Show us your HORSES!

I didn't know the crazy Lusitano was among your favorite models.
Series 1 and 2 are the typical horse figure we could find everywhere since Toy Major partenered with lots of other brands. It really turns series 3 and 4 somewhat more exclusive. Though, there is some consistency, the original concept of offering different breeds or colors remained during the whole series. Congratulations again for completing the collection, you'll always be the Funrise girl.

I'm not sure how well this will work, but I thought of a potentially better way to show my full selection of horse models in this topic, without just posting hundreds of pictures in a row. So I've tried condensing them into thumbnail form, starting with the original finish Traditional (1:6) scale.

First, the best known brand, Breyer. There's a mixture here of regular runs, special runs, Breyerfest models, from when I first got into model horses in the early 2000s right through to last year's releases, as I'm still actively collecting them (the only reason there's no 2022s is cos they haven't reached my country yet - I plan to keep adding to this collection every year even though my island's on a perpetual time delay in getting anything in stock! )

These aren't in the order they were made, or the order I got them, or code number, or even alphabetically by release name, but rather randomly shuffled into in alphabetical order based on the made up names I've given to my own individuals - that's how the thumbnails were sorted when I made these screenshots from my website

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Next, my Peter Stone horses. These are a slightly older selection, with no new or recent models at all - I bought a lot of these back when the releases were cheaper, the exchange rate was favourable, and shipping & handling & customs fees weren't so extortionate.
So although I still love the ones I've got, I've had to stop actively collecting them, as they're just miles out of my price range these days (a minimum two or three hundred pounds/dollars per horse, when they used to be comparable to regular run Breyer prices!)

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And finally, my horses by Copperfox, all the welsh cob mould as that was my favourite from this British brand. There's one more I need to find to complete my collection, a chestnut.

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(Edit : phew, it worked on the second attempt! Postimg hosting kept resizing some of my images but not others, so cutting the longer ones into pieces then making them align again was not proving easy, but I seem to have found the size it's happy not to mess with )

What a superb collection!

Carrying on with the next chunk of my collection, these are all the same 1:6 scale, but this time the custom painted horses.

First, Breyer...

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Some of these are actually my own work, see if you can find them : on the left hand column, it's the fourth and seventh down from the top, and then over in the right hand column, the black and white pinto.
I did do some work on the other pinto in the right-hand column too - he came to me cheaply second hand, very badly scuffed and damaged, so I adjusted and extended his white markings to conceal the marks.
All the rest are by various different artists, if I'm counting rightly there's sixteen people's work on show here. No, seventeen cos I count too even though I don't paint this scale any more

And then Peter Stone

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Only one of these is my own repaint, the plain brown in the top left, he's a portrait of a brilliant little pony I used to ride.
The mare and foal weren't the same artist, or intended as a set, but I already had her and the baby looked such a good match for her markings and art style, I just had to bid on him as well to pair them up as a little family!

This is surely a very rich presentation since many artists, breeds and great quality figures are documented. Even if it is just reduced version of your collection, it shows how magnificent it is.

I'm going to try to work my way through my whole collection, in chunks - there's still several scales of these brands to go, and then the toy-type figures and hand-made models to compile into images and chop into pieces small enough for the forum to handle (these lonnnnng pictures have many invisible joins in )

amazing! I can circle a few that really stand out for me :)
and when I get more time I will pour over them in detail, but for now I am taken aback by how many beautiful models you have and all photographed wonderfully George! It's great to have you on here enriching this forum with your passion for horses.

here are a couple of prehistoric horses - Mongolian Wild Horses that I painted from 2 Britains 1/32nd scale zebras.
One is tailless and that's a natural occurrence in the wild when you are running from someone who is hungry! I have seen quite a few tailless herbivores in the wild. Bless them

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Take a deep breath, here is one of the biggest sections of my collection : original finish Breyer Stablemates (1:32 scale)

These are sorted by mould name, so you'll see as you scroll down how I have lonnnng conga lines of some moulds, and not many of others, and some moulds I don't have at all yet. I didn't start collecting til 2003, so I don't have many of the vintage G1 moulds at all, and the vast majority of what you see here are releases from the 21st century.

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P.S although this looks like a super-long ridiculous image when fully loaded, it's actually 18 small photos posted to fit together, so give it a second of patience and it'll be fine

WOW!!! What a collection, I am enjoying all of your photos. Breyer certainly knows how to get the most out of a mould!! My favourite has to be the foal scratching and of course the draft horses :)

wonderful collection you have George! I've seen a few that caught my eye, thanks for taking the time to share your exciting models

What a great, fantastic collection George! My favorites have to be all the customs and repaints And all of them are wonderful, OF too Thank you for sharing!

And what a clever way to present them all like this. Shelf photos usually hide some models and we can't really appreciate each separately. At the same time, if you chose one big photo for each, this topic would take extremely long to scroll down. This is a perfect solution to see many horses without too much scrolling.

I remember you also have many stablemates-sized customs, right? I'll be very excited to see that part of your collection presented here too.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] your Mongolian horses look lovely! What a great idea to turn Britains zebras into this breed. They have a similar body type, I think it's a great match. I like your painting style a lot too!

Holy Macrel, George !!
What an amazing colletion

Sunny, I adore your Mongolean horses
Wonderful species, angreat repaint...they even have the dark skin under the tail, where they don't have fur

I wanted to read older posts on this topic and I noticed the first post was opened more than 10 years ago! I'm sure everyone's collections changed a lot since then

My horses' collection did for sure. A few years ago equines became my main collecting focus. I rarely buy any other animals anymore.

thebritfarmer wrote:

WOW!!!  What a collection, I am enjoying all of your photos. Breyer certainly knows how to get the most out of a mould!! My favourite has to be the foal scratching and of course the draft horses :)

I'm glad you're enjoying them, I'm also having fun with it, compiling them all together like this - somehow they look a lot more impressive with their scenery-photos than they do side by side in rows on my bookcase shelving!

Taos wrote:

sunny wrote:

wonderful collection you have George! I've seen a few that caught my eye, thanks for taking the time to share your exciting models

And thank you for looking through so many! I've been here over a year, it was about time I shared them on this topic

Ana wrote:

What a great, fantastic collection George! My favorites have to be all the customs and repaints And all of them are wonderful, OF too Thank you for sharing!

And what a clever way to present them all like this. Shelf photos usually hide some models and we can't really appreciate each separately. At the same time, if you chose one big photo for each, this topic would take extremely long to scroll down. This is a perfect solution to see many horses without too much scrolling.

I remember you also have many stablemates-sized customs, right? I'll be very excited to see that part of your collection presented here too.

I came up with it the other day, when looking for a certain horse's photo on my website when I couldn't remember what showname I'd given him to jump to the right spot alphabetically - it was a lot easier to zoom out and scroll down them as a mass of thumbnail sized pics, and that gave me the idea of presenting them this way for the forum too. I'm glad it's working!

Yes, Stablemate customs are the next planned chunk of horses, I'm just about to start working on compiling them now. I fear it's going to take quite a while...

SUSANNE wrote:

Holy Macrel, George !!
What an amazing colletion

Thank you! I did warn the forum I had a quite excessive number of horses when I first started posting here, it's just starting to be more obvious now I'm posting the whole collection in batches, rather than just new arrivals as they come to me. Still a lot more to share...

Ana wrote:

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] your Mongolian horses look lovely! What a great idea to turn Britains zebras into this breed. They have a similar body type, I think it's a great match. I like your painting style a lot too!

thank you Anna, I agree too - they are 'fat' and with the standing up mane look very 'old' breed!
and thank you for your gracious comment on my painting style

SUSANNE wrote:

Sunny, I adore your Mongolean horses
Wonderful species, angreat repaint...they even have the dark skin under the tail, where they don't have fur

thank you Susanne! yes I love ancient breed very much. And indeed they do have the black skin under their tails I try my best to make them real..ish

Part, uh, four I think, and it's time for the Stablemate (1:32) scale custom finish models.
These I've split into two groups for clarity - all the first batch are my own repaints, all the horses by other artists have a picture to themselves afterwards,

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There's around 15 years of painting here, they're sorted by the name I've given them rather than date so you can't really see the progression and changes in my style but it's there, just all jumbled up

Quite a lot of them are portraits, both of horses I've personally known, or ridden, or owned, and also some famous horses from the world of racing and eventing. There's also a few which are based on classic paintings, as I'm a fan of art history, especially so when the art multiplies up my interests and features horses and tack!

There's a lot of different coat colours on display here, but there are still some I haven't done, and would like to, as well as several important breeds which are absent and on my to-paint list if I can get hold of a suitable mould to create them from.

And now the ones painted by other people :

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There's 13/14/15 different artists here, I can't be entirely sure as some came to me by chance in mixed 'body' batches with no information given about who customised them. A few I bought straight from the artist, or second hand but with full credits attached so I knew who they were by. And some were gifts from hobby friends

That's all the Stablemates (until I buy more...I just realised this thread is one of those which we're supposed to keep updating and there's no way I'm going to edit these images to slot in any new arrivals alphabetically, so I might just end up doing a roundup at the end of the year to just add the new horses to our forum-wide international herd )

All very nice but two stand out for me are the grey Fell and the grey Clydesdale? Beautiful !

Wow, George! I knew it will be my favorite part! So many beauties! What an amazing collection full of real jewels
Your pintos are so realistic, and your Appaloosas so intricate! And you painted also so many unusual and rare colors! And the classic solid bays, chestnuts, blacks, and greys are lovely and richly shaded.
15 years of painting? I imagine it would rather take me 50 years to paint so many

I wouldn't be able to choose one favorite but it is so fun to see your own take on Whistlejacket! With perfectly replicated lighting and background from the painting Very clever! I also recognize one or two other horses from paintings but I don't remember their names.

What a wonderful collection, thank you for sharing!

It is impressive in all regards! It also tells a longer story than the story of this forum.

It's great to see all your Stablemate repaints together. You are very lucky to have such an amazing painting talent, it gives you so much more than just the original Stablemates. Though I am sure a lot of learning and hard work was involved in these repaints too.

thebritfarmer wrote:

All very nice but two stand out for me are the grey Fell and the grey Clydesdale? Beautiful !

The fell (and the Clydesdale, if you mean the picture directly above him) are recent ones done with pencil to scribble in the dappling on top of the painted base coat. Really different to how I usually work but I enjoyed it and will try it again some other time I want a dapply pale grey

Ana wrote:

Wow, George! I knew it will be my favorite part! So many beauties! What an amazing collection full of real jewels
Your pintos are so realistic, and your Appaloosas so intricate! And you painted also so many unusual and rare colors! And the classic solid bays, chestnuts, blacks, and greys are lovely and richly shaded.
15 years of painting? I imagine it would rather take me 50 years to paint so many

I wouldn't be able to choose one favorite but it is so fun to see your own take on Whistlejacket! With perfectly replicated lighting and background from the painting Very clever! I also recognize one or two other horses from paintings but I don't remember their names.

What a wonderful collection, thank you for sharing!

I'm so glad you enjoyed seeing them all! Pintos are possibly my favourite to paint, I find tobiano patterns come very naturally cos I see so many of them (I learnt to ride on piebald cobs, trained one, see a lot in fields in the country lanes where I live, and there's a lot of them where I keep my ponies - I'm about the only owner who has natives instead of hairy patchy horses ). Appaloosa patterns I see a lot more of online than on real life, though, I only ever rode one spotted horse!

I like fitting unusual colours in, for variety, to give myself a challenge, and just for the sake of ticking them off as done! I'm currently plotting a chimera horse, having seen one in person for the first time ever I'm at the reading-about-it stage and considering which mould to put my two colours onto!

Funnily enough, the VAST majority of these have been done in the last three years. More last year alone than in the first twelve years all added together? Yes, probably

The art ones have been some of my favourites to do, I've got some pictures of them with their paintings

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(That last one has his story told here on my blog)

Roger wrote:

It is impressive in all regards! It also tells a longer story than the story of this forum.

I'm surprised how many there are when I see them all together like this, with them being painted in batches one or two or a small group at a time, and not having enough shelf space to display them near each other, I never really see them all at once!

rogerpgvg wrote:

It's great to see all your Stablemate repaints together. You are very lucky to have such an amazing painting talent, it gives you so much more than just the original Stablemates. Though I am sure a lot of learning and hard work was involved in these repaints too.

Yeah, I think that's what I love most about being able to paint, the fact I can have so much more variety than just what Breyer release - if I think a certain colour would suit a certain mould, or want to own a particular breed, I just make it happen and widen my collection that way.

I honestly think there's as much time spent reading and learning about horse colours in all these customs, as actual physical painting. If you counted up the hours, it would've taken me longer to research and reference beforehand, than it took once I sat down and got the paints out.
For every time I can just go freehand and decide to do a colour I know off by heart, there's another time I spent all afternoon reading about a breed's foundation and history and naming traditions, or a book I sat down and studied the photos in to learn exactly how the dapples should go, or hours of google searching an obscure pattern I wanted to be sure I understood before I tried it.
And that's what makes it fun! For me, at least, the research is critical to enjoying the paintjob - there'd be no satisfaction at all in painting colours without being sure I was getting them right, or making up 'pretty horse' ideas without knowing there are genes which cause exactly that colour tail with that colour body, and so on

Wow, it's lovely to see your inspiration! I recognized Whistlejacket and the horse in Capriole from Johann Goerg Hamilton's painting (apparently a Kladruber called Cerbero). The other 2 I didn't know.

How great that you did such good research to find out about Paragon! Very impressive! Thank you for sharing this story with us I also think your custom portrait of him is just perfect!


I thought I would use your method George, and show my horses in a similar manner. My collection isn't big so, I believe they can all be posted in one go.
Starting with the smallest, my micro minis
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My stablemate sized horses (but only two actual Breyer stablemate customs)
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Sizes between 1/18 and 1/24, so just like schleich or collecta
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Classic 1/12 (dollhouse scale)
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Traditional, 1/9
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