horses. Much better than docking!

Another angle, I'm really happy with how his new face marking came out, especially the pinking of the nose with little uneven patches of dark colour to give him some individuality.

I haven't named him yet but I'm really pleased to have finally got him completed, after all this time leaving him waiting. I did think 'Patience' would be a good name for that reason, but it sounds more like a mare, so I need to have a rethink. Just mustn't make him wait quite so long for his name as for his paint!

Painted in 2022

Time for my annual recap of custom repaints!

2022 sees less horses than the last couple of years, there were a few longer pauses while I didn't paint any at all, but I've still managed to end up with an impressive total - 55! Let's have a look at them all together...

There's 35 solid colours, 12 pinto, and 7 spotted.

Bay is, just like last year, my commonest colour to paint. I've done two colours for the first time, silver buckskin and dunalino, 

And my first customs of a LOT of different breeds, too, these read like a flick through random pages of a breed book : Haflinger, Nonius, Dole Gudbrandsdal, Sable Island Pony, Connemara, Pottok, Boulonnais, Falabella, Gotland Russ, Black Forest Horse, Cleveland Bay, Friesian, Pony of the Americas, Missouri Fox Trotter, Altér Real, Sorraia, Lokai, Budyonny, Yakut horse, and Sugarbush Draft.

9 of the customs this year are portraits; one pony I own, one character from my writing/drawing, one racecourse 'pony', and six racehorses (one from the flat, five chasers).

Four are Breyer Stablemate moulds I'd never painted before, as well as my first customs on quite a few CollectA sculpts and the WIA criollo, and one large artist resin.

Plenty more left in the body box for next year!

Tales from the Body Box - Two Stablemates, two CollectAs

I'm trying to catch up on posting, so that all my 2022 customs have a '22 date on their blog posts! Here's the last few customs I did a while ago - as you can tell from the background being open country, they had their photoshoot the same day as Red Queen.

First, two racehorse portraits. I don't always paint the winners of the biggest races, but rather my favourites - the horses I like for their character, their looks, their performances - any where I've especially enjoyed following their careers.

This is Frodon, a tough and sparky little horse (his regular jockey describes him as 'such a dude' cos she loves his cool fun attitude so much) who's defied his size and been the underdog who out-performed all predictions, winning some of the most prestigious races in the country with his front-running speed and stamina.

His name is apparently the name for Frodo in the French translation of The Lord of the Rings, though I've no idea why it needed alteration as it's already not a real name in the author's native English either!

He's a good colour to paint, with just enough white markings to make it easy to capture the likeness - when they're plain bay or chestnut it can be harder to make the model look like the real horse, but a few socks and a face marking or two and it's much better! He varies in colour through the year and depending on how recently his coat has been clipped, but here's a fairly similar picture to how I've painted mine.

Potters Corner is another long distance steeplechase horse, another tough stayer who relishes the winter mud conditions and did great things for a small yard, for a trainer with not many horses he was the first stand-out star. He won the Welsh National, but never made the big one - he won the 'virtual' Grand National the year it didn't happen due to Covid lockdown, when a computer programme worked out the most likely winner based on form, stamina, suitability for the track, and previous jumping ability. He's retired now, so he never will get a real run in the race, but he's been given to the stable hand who looked after him and promised a home for life with 'lots of attention and cuddles', which is pretty adorable in a world where horses can easily be passed on and forgotten when they stop winning.

Another interesting colour to paint, he's officially a bay but with a lot of light brown shades in his coat, including the mane and tail which would usually be pure black. You can see a nice picture of him here. And again, I like that he's got plenty of white on, so it's given me plenty to match to the reference photos.

The next two are CollectA customs, but the first also has a racing link. You might recognise him if you're a Breyer collector, as they've also made a portrait of the same horse.

Harley is a spotted draft horse who works on the racetrack where this year's Breeders Cup racing was held. His role is 'ponying', which is accompanying racehorses down to the start, and back again afterwards - we don't have horses doing this job at all in the UK (it's legally allowed in our rules, but you only ever see it in practise when US horses have been flown over for the big meetings - none of our British or European trainers seem to bother!)

For the last couple of years, the Breeders Cup race meeting has been covered by British tv, so we've got the chance to see Harley in action for the first time. He really is a striking-looking animal, huge and sturdy and with such an eye-catching colour, I started wondering if I should buy his official Breyer portrait release after all.

But I'm not keen on the mould - I love the pose, but not the sculpt style - and no matter how good the colour was, or how much I liked the real horse, I didn't think I'd take to the model. So I decided to paint my own, and with no Stablemate mould really looking like him, I went up a scale and looked through the CollectA moulds to choose the one which was the best match.

This is the 'American Cream Draft', but no longer cream coloured! He was a fun one to paint, with plenty of references out there from all angles cos he spends so much time in the public eye. There's plenty of pictures and a full biography of him here.

A couple more pictures, including the other side, cos I often neglect the 'wrong' side when a mould looks better from a certain direction.

His black bits aren't quite jet black, which made him much more interesting to paint - his nose is especially shaded. And he has a big spotted bottom!

And finally, one more CollectA custom, the Yakut horse.

When this model was first announced, I remember saying it's a shame he's not dun, as that's such a distinctive colour for the breed as well as being a bit more interesting than plain grey - and I've seen several other collectors saying the same thing since. Rather than wait for them to re-release it in dun (now they are reissuing moulds in alternate colours, that's at least a possibility to hope for!), I decided to buy a duplicate and make my own dun one.

He's bay dun, with leg barring to help make it clear that he's intended as a dun not a light bay. I'd love to do some different shades as well, maybe a paler bay or buckskin dun, a black dun, and a greying-out dun which would be even paler, I'd happily have a whole herd of these little things!

He looks nice against the blue sky! I've named him Ärčimnǟx, which means strong and energetic in the Yakut language - most of their horses are named with descriptive terms about their colours or characters, and the word for 'dun' was too hard for me to read or say so I picked something else!

Weirdly the other side of him looks more orange in photos, but it must just be the angle of the light cos I used the same pots of paint throughout! I love the attitude of this sculpt, and I think he looks even more expressive with his features painted in more detail. And he does look good in dun, so we were right!

One last shot, it seemed a shame not to make the most of the frosty ground for this horse breed from a very cold climate, here's a bit of local icy road standing in for Siberia.