Anna's customs and repaints, NEW Irish Sport Horse Mare

Thanks so much for your words Bonnie, and Christophe
I have the comparison shot for you At least she's not as red as this red lego block
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Oh wow, this ist tiny! But so detailed and pretty painted! Wonderful!!

Gosh, so much detail on such a small horse, just mindblowing!

I agree, amazing detail on such a tiny thing! The precision really fools the eye into thinking it's much bigger than it is. I think it's a wonderful bay, it makes me think of Sham from the King of the Wind's described color.

Thank you all so much for your kind comments! I think the sculpt is really lovely and that made it easy to paint even in small scale

I have a little update. I finally finished painting my Breyer Stablemates Thoroughbred model. This time it's for my own collection. I like the mold quite a lot and I wanted to practice painting this pattern, so here he is. The color is chestnut with rabicano (aka white ticking) and minimal sabino patterns. Color and pattern are based on a TB yearling from a Japanese Auctions website (name unknown). I named my model Kitsune-Tsuki
I prefer this side
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I'm not entirely happy with the pattern on this side but I'll live with it.
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Wow!! Gorgeous!!

Oh, he's lovely! I really like the depth of colour in the chestnut shading, how dark and reddish it goes on his hindquarters especially, it makes him look really vibrant and handsome. The darkening of the tail toward the tip is also a beautiful decision. And the markings, with either the white stockings & blaze or the rabicano roaning it would still be a fantastic paintjob, but to go for both on one model shows your commitment and patience with the detailing. I agree that the side you prefer is his nicest, the ticking looks slightly more subtle, but that's his 'good side' for the mould pose anyway, so he'll look his most gorgeous in photos and on display when he's facing the right way (I hate when the nicest side of the paintjob ends up being the 'back' of the model )

I love him so much, you have painted him amazingly with your incredible talent!
So many different shades on such a small horse, and it looks so realistic, as though it is real and not painted!

Stunning!

Thank you all for your kind comments! I'm glad you like my little fox

George, yes, I agree it's annoying when the "back" of the model gets the nicer paintwork

The subtlety of the pattern on this tiny figure is fantastic.

He's beautiful, his face especially is so full of detail and life. Your paint job really accentuated the model, which is a really nice one. All that musculature really shines with the shading of the coat! Gorgeous and difficult pattern you chose, it came out so well, even the side you like less! I love the shape of his blaze on his muzzle, too. Stunning!

Thank you so much for your kind comments Jill and Burgerenby!

I'm sorry for the long silence here but I do have some updates today

This month I participate in Namopaimo (National Model Painting month) so I thought I can also share progress pictures here. I chose Pierre (1/9 scale Percheron sculpted by Emilia Kurilla) and the tiny Shire foal model (1/64 scale) by Maggie Bennet as my victims. It's just one more week to go and I don't know if I will be able to finish the big one.
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Also, I forgot to share this model I finished painting last month. Capriole was sculpted by Kelly Sealey originally as Lipizzaner (scale 1/24). I chose blue roan with reverse dapples for this model, I based it on one Italian Murghese stallion, so now I consider it a Murghese and called him Azzurro.
Funny thing, I started painting him years ago but I was intimidated by the hair by hair roaning technique and left him on the shelf. I came back to painting him in January this year and finished him in about two weeks.

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beautiful horses Anna! you are very skilled and talented. Pierre has such a soft face with those colours seamlessly blending into each other / fading out. I can feel my hand patting his warm soft skin
Superb!

Excellent as always! I absolutely love the painting on Azzurro!

Fabulous repaints as always, Anna

That Azzurro is quite outstanding , both model and paintwork !
I never heard of this breed before

Thank you all so much for the lovely comments!!

Susanne, I think this breed is not very widely known. And most of Murgese horses are black rather than roan but this color is allowed too. One of the more famous ones is stallion Carletto, photo below.
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Oooh, seeing that real horse really emphasises how well you've nailed that roan and dappled colour, I'm even more impressed than I was before!

The little shire foal is also beautiful, I especially like the pale curly foal coat giving way to the darker adult summer coat in just the right places. My grandparents lived next door to a shire breeder so I saw a lot of foals growing up, it's always really touching to see a foal model which really looks like my old friends at that age!

A blue roan called Azzurro is fun. It is actually very beautiful!!!
Azzurro is like the Portuguese word for blue but it also sounds like "eu zurro" that means "I bray"
Oh, the advantage of being a TAW editor is that I've heard before about Murgese because I needed to add the Funrise Murgese, from Jill, on TAW.
I hope you can complete your plans on time.

These are absolutely stunning, your repaints are always so inspiring! That dappled colour is incredibly realistic, and the 1/64 model is so tiny yet you have included as much detail as on a much larger model- amazing!! And all those shades of brown are blended so smoothly on the 1/9, I love it! Do you use acrylics for painting your models? I have been and find them ok, but sometimes quite thick/ clumpy and not the easiest to work with, but maybe I am using the wrong brand!

Wonderful models. I knew that the Murghese generally came in black but I got a horse book recently and they described the roan/dappling with an illustration!

Pierre will be a hit, I can't wait to see more pics ! 

And Azzuro is the best name to provide to this horse, actually it is the best name to provide to a lot of good things 

Thank you all so much for your comments! It makes me happy to read that you like them! I worked on Pierre the last two days and I think I may be able to finish him in February after all (if I don't have one of the possible technical troubles)

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] thank you! I'm so happy to hear that the Shire foal looks realistic! That means a lot coming from you! I still need to add details to his eyes, and maybe check if I can improve other details as well.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] I use acrylics and powdered pastels (Panpastel). In general, there are so many brands of acrylics, and each of them produces different qualities that it's hard to tell why your paints were not always nice to work with.
One thing I've learned about paints and pastels over the years is that usually the cheaper brands have less pigment in them, have a lot of fillers and it's a lot harder to paint with them. So, in my opinion, it's better to buy fewer colors of higher quality paints (and mix your colors from the basics) than a lot of cheap brand paints. Also, if your paint is too thick, maybe it's that kind of "heavy body" acrylics, those are nice to paint on canvas, create texture effects, but I don't like them for painting models. Acrylic paints that I like are more fluid. I used to like Vallejo model acrylics, they are quite thin and nicely pigmented, I would still recommend them.
Nowadays I use brands Golden (they have a fluid version, heavy body version, slow drying, super-flat, many kinds of paints and mediums, but this is a really expensive brand) and Liquitex (they have for example very good acrylic ink, some painters love it).

And, about the name Azzurro, admittedly it wasn't my own idea. I've asked my good friend for help because her husband is Italian. So, he came up with the idea and I liked it a lot! Especially good name for a blue roan I thought.

Ana wrote:

One thing I've learned about paints and pastels over the years is that usually the cheaper brands have less pigment in them, have a lot of fillers and it's a lot harder to paint with them. So, in my opinion, it's better to buy fewer colors of higher quality paints (and mix your colors from the basics) than a lot of cheap brand paints. Also, if your paint is too thick, maybe it's that kind of "heavy body" acrylics, those are nice to paint on canvas, create texture effects, but I don't like them for painting models.

This, exactly this! Every time I've had painty discussions with people trying to get into customising and struggling with making their paints play nicely, I've had to recommend spending a bit more and resigning yourself to getting less paint for your money. You really do need paints formulated and designed for models or miniatures, rather than art or craft shop acrylics which you'd use for painting on canvas or other large flat surfaces.

Expensive paint doesn't make good painters, it's not that. But wrong paints cause frustrated painters with poor results, while right paints make it easier to get good results and improve your skills. Once you find the paint brand that suits the way you want to paint, you're halfway there.

But you do need to experiment to find that perfect fit. What one person swears by, another will find impossible and infuriating and avoid forever afterwards (for example, me and my three best model-horse-painting friends of fifteen years, each perfectly competent with our own customs, have ended up with such distinct preferences that we couldn't manage a decent horse with each other's materials if we tried!)

I wrote about my own paint choices here - it's Games Workshop 'layer' range, if you don't want to read the full rambling