Harecroft Horses - Tales from the Body Box - CollectA batch two!

Joliezac wrote:

I wish CollectA made some same colored horses as Spirit and Rain, I think that a more "realistic" version of them would be cool

Yeah, I often find I wish for CollectA to make things, I trust them much more with providing nice new horse breeds than other toy-type brands - Mojo have a smaller range, Papo horses are ten times worse than their wildlife, Safari got too stylised, Bullyland make every breed look like a cute plump pony, and Schleich manage roughly horse shaped. CollectA's the only one where I have a wish-they-'d-make list!

Bonnie wrote:

Interesting touch with the sun fading on the fell pony, and the detailing on the Iberian horse is wonderful, so delicate and pretty!

I look after a black pony at work, he goes this colour with the faded ends so I'm used to seeing them, it'd be weirder for me to paint a pure black colour without the browning bits!

Roger wrote:

I didn't know about the historical Spanish breed. Not even its influence on American breeds I always assumed directly influenced by Pura Raza Española. The horse is beautiful as all others. Fel Ponies are so nice with that chubby Friesian look.

It's one of the things I find so wonderful about this hobby, how there's always things you didn't realise you didn't know til a model release or someone's repaint makes you go off and read up about a breed or species you'd somehow just never heard about before.
Yes, that's what they look like - short chunky Friesians!

Jill wrote:

It is kind of a funny mold, originally (I like it for its vintage charm, but artistically, it's not exactly right), but you made it seem exactly as it should be.

I am once again so impressed by your fleabitten markings (fleabites?). Such patience and diligence! Especially on that scale. My eyes would roll right out before I got a quarter of the way through.

I remember the Silver Brumby, wow, what a throw back. I don't think I ever read the books though? I saw the movie, I believe . . . probably not at all like the books, I'd guess, ha. His name was still Thowra, though. Lovely rendition of him, probably as he was meant to be in the books. He was more traditionally palomino in the movie, I think.

Yeah, I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do with the mould when I first got that duplicate, but as a cob it just works in a way it didn't before. If I end up with any more, I think I'll be hairing them all up as cobs or different draft breeds (some of the Continental drafts are much chunkier than Clydes, which are very narrow, long, and leggy for a heavy horse!)

Have to admit, I didn't do the fleabites on her other side yet! So I managed half way before I'd had enough

I didn't know they'd made a movie version til last week when I was Googling book covers to see how they'd interpreted his colour in other editions. Apparently there was also an animated tv series, but reading through the fan pages about episodes and storylines, it's only very loosely based on the books - seems they told fun adventurey stories using the horse characters and other Australian wildlife, but left out all the mundane, unpleasant, or violent bits of wild horses' lives which made the original stories realistic and interesting. So I don't think I'll bother with the cartoon but I wouldn't mind catching the film some time.

This will be my last batch for a little while, I'm off injured!
At work yesterday I tweaked something in my lower arm while pruning a too-thick branch at a very funny angle - first my index finger went into cramp and wouldn't move, then after a few minutes it was twitching all on it's own, then eventually I got control and feeling back, and was able to carry on. But today it feels tingly, my arm's very strained and sore, and I've lost all grip strength in that hand - I can't even hold a fork to eat my dinner, so I definitely can't hold models or paintbrushes to carry on with my repaints while this heals.

So here's the last two I did, earlier this week.

First up, an experimental horse - I remembered reading ages ago that dappled patterns can be done using pencils, and while I think they meant artists' colouring pencils, I haven't got any of those, so I thought I'd try using a normal grey writing pencil, and see what happened...

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Dapples happened!
I was surprised how effective it was, in very little time the pattern started to come up pretty clearly, and with each repeat covering of scribble they got darker and better defined. I finished her off with paint for the mane and tail cos I wouldn't have been able to get the pencil into all the little grooves of the hair texture, and for the shading and markings on the limbs and face.

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She's really quite pretty, a colour I wouldn't have been able to get quite the same with painting, and something I'll definitely try again, maybe in combination with more paint shading over the top to get darker, or a more rose-grey effect.

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Here she is laying down, cos I think you can see the scribble work a bit more clearly like this!

Then it was back to paint...

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This was a colour idea I'd had in mind for this little chunky pony mould ever since I first saw it - a pony cob.
Quite a few traditional cob breeders in the UK are aiming to make a smaller type now, about 12-13hh instead of the usual 15-16hh traditional cob type, while keeping the true chunky type and heavy feathering on the legs. Before, if you wanted a pony sized cob either for driving or children to ride, it was usually a cross with a native welsh or partbred pony, so it'd be a lot lighter in build and more pony proportions, where these look just like scaled down large cobs.
There's no real breed name for them yet, they're locally known as 'pony cobs' but could be known by different terms elsewhere, just like the big ones are a cob to me and a vanner to an American and a tinker to a German, and so on

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Pony cob doesn't have a name yet, but I really like how he turned out - as usual he's got made up markings because copying from a picture stresses me out and rarely goes right, so I only make myself do it when it's for a portrait model of a horse I know. This one's just a general example of his type, who exists purely because I wanted to do the pretty colour on the cute sculpt

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It's a much smaller mould than most Breyer Stablemates, his head only reaches the shoulder of the Arabian posted up above him there - which makes it fun to paint, and gives a bit of variety when he's standing among mostly horse-sized breeds!

Hopefully it won't be too long before I can get back to painting, but this is where I have to take a break for now

I love your new hairy horses! They are really glamourous!
Though, I really want that you recover soon and completely.

I hope you make a speedy recovery! Beautiful repaints as always

Oh, yikes, best wishes on a fast recovery! What a bummer!

I love what you did with that pencil, how creative, and it worked so much better than I would have guessed. I can imagine is smudging easily? Both came out really excellent, that's a perfect paint job for that cute little pony. He looks extra jaunty in spots. :) Looking forward to what you paint once you've healed up!

Oh no, I really hope you make a speedy recovery!!
What wonderful repaints, that pencil technique is really interesting and the result is beautiful, the dappling works really well on the smooth texture of the model!

Roger wrote:

I love your new hairy horses! They are really glamourous!
Though, I really want that you recover soon and completely.

I'm getting used to doing everything left-handed for now, it's surprising how quickly you can adapt, and how funny it feels when you go back to doing things the right way round afterwards. I'm part metal after a bad accident, and for about a year I had to get on horses from the wrong side to protect the healing side and use the leg I could feel. And for the next twenty years of riding, I could get on from either side equally easily, which is apparently unusual skill (and surprised the horses as much as the people who saw me do it, hahah )

Joliezac wrote:

I hope you make a speedy recovery! Beautiful repaints as always

It's already less painful than it was, and I've got more movement before getting to the point where it makes me say 'ouch'

Jill wrote:

Oh, yikes, best wishes on a fast recovery! What a bummer!

I love what you did with that pencil, how creative, and it worked so much better than I would have guessed. I can imagine is smudging easily? Both came out really excellent, that's a perfect paint job for that cute little pony. He looks extra jaunty in spots. :) Looking forward to what you paint once you've healed up!

It's annoying, but not too bad, I'll be back to work in a couple of days (but giving myself light duties and carrying everything in my other hand )

I was concerned about smudging, but it didn't seem too much of a problem in the end. I was working over a base coat of white, and you can see even the palest parts of the dapples are faintly grey, so that must be from the pencil transferring about from my fingers, but if anything that's made it look nicer, cos I think the contrast would've been too stark if it was still pure white between the scribbles!

Bonnie wrote:

Oh no, I really hope you make a speedy recovery!!
What wonderful repaints, that pencil technique is really interesting and the result is beautiful, the dappling works really well on the smooth texture of the model!

I keep forgetting I can't paint and having ideas - I've picked out a 'body' horse three times then realised I couldn't do them yet

And yes, good point - I don't think it would work at all well on a textured model, anything with sculpted fur or even just a slight roughness to the surface would catch the pencil in lumpy streaks, you'd need to stick to sculpt styles without any hairy texturing built in.

Wonderful repaints again I first thought you put some hairs on the Pony cob, it is really incredible !

Great repaints again! I'm sorry to hear about your arm, I hope it gets better soon.
I've recently seen some photos of those small cobs too, I think they look very cute

The dapple grey looks super nice, I think this technique worked out perfectly! I haven't tried a regular pencil for painting models, but actually why not use it?

I had the opportunity to buy a pony cob once, if things had been different I'd be painting portrait models of piebald patches!
He and the New Forest came from the same rescue situation together as foals, their temporary owner got me to help him look after both of them, so there was enough chance to have got attached to either one - but in the end the filly foal chose me, there was no doubting who she'd decided she needed to belong to and we bonded as she grew up, so when they reached two years old he went up for sale and she stayed with me.

Hope the recovery of your arm is going well. Interesting technique for the dappled horse. The pony cob is absolutely amazing, another one with real-looking hair.

Crazy question: do all riders get on their horse from the same side?

It's feeling a lot better now, still taking it easy but I'm sure I'll be back to painting by next weekend :)

And yes, everyone's taught to get on from the same side, with the horse facing your left, reins held in the left hand, left foot in the stirrup, swing your right leg across the back. Even people who get on using a mounting block or step will position the horse facing left. The horses are taught the same way, too, and learn to brace their weight early on, so they're expecting you to approach their left side, and steady themselves so they don't stagger or tip sideways.
Changing sides feels really weird to start with, it's a bit like learning to write with the pen in a certain hand your whole life, to try it the other way round feels very awkward and ungainly, and it takes a lot of figuring out and practice to re-learn the opposite way.

Often if you have a troublesome horse who fidgets or shoots forward or swings away when you go to mount, you can get them to stand still by quickly getting on the 'wrong' side, as they're just not expecting it and aren't in the habit of trying to make it difficult from that direction, so they just let you up before they've realised you were about to do that

Thanks, very interesting.

George wrote:

Roger wrote:

I love your new hairy horses! They are really glamourous!
Though, I really want that you recover soon and completely.

I'm getting used to doing everything left-handed for now, it's surprising how quickly you can adapt, and how funny it feels when you go back to doing things the right way round afterwards. I'm part metal after a bad accident, and for about a year I had to get on horses from the wrong side to protect the healing side and use the leg I could feel. And for the next twenty years of riding, I could get on from either side equally easily, which is apparently unusual skill (and surprised the horses as much as the people who saw me do it, hahah )

I find these experiences a lesson of life, instead of complaining or demotivating, resilient people is able of adapting and at the end taking advantage of a negative condition or circunstance.

Yeah, I've had several bad injuries or difficulties to get around, (smashed pelvis, spiral twist in spine, broken ankles, dislocating shoulder, separating sacro-iliac joint, burst appendix...I'm a catalogue of old injuries and repairs and scars, and that's even without the random small things like fingers and thumbs and my three-times-broken nose ) and it's always just a case of adapting and carrying on.
I don't believe that saying 'Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger', my version would be 'Whatever doesn't kill you leaves you a little bit more damaged and worn out, but more optimistic and determined than ever'

That's an impressive list of injuries, you must certainly have developed a good way to bounce back.

And I forgot about the foot : one time the horse spooked at a pigeon, jumped in the air, and landed right on top of my foot, crushing three metatarsal bones. They healed all lumpy and crooked but it doesn't hurt any more, and oddly enough the uneven stride caused by a not-very-flexible foot evens out the limp I had from the other leg being shorter, so actually I walk better now than I did before

But all this is part of why I don't ride anymore. Unlike a lot of people who give up riding I've kept my horse and she's staying with me for life, but I say we're both retired from the whole riding thing now - I'm just too beaten up to comfortably get on her back any more. We still spend plenty of time hanging out together, a couple of hours most days and longer when I'm not working and the weather's nice, I just stay on the ground beside her now, and she hasn't so much as seen her saddle in years

It is a real joy to watch your repaints George !
I really enjoy all of them , although I haven`t comment till now. You are very tallented.
And you have a great collection too.
Wish you a very fast recovery !

After a couple of weeks off painting, I'm back!

One of my favourite horse books is the good old Dorling Kindersley 'Ultimate Horse Book' from the 1990s - a precious and (to our family, very expensive!) gift from my grandad, the year I started riding lessons. It was the first time I'd ever seen or heard of most of the horse and pony breeds shown inside, and the photos in there are now so, so familiar, like I learnt them off by heart from all the times I flipped through the pages - they're ingrained in my mind to the point where they're often the first mental image I get when I think of any particular breed I haven't known personally.

So occasionally, when I want to paint a custom model of a breed, I decide to copy not just any random reference photo from the internet, but the exact horse or pony who was photographed as the example for this book.

Here's my first repaint back after my break, CollectA's lovely Norwegian Fjord, and the real pony he's copied from...

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You can see he's quite a deep golden colour, a much stronger shade than I'd have gone for if picking a more average example of their famous yellow dun colouration, but I think I did a pretty good job of matching the book pony! I can always do a pale one next time a Fjord model comes my way, it'd be fun to have a little herd of the different shades of dun they come in

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Here he is in full detail, I enjoyed doing the primitive zebra striping on the legs and need to find some more breeds I can scatter wibbly lines on

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And a 'before and after' shot to compare the original paintwork - the one on the right is my original finish Fjord posing with his repainted pal, proving this is another of my Paint A CollectA The Colour It Was Anyway habit

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Sorry some of these pictures are really dark, I was taking them indoors in a patch of sun by the window cos it's really rough and windy outside even when the sun's out, and I knew the entire set-up of scenery and horse would end up bouncing all round the garden if I tried for my usual outdoor photography!

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I've called him Gyllir, the name of a horse mentioned in the Norse sagas, it means 'golden' so it suits his national heritage and his colour nicely

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You can see his two-tone mane better in this angled shot, it's a shame the black doesn't show from the side but his haircut isn't sculpted with the longer-in-the-middle trim some real fjords are given, so I couldn't really do anything with paint to make it look that way.

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And there's the dorsal stripe, the most nerve-wracking bit of the entire paintjob as it has to go on in one single steady stoke of the brush, with no wobbles or shakes and no second chances. It's bad enough on the tiny Stablemate scale models, but this was three times further to hold my breath and keep my hand steady

Beautiful repaint and hurray that you are back to painting too! I love all the tones you have included, and that rich colour! I'm like you with a few dog breed books, every page is so familiar that I can run the book through in my head!

Beautiful model .I too have the same book and its a very good one on horse breeds.

what a lovely fjord you have painted there George, well done!
I especially like the stripes on his legs, what a wonderful touch
and that book looks familiar to me, I must have had a similar one some time

Yay glad you're back to providing eye candy, glad you're feeling better! Gyllir is quite the lovely dun, love the primitive stripes.
(Sorraia maybe, that would please Roger, though some mustangs show a fair bit of primitive striping)

Gyllir is so handsome! Amazing work! I love his striped legs

Bonnie wrote:

Beautiful repaint and hurray that you are back to painting too! I love all the tones you have included, and that rich colour! I'm like you with a few dog breed books, every page is so familiar that I can run the book through in my head!

I think the ones we got first, or were familiar with as children, somehow get 'learnt' in a way books collected later just don't!

Taos wrote:

Beautiful model .I too have the same book and its a very good one on horse breeds.

There's a bit of out of date info in there now (particularly what colours are found in certain breeds, as stud book rules have changed or individual horses have brought new colours in), but I do love it. Most of my reference pictures come from horses I've photographed myself, or found online, but I do like going back to the book now and then

sunny wrote:

what a lovely fjord you have painted there George, well done!
I especially like the stripes on his legs, what a wonderful touch
and that book looks familiar to me, I must have had a similar one some time

Thank you! The stripes really give a bit more detailing to the colour, when they don't have white markings it's handy to have something to add more interest to a simple colour.
The same photos, or different shots from the same photoshoot, were used in the Dorling Kindersley 'Encyclopedia of the Horse' later, I don't have that one cos it'd be doubling up the content I've already got, but I see pages from it quite often when Googling horse breeds, so I know what's in there

pipsxlch wrote:

Yay glad you're back to providing eye candy, glad you're feeling better! Gyllir is quite the lovely dun, love the primitive stripes.
(Sorraia maybe, that would please Roger, though some mustangs show a fair bit of primitive striping)

I think this forum will help prevent me from letting the painting habit fizzle out again, knowing people enjoy seeing them is a big positive motivation to provide more!

A Sorraia would be a lovely project, and I've considered it last time they were discussed on here, but I don't think I've got anything in my body box which would make a good one. I know Schleich released one, but I don't like the sculpt enough to choose it as my repaint, so I'm thinking perhaps a CollectA mould would be better, cos I do like their style much more.
In real life, Sorraia look like a mid point between Konik and Lusitano, but as plastic models can't be convinced to breed, I can't make that cross happen
I've got the Lusitano in my body box (bent legs, but hopefully can be fixed to stand steady) but I think he's too light and leggy. And the Konik mare has only just come into stock here, in very limited numbers, so I'd feel selfish taking one to repaint when there's so many collectors out there who need it for their own shelf as it is. Maybe a couple of years down the line, when supply issues have settled, and everyone's had chance to get their own Konik, then I'll treat myself to some duplicates and get painting them!

Joliezac wrote:

Gyllir is so handsome! Amazing work! I love his striped legs

Thank you! I've wanted to paint one of these ever since my first one arrived with rather lacklustre paintwork and I knew it had the potential to look so much better with a bit more contrast and detail, I'm pleased to have finally got round to making it happen :)