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

Today's custom introduction is WIA's criollo mould, sculpted by Morgen Kilbourn.

As soon as I saw these new models, I had the thought of how good the mould would look in the breed's famous wild pinto colouration, known as 'manchado' - you can see a few examples of how spectacular the colour is, here, here, and here : aren't they gorgeous!

It's a colour which is a little bit scary to tackle, but not too difficult once I actually get going - with co-operative paintbrushes of the right size and just the right dampness of paint, I find I can block in the mottled colour with careful jagged strokes and stipples, then go over the colour again with a finer brush to refine it and add more detailing, both white for the roany speckling, and colour for spots of dark within it. I've done a couple of Stablemate scale before, but this was my first time trying it on a larger 'canvas', so it was a case of being brave and hoping for the best

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I'm really pleased with how he turned out! I used a deep dark shade of bay for his base cos I find my more chestnut colour paints mix badly with the white and the models end up with an unrealistic yellowed-out ginger tone in the overlapping, where the redder browns look more natural.
His markings weren't copied from any one horse, cos it's far easier to play it by ear and just see what happens, so I just look at a lot of photos beforehand then try to make up something which looks possible, rather than attempting to fiddle in every speck of white and colour from a single reference.

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The big difference between my custom and the original is the haircut! If you look again at the reference photos I linked, you'll see the criollo's traditional trim is a short neat clipped cut along the crest of the neck, with the forelock left on as protection against flies, and the tuft at the withers to provide a hand-hold grip for a rider. Criollo saddles don't have a rigid tree with a horn like most stock saddles, they're fleece and skin over a pad, so the mane can be held on the way up when mounting, and as an anchor when working cattle or tackling steep terrain. The practical working mane trim has carried on as the correct turnout into the rodeo and show ring world, so the majority of ridden Criollo horses will have this short, upright mane left long at either end.

I didn't do any resculpting with putty for this change of style - first I cut the mane off with a mini hacksaw, carefully avoiding the parts I wanted to leave on, then filed it into an even arch along the line of the neck. Finally, I used the sharp corner edge of my file to pull in some of the grooves and creases at the tips, just to give it that textured edge rather than looking too bluntly plastic.
I also took the trailing tip off his tail - although the usual cut is much higher, not far below the hocks, the Erren scupt uses the tail for stability and to support his weight better, so I could only shorten it a little.

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A fun but unrealistic headshot, I was going to do one anyway to show the detailing on his face, but it amused me to line him up with one of the sunflowers in my garden

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Criollo halters are made with braided rawhide or cord, with knots rather than buckles to fasten, so they're fairly easy to make in miniature with braided thread. His big forelock makes it very hard to get on and off, though, there's a big bow holding it together on the other side

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I've named him Carrapicho, a name picked from the pedigree of a real stallion. A lot of them are given names to do with nature and plants, and this one translates as a kind of spiky burr found growing on their native pampas home.

I wouldn't suggest this mould for a custom unless it is someone incredibly talented as you.
The first picture you linked puzzled me, a horse with 6 legs but it was not easy to find the correct ones at first.
When you put so beautiful color pattern in a mould like this one, the result is fabulous for sure.
Carrapicho is also a Portuguese word, it is a plant but it is also best known as a portion of hair old ladies usually tie on the top of the head. Very pictoresque word.

Incredible! I LOVE the haircut, both the mane and tail, I like it even more than the original. That was not only clever but skillfully done. And you recreated that color perfectly! The details of his face are especially nice, all the color in his muzzle and expression in his eyes. What a great looking custom.

Really striking colouring and combined with that impressive pose the model looks so beautiful now!

Roger wrote:

I wouldn't suggest this mould for a custom unless it is someone incredibly talented as you.
The first picture you linked puzzled me, a horse with 6 legs but it was not easy to find the correct ones at first.
When you put so beautiful color pattern in a mould like this one, the result is fabulous for sure.
Carrapicho is also a Portuguese word, it is a plant but it is also best known as a portion of hair old ladies usually tie on the top of the head. Very pictoresque word.

I think it's a fun mould to paint, cos it's so smooth - there's no hair texturing like other brands use. Which is both good and bad when it comes to applying paint by brush - it does mean your colour doesn't catch on the raised bits and leave gaps in between, but it's also very unforgiving for any brush strokes or roughness, which can be hidden by a textured sculpt.

How funny that it's got the second meaning!

Jill wrote:

Incredible! I LOVE the haircut, both the mane and tail, I like it even more than the original. That was not only clever but skillfully done. And you recreated that color perfectly! The details of his face are especially nice, all the color in his muzzle and expression in his eyes. What a great looking custom.

Ahh, thanks! I love the haircut too, it's such a characteristic of the breed that if you spend any amount of time looking at pictures of them, the full-maned model seems wrong. I can see why they did it for the portrait sculpt, though, cos the horse in the book is feral/wild and doesn't have anyone to trim his mane for him

He's done rather well, I entered him in two photo shows the weekend he was finished : in one he placed first in his breed class, while in the other and he won his class, his section, and was division champion too

Bonnie wrote:

Really striking colouring and combined with that impressive pose the model looks so beautiful now!

Thanks! It's one of those colours I just had to go for, the breed does come in lots of sensible plain shades of bay and dun and chestnut too, but I've always had a soft spot for the patchy Manchado kind.

Today's post is dedicated to [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] - two Portuguese-breed custom repaints to introduce!

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First, an Altér Real, a strain developed and preserved at the royal stud. They're a little bit deeper in the neck and chest than the usual modern Lusitano's build, due to crossing with Andalusian and Carthusian stallions to bring the breed back to it's old type after they'd been spoilt with too much TB and Arabian crossing during Napoleon's era. So their typical shape is rather like a halfway point between the Lusitano and Andalusian, meaning I can use an Andalusian sculpt to represent one

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I'm not sure which photo I like best, so I'll just post both They're a breed which is almost entirely bay in colour, but through various shades from deep dark-chocolate brown right through to a gingery tan colour, always with black points. I picked a shade I don't paint very often, a medium bright bay, with just a little bit of dappling and shading to give him some depth. I've picked a name from a real pedigree, he's called Maravilha (but that's Harecroft Maravilha AR, to give him his full title with my show prefix and his breed suffix).

Second, I finally painted the Sorraia which @Roger's been wanting me to do since I joined the forum I've been reading lots about them lately (from both points of view : there's a side which says they're just one man's created breed made from local farm horses the right colour, and a side which says they're ancient natives and have always been there). Reading more made me want to do a custom, but I haven't got any Stablemate bodies which would suit, so I thought it would have to wait. Then I found that I'd already got one in my body box which would be an ideal match for the conformation and characteristics, just a bit bigger than I'd been considering so far : the CollectA Lusitano stallion!

The only down side is that my paint which would've been the right shade for their commonest colour had set solid in the pot, so I had to go for a slightly darker slate-grey colour, which is fine for the breed, just not the one we see most often in the example pictures (although having said that, I went to get a link and the main image on their Wikipedia page is one of the darker horses! )

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So here he is! I think the colour really suits the mould, and the pose works really well for a horse said to have come from a free-ranging herd, and currently living that way again in a nature reserve.

All Sorraia horses are dun, and they're all one of two kinds - either what's known as grulla (dun gene acting on a black coat), or occasionally bay dun. There's no red duns meaning there's no chestnut gene in there at all, no non-dun colours ever happen, and they don't have any white markings either. This very specific narrow colour range is cos all Sorraias come from the same handful of horses used at the start of the breeding project in the 1930s, and no crossing from other breeds has been done within the European herds, only in the USA - and those partbred individuals wouldn't be re-absorbed as purebred Sorraia if they ever came back to Europe, so any colours that crop up from their added Mustang ancestry won't change the breed standard.

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It's not a colour I paint very often, when I do a dun I usually go browner or more golden-coloured, but I enjoyed making it greyish without looking like an actual grey, and of course all the primitive zebra-markings were a lot of fun to detail in at the end.

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Another view of the markings, you can see the stripes on the legs but also the dorsal stripe down the middle of his back, and the faint shadows of striping coming from either side of it on his rump (also on the neck and shoulder, but his mane hides most of that!)

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Usually I know at once which is the 'good side' for my models to display and be photographed, and with my factory finish CollectA Lusitanos it's always been with them facing left, but on this one I'm kind of tempted to use this side instead! I love the big flying mane, and the two-tone colouring shows a lot better on this side than the other, the pale hairs giving a streaky effect along the outside edges is typical of the Sorraia and I think it would be best to display that feature when he goes on my website.

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His face also looks equally nice from either way, and even though his neck is turned a bit you can catch him in profile or near-profile with the right camera angle, so I think I will use this 'wrong' side as his right side

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I've named him Temerário, which means someone reckless or a daredevil (I've already got a Temeraire, but that's the French equivalent and he's named after a ship, and he's a different breed and colour, so I won't ever get them muddled up )

I've also got one more Portuguese introduction to make, but as he was bought and not painted myself, he'll be appearing on the General Additions board, rather than in this thread." />

Wonderful repaint on this "full of life" model and very beautiful display with appropriate background! I did'nt know this breed till Shleich released one model last year!

Beautiful! I noticed that Temerário has some stripes on his hind legs. I recently had a Stablemate with stripes there and thought it was a factory painting fault, but if you paint stripes then I know it can't be wrong. Great photos again. I like the ferns, how did you make them?

Caracal wrote:

Wonderful repaint on this "full of life" model and very beautiful display with appropriate background! I did'nt know this breed till Shleich released one model last year!

Thank you!

I was really pleased I'd got a background of the right country, most of them are just fields or fenced paddocks with some green landscape behind, but when I searched through the stack of pictures I found this one (and it's definitely Portugal, cos it came from inside a Breyer model's box and says 'Lusitano' across the top in big letters - I have to get the camera angle right to cut those horse breeds or names off when re-using these packaging pictures )

Taos wrote:

Thanks!

rogerpgvg wrote:

Beautiful! I noticed that Temerário has some stripes on his hind legs. I recently had a Stablemate with stripes there and thought it was a factory painting fault, but if you paint stripes then I know it can't be wrong. Great photos again. I like the ferns, how did you make them?

They're known as zebra stripes, or barring, or just grouped together under 'primitive dun factor' markings. Not all duns have them to any noticeable amount, and they're more distinct in some breeds than others, I've seen the really strong marks on Campolina, Sorraia, Fjords, some Mustangs, and some Highlands, but any dun can have enough striping to be notable.

The ferns are made from a single lifesize plastic fern leaf, which came from the fake flowers section in one of the big home decorating shops, I can't remember exactly but it has to be either B&Q or Dunelm or Wickes cos that's all I've ever been in. Cos the fronds are fractals you can snip one big one into lots of little ones, and the pieces look like individual ferns at a smaller scale. They're superglued to the base to stop them falling all over the place.

I feel really honoured that you dedicated such a beautiful post to me.
Both custom repaints are absolutely wonderful and it is a joy for me that you accepted my suggestion for a Sorraia.
Alter Real stud farm is in a village called Alter do Chão in a province of the South of Portugal which is called Alentejo. That's exactly the region which is represented in your landscape.
It is also very nice to see you studied carefully the Sorraia breed. There's a breeding population in Germany and that's probably the reason why Schleich released a model of this horse.
Everything is amazing and interesting to read so many thanks for bringing these Portuguese breeds to your topic.

George wrote:

They're known as zebra stripes, or barring, or just grouped together under 'primitive dun factor' markings. Not all duns have them to any noticeable amount, and they're more distinct in some breeds than others, I've seen the really strong marks on Campolina, Sorraia, Fjords, some Mustangs, and some Highlands, but any dun can have enough striping to be notable.

The ferns are made from a single lifesize plastic fern leaf, which came from the fake flowers section in one of the big home decorating shops, I can't remember exactly but it has to be either B&Q or Dunelm or Wickes cos that's all I've ever been in. Cos the fronds are fractals you can snip one big one into lots of little ones, and the pieces look like individual ferns at a smaller scale. They're superglued to the base to stop them falling all over the place.

Thanks, I need to check whether it was a dun, I can't remember which SM it was. The ferns look very realistic.

Roger wrote:

I feel really honoured that you dedicated such a beautiful post to me.
Both custom repaints are absolutely wonderful and it is a joy for me that you accepted my suggestion for a Sorraia.
Alter Real stud farm is in a village called Alter do Chão in a province of the South of Portugal which is called Alentejo. That's exactly the region which is represented in your landscape.
It is also very nice to see you studied carefully the Sorraia breed. There's a breeding population in Germany and that's probably the reason why Schleich released a model of this horse.
Everything is amazing and interesting to read so many thanks for bringing these Portuguese breeds to your topic.

I'm glad you like the finished result! I'd like to do another one at some point, Stablemate scale preferably - but I've got to wait for the right mould, the Iberian-looking one I've got at the moment isn't right (the same as I used for the Altér-Real, which looks too compact and muscular and tucked-in for a Sorraia, I'd rather use the Mirado or Rearing Andalusian - but I don't have those and they're not sold as regular run singles at the moment so I can't easily get hold of either)

How perfect about the background! I knew it was the right country but had no idea it was so precisely local to just the right place, thanks for the information!

I've got a bit behind on posting my repaint, so I'm just going to put them all in one big batch!

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Bright Lights, my first custom on the Missouri Fox Trotter mould. It's not a breed I know a great deal about, this is only my third model of one (after the CollectA chestnut mare, and the grey on this Stablemates mould). I looked up colours and while solid coats are the most common, there was also a really lovely example of a purebred in this bay pinto with quite subtle pinto patterning - just very high socks, a flash of white on the neck, and a mostly white tail.

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It's always fun painting a new mould for the first time, and this one has only been available in the 70th Anniversary blind bags, so I've not been able to buy them by choice, just by random luck. I'm kind of hoping a lot of these more recent moulds will make it to the next batch of 12 single horses sold on cards so you can see what you're getting. But knowing Breyer they'll probably just do more unicorns and blind bags (or blind bags that contain unicorns)

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My first ever Pony of the Americas custom, though the sculpt is one I've painted before. The 'POA' was developed by breeding small Appaloosas with Shetlands, to get the Pony size and tough nature combined with the flashy colour, they're quite a new breed compared to either of their contributing halves, but seem to be popular and much liked.

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They come in all variations of appaloosa pattern, but leopard and near-leopard seem to be the commonest, and I paint more roany blanket patterns normally, so I decided to go for full-body spotting this time! His base colour is bay, so the spots vary in colour from light brown to dark brown to black.

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Adding in the spots is always the most fun part of the process, making up a pattern and filling it in til there's just the right amount. Of course the number of spots any one horse will have varies hugely, from just a couple to hundred upon hundred, so that leaves me plenty of leeway for making up a realistic design!

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Another of the 70th Anniversary moulds, this is the Fighting Stallion - no breed given but I think he's usually regarded as a Mustang. I've called mine Daredevil.

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I've got some white paint which is rapidly trying to set solid, so I'm trying to use it up by doing horses which have layers of solid white as base coat and then smaller markings like patches or spots added, rather than applying just a bit of white over a painted colour That does make it tricky to get the colour on smoothly, the result always looks a little bit water-colour and tends toward messiness.

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This is Reckless, yet another tobiano cob on the mini Vanner mould. I have about eight of these to paint so there's bound to be a lot of different pintos

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I decided to do a dun/buckskin base colour this time, to use my golden shades of paint - in the end I settled on buckskin so didn't give him a dorsal stripe or leg barring.

The next horse is based on a fascinating reference picture I found online, here. I've tried to figure out what colour that horse is, genetically speaking, and the best I can come up with is that he's a sooty buckskin, going grey, but then also clipped, which really changes the look of the coat by taking off the coloured tips of the hairs. It especially messes with the look of dapples and greying, both of which this horse seems to have, so it's no wonder he's ended up all blotchy and mottled!

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It was a very hard colour to replicate, and I think mine does have less contrast between the dark and light because I was scared of spoiling it and stopped at a point which looked reasonably neat and nice, rather than adding more layers and risking ruining it into a paintstrokey blobby bit of impressionist art!

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He looks quite a bit darker in the shade, but when it's such a weird colour anyway I don't think any lighting would really flatter it - I doubt I'll ever enter this one in photo shows cos 'Sooty buckskin going grey but also clipped' isn't a colour there's ever a class for, and judges might just take one look and think I'm a messy painter

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I haven't chosen him a name yet, but the mould was sculpted as an Irish Draft, and as both buckskin and grey are found in that breed, there's no need to change it. The original horse in the reference picture has 'Galway' in his name, so I suspect he's either pure ID or at least a partbred one and from Ireland.

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And finally, an attempt at etching. This is when you take the factory paint off with a knife point or scraper, leaving the original colour behind only where you want it - usually in a pinto or appaloosa pattern, as that looks more dramatically different than just extending the white socks or giving it a new face marking.
It's very fiddly and time-consuming (getting both sides of this small foal mould to the amount I wanted took nearly two hours!) but looks quite fun when finished, and it made a change from painting.
There is a little bit of my own paint applied here, to give the hooves some colour and add the pink speckling on the face, but other than that it's just white plastic revealed by scratching off the black paint finish.

As always, absolutely amazing. I am sure other competitors are just fighting for second place if you enter them in a competition. The 'sooty buckskin going grey but also clipped' certainly doesn't look messy, it looks perfect to me. Useful to know that 'Fighter' may be a mustang. Shouldn't they normally have feathering? Ah, and now I understand what etching is.

These are all fantastic !
I really like all moulds and with your choises of colours, and your brushes, now they look fabulous !
The Pony of the Americas and the Irish Draft are probably my favorite, but it is actually hard to pick a favorite from all your amazing repaints.

George wrote:

:

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I haven't chosen him a name yet, but the mould was sculpted as an Irish Draft, and as both buckskin and grey are found in that breed, there's no need to change it. The original horse in the reference picture has 'Galway' in his name, so I suspect he's either pure ID or at least a partbred one and from Ireland.

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And finally, an attempt at etching. This is when you take the factory paint off with a knife point or scraper, leaving the original colour behind only where you want it - usually in a pinto or appaloosa pattern, as that looks more dramatically different than just extending the white socks or giving it a new face marking.
It's very fiddly and time-consuming (getting both sides of this small foal mould to the amount I wanted took nearly two hours!) but looks quite fun when finished, and it made a change from painting.
There is a little bit of my own paint applied here, to give the hooves some colour and add the pink speckling on the face, but other than that it's just white plastic revealed by scratching off the black paint finish.

the brown horse is really beautiful George! I like the subtle coat variations, all nicely blended.

And the etching is wonderful! Who thought to do such a technique ? I think that is just GREAT!! well done for being so creative :)

They are all great but the Appaloosa pony and the sooty buckskin are far above the others for me

Again really great customs. I always enjoy learning new things and that etching technics is really interesting.
About your Portuguese horses, I like the Mirado mold. Curiously, the name of the landscape is montado in Portuguese language, dehesa in Spanish, I guess since this kind of landscape also ocurs in other Mediterranean countries.

Wonderful repaints yet, the result of this etching is unbelievely realistic!

Wonderful repaints, I really admire your dedication to each individual horse, always researching them thoroughly and painting each one to the same amazing standard!

rogerpgvg wrote:

As always, absolutely amazing. I am sure other competitors are just fighting for second place if you enter them in a competition. The 'sooty buckskin going grey but also clipped' certainly doesn't look messy, it looks perfect to me. Useful to know that 'Fighter' may be a mustang. Shouldn't they normally have feathering? Ah, and now I understand what etching is.

Thanks!
The fun thing about model showing is that you can never really predict the outcome - a horse might win his way through the divisions and be supreme champion in one show, then not even place in his class in the next - it all depends on what else is entered on the day, and also what the judge is looking for. You never know!

Mustangs don't usually have feathering, some have just a little on the back of the fetlocks (like this Stablemates mould) but more often they're fairly smooth-legged.

costicuba wrote:

These are all fantastic !
I really like all moulds and with your choises of colours, and your brushes, now they look fabulous !
The Pony of the Americas and the Irish Draft are probably my favorite, but it is actually hard to pick a favorite from all your amazing repaints.

Thanks! I really enjoy choosing well-suiting colours for the various moulds, things which fit their breed and look good on them. I probably spend as much time deciding and researching as I do actually applying the paint!
Nice to know which you like most, I always do wonder what other people think of the colour combinations, especially when they're changing the breed from whatever the mould was sculpted as.

sunny wrote:

the brown horse is really beautiful George! I like the subtle coat variations, all nicely blended.

And the etching is wonderful! Who thought to do such a technique ? I think that is just GREAT!! well done for being so creative :)

I'm glad you like him! These challenging colours are really rewarding when they do work, even if they're a bit daunting to get started on, and scary at the time of painting!

No idea who came up with the idea of etching, I've been aware of it since I got into the hobby at the end of the 1990s and I suspect it's been around for a lot longer than that. I tend to prefer working with paint, but it is nice to make a change to a totally different technique now and then.

Kikimalou wrote:

They are all great but the Appaloosa pony and the sooty buckskin are far above the others for me

Thanks very much! Those two seem the most popular, I'd been planning them both for a while so it's really satisfying to know they worked out so well.

Roger wrote:

Again really great customs. I always enjoy learning new things and that etching technics is really interesting.
About your Portuguese horses, I like the Mirado mold. Curiously, the name of the landscape is montado in Portuguese language, dehesa in Spanish, I guess since this kind of landscape also ocurs in other Mediterranean countries.

Thanks again! I'm learning so much on this forum, and not all of it about model animals!

Caracal wrote:

Wonderful repaints yet, the result of this etching is unbelievely realistic!

Thank you very much! I'll have to try the etching on a bigger model at some point, I picked the foal because it was a smaller surface to cover with the tiny scratches but now I've done it once I'm going to have to go bigger next time!

Bonnie wrote:

Wonderful repaints, I really admire your dedication to each individual horse, always researching them thoroughly and painting each one to the same amazing standard!

Thanks so much! I love the research side, creating little authentic characters rather than just picking pretty colours to put on whatever mould comes to hand. I don't think I'd find much interest or creativity in just doing easy colours on basic breeds I already knew about, for me half the fun is in the planning stage. There's huge satisfaction in adding a new rare breed to the collection by creating my own custom of it, reading up on each breed and its history, as well as choosing the colours and markings it could and should have.
I think that's why I enjoy customising so much, there's more to it than just learning how to paint neatly, you also learn so much about the breeds themselves, and even plenty of geography and world history along the way.

So many beautiful repaints again! You've been busy, wow!  
I love the buckskin going grey, such a unique color! And you nailed it! It must have been so difficult to paint. I struggle even with regular buckskins, for some reason I always add too much yellow.

Yes, I think that's probably one of the hardest colours I've ever tackled, so I was really relieved he looks ok after all!

Today I've got a nice little trio of customs to introduce.

A while back, we were talking on the forum about how hard it had been for UK collectors to buy some of the recent Stablemates, with long delays, low stock, and some retailers not bothering with them. I shared pictures when I'd finally got hold of the six new single horses - these ones, released last year in the US and this year internationally. One of the most sought-after moulds in the batch is the Mini Alborozo, that Andalusian in the top left of the linked photo.
He's been easy to buy as a unicorn version in the years since the mould made it's debut, but cast in his normal horsey form without the horn, he's only been issued once as a regular run - and even that was as a blind bag so you couldn't just order the one you wanted.
So, when I finally found somewhere selling the recent Stablemates, I put an extra Alborozo on the order so I'd have one to repaint.

A few weeks later, a collector friend of mine happened to post a Wanted ad on a model horse site, for that exact release. So I offered my spare, if she could send me a couple of Stablemates in trade - one to replace the Alborozo, plus one to cover the cost of postage, just so I wouldn't be out of pocket as well as out of the horse I'd wanted to paint As she'd been willing to pay well above market value to find this model, she kindly sent me one of the blank unicorn Alborozo from a painting kit, and not one but three horses from her own body box.

Trading or buying second hand lots is always an interesting way to get models to repaint - rather than choosing in advance what sculpts or breeds I'd like to do more of, and deliberately seeking them out to buy, instead I find myself with a random selection and the fun's in deciding what to do with them. What colour haven't I painted yet on that mould I've had loads of? Which breed could this be which it hasn't been before? What shall I do with my first on this sculpt? Lots of planning and research and decision-making, which as you've probably noticed by now, is one of my favourite bits of the customising process

So, here's the majority of my little traded parcel, in their new colours (the Alborozo unicorn is still sitting in his blank state waiting, these are the gifted extras to make up for the postage cost)

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The one I was most excited to start was a G1 mould, one of very few which have found their way to me over the years.

Usually, I wouldn't repaint a vintage model, as someone else might've wanted it in the original finish for their collection, but this one was beyond minor touch-ups, with deep scuffs down to bare plastic, and a snapped leg which had been very lumpily glued. To restore it to looking new, or even presentably decent, would've been near impossible. And if I'm going to be repainting any of these lovely older sculpts, then this was my guilt-free chance - no point ruining one which would've been nice enough left alone, and a badly damaged model gets a new lease of life.

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Although the mould was sculpted as Silky Sullivan, a famous Thoroughbred racehorse of the 1950s, I looked at it in hand and thought I saw potential for a nice match to a much rarer breed - less common both in real life, and in model form.
And so she became a Budyonny (sometimes spelled as Budenny), a breed developed as the ideal cavalry horse, from Thoroughbreds crossed with mainly Russian Don mares. They're a very distinctive looking breed, but there's something about this mould which just works - the high withers, the set of the shoulder and neck, the sloping rump, and even the way the head is held.

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The Budyonny comes in black, bay, grey, or chestnut, much like most warmblood and partbred TB breeds, but the Don blood also brought in their wonderfully specific kind of chestnut with a metallic sheen, and darker mane and tail. So it seemed perfect to choose this rarer colour, and give my little mare a hint of gold brushed over her paint.
The freeze branding on the shoulder is something I noticed in many, many photographs of the breed while I was reading up on them, so I added in this registration mark of numbers and letters with white on a very fine brush.

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I can't remember which hind leg was broken, I think it was this side? I carved the excess glue back and sanded the join smooth, but gave her white socks to disguise any slight imperfection where it was reattached! I've named her Birzha, which means 'chestnut' in Ukrainian, one of the countries where the breed had it's roots, although they're now exported and bred worldwide.

The next mould isn't at all rare or hard to find, the G2 Rearing Arabian.

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I've painted quite a lot of these before, and when I counted back through them it turned out the only colour found in pure Arabians which I hadn't already done on this sculpt was bay, so bay he became! He's named Al Amir, picked from a real horse pedigree to save myself having to learn more Arabic vocabulary

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It might seem a bit boring, the commonest horse colour on a very commonly seen mould, and a breed which is one of the most often-made of all model horses, but it was still interesting to give him a nice rich coat colour.
I polished him up with a piece of fleece blanket once the paint was dry, buffing them briskly with something very soft like synthetic fleece or a microfibre duster cloth just gives a little extra shine without resorting to varnish or polish!

And the final horse is another G2 mould, one of my favourites - the lovely chunky, kind-faced Warmblood :)

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Again, I've painted this mould in many colours already, from the usual solid bays and greys we'd expect to see on warmblood breeds, through to roan and buckskin, tobianos, and even a couple of spotted patterns for variety. But my previous bays were one very plain brown shade like dark chocolate, and one extremely light almost sandy-coloured bay - I'd never done a really bright, vivid, red-based bay with dapples and high contrast shading, and that's one of my favourite colours to paint, so I decided it was about time I combined it with this mould I like so much.

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He turned out really nicely, almost exactly what I had in mind. He'll be a Holstein, the mould wasn't ever given a specific breed when it was released but with that build it's got to be one of the heavier good old European warmbloods, and Holsteiner seems as good a match as any!
I think his name will be Gladiator, or Gladiateur - I haven't quite decided yet which language/pronounciation suits him most. But it's nice to have one more for my Warmblood collection, and to have got round to a colour which I might otherwise not have done, if it hadn't been for the exchange of horses arranged, and the good luck that I had a spare copy of the right model to trade in!

Beautiful horses again 🤩 I love the Budyonny especially. Great great color choice, indeed the special Don color. And very special vintage mold, what a gem
I like the little details like the freeze branding too!
And the two bays are wonderful too, you can never have too many bays! Especially if they are rich dappled bays