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

Wonderful repaints! I hadn't paid attention to this before, but I now notice how well you paint horses' eyes. What does the branding on the Budyonny mean?

The sloping rump was the first thing I noticed on your Budyonny.
When you forget which leg was broken, it reveals how perfect is the job.
Gladiateur sounds less bloody to me. I think the softest French accent works better.
Despite the apparent simplicity, I love the Arabian and your pictures are perfect as always.
Thanks again for showing what a talented person can do with such small pieces of brittle plastic.

George wrote:

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oh I love Birzha! her expression and delicate face are just stunning! And her sleek beautiful body - she is so perfect!

You have painted her so well George.

That was a lovely package from your friend. Perhaps you could saw off the unicorn horn to get your paintable horse after all ??

Ana wrote:

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

Thank you so much! It's always lovely hearing what people think of what I've done. I've never painted a Don custom, so this is the closest - she's my first Budyonny too, actually. Glad to expand the range of breeds I've got, there's something really satisfying about making a brand new page for my site, like it's filling a gap and ticking something off the list!

I think the temptation as a painter is to concentrate on the rare and interesting colours, and we overlook the 'boring' colours like bay or chestnut

rogerpgvg wrote:

Wonderful repaints! I hadn't paid attention to this before, but I now notice how well you paint horses' eyes. What does the branding on the Budyonny mean?

It's really tricky getting much detail into a Stablemate scale eye! I always try to give them an expression by angling the eye-white, or placing the iris colour ever so slightly off-centre so they're looking in a certain direction if the pose suggests the real horse would be.

I don't know the precise meaning of the freeze brands for this breed. It does varyu a lot, between breeds and countries or even just traditions within herds. Sometimes they're a random allocation of letters and numbers just so the horse can be recorded (like a car registration plate), sometimes they're the initials of the breeder or the stud farm, sometimes they signify a year code. The number sometimes refers to the number of foals born in a herd in a year, so the first foal has 1, the second has 2, and so on. But if you just mean was there a meaning for the brand I chose, I picked HF for my fictional 'Harecroft Farm', and 4 because it's all straight lines which are easier to paint in tiny strokes than curved numbers are

Roger wrote:

The sloping rump was the first thing I noticed on your Budyonny.
When you forget which leg was broken, it reveals how perfect is the job.
Gladiateur sounds less bloody to me. I think the softest French accent works better.
Despite the apparent simplicity, I love the Arabian and your pictures are perfect as always.
Thanks again for showing what a talented person can do with such small pieces of brittle plastic.

Yes, it's a bit of a funny shape for a Thoroughbred sculpt, that's why I started thinking what else I could switch it to!

I think I will go with the French version, as well as sounding more pleasant I find the English word reminds me too much of the Russell Crowe film

And thank you! I have a lot of fun with these little customs, picking colours and breeds I want to make and own, so really it's being creative for my own amusement and catering to my own taste in horses, but it's lovely hearing what other people think of them, too.

sunny wrote:

oh I love Birzha! her expression and delicate face are just stunning! And her sleek beautiful body - she is so perfect!

You have painted her so well George.

That was a lovely package from your friend. Perhaps you could saw off the unicorn horn to get your paintable horse after all ??

Ahhh, thanks! It's such a pretty mould, the sculptor's art style has a soft and graceful touch compared to the modern ones, which tend to have more definition but less of that artistic interpretation. I wish they were still in production, so they were easier to get hold of - I'd love to be able to paint more of them, but they're hard to find, often expensive, and as I said I'd feel too bad about repainting any nice-condition rare ones which somebody else would like to keep!

And yes, the horns come off quite easily, I've done several cos there's quite a few moulds which've been easier to buy as unicorns - I snip them with scissors then carve the forehead smooth with a scalpel. So he'll get to be a 'real' horse soon enough - just have to decide a colour

Thanks for the explanation about the branding, again something more I learnt.

George wrote:

Roger wrote:

The sloping rump was the first thing I noticed on your Budyonny.
When you forget which leg was broken, it reveals how perfect is the job.
Gladiateur sounds less bloody to me. I think the softest French accent works better.
Despite the apparent simplicity, I love the Arabian and your pictures are perfect as always.
Thanks again for showing what a talented person can do with such small pieces of brittle plastic.

Yes, it's a bit of a funny shape for a Thoroughbred sculpt, that's why I started thinking what else I could switch it to!

I think I will go with the French version, as well as sounding more pleasant I find the English word reminds me too much of the Russell Crowe film

It really does. I think this warmblod is not a race horse or you could call him George Russell. Sorry, I'm a Formula 1 addicted guy.

Back after nearly a month break from painting - with something very big and precious to share!

Normally, I don't paint many resin models, they're a bit beyond my budget. And I don't paint anything larger than CollectA, as they're too big for me. So a large scale resin? Not something I've ever tackled before!

But recently, one of my long-time friends contacted me with a wonderfully generous offer I couldn't refuse - would I like one of his resin sculptures to paint? No charge, just that he'd really like to see one in colour, and thought my painting style and area of interest would suit the horse in question so well - a historical hunter.

Years ago, we got to know each other not only though the model horse world where we collected the same brand and met at the company's live show, but also a shared interest in horsey art and writing online - we often drew things for the same events, and got to know each other's fictional horse and rider characters. So with the resin in question being a portrayal of a hunter from 'my' era, and me being known for drawing historical hunters, it was a perfect match.

I just had to be brave and scale up my painting by quite a lot, as this mare is the size of a small Traditional scale Breyer (those are 1:9 scale, she'd be a little less, but resins tend to be made and sold under the wording of the horse hobby rather than mathematically scaled number ratios, so 'Traditional' she is)
You can see her on the official shop page here : [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

I waited til my sculptor friend had seen and had chance to talk about the photos of the finished horse before posting her here, as it seemed a bit rude to go showing other people before her creator got 'first look', but now it's time to introduce her : meet Red Queen!

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Red Queen is one of the fictional horses I made up a few years ago - there used to be regular community art events where lots of people drew their horses doing the same thing, for sharing together on a certain deadline - maybe showing, or jumping, or in this case, hunting. The other artists taking part drew modern scenes, so a lot of events I couldn't take part in, but I could get away with virtually sending my historical characters along, as hunting hasn't changed very much over the generations (no foxes now, but I never did put foxes or hounds in my pictures anyway), so they didn't look out of place at all.

The drawn version was a rather chunkier horse than the resin, which is very long and lean-legged, but it doesn't matter too much - it's more the colour, the markings, and the personality of the horse which I'm translating across to 3D form.

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Here she is the first time I drew her, making on her first appearance on the hunting field - Aubrey is a hopelessly ineffective rider, but doesn't like to admit weakness, and will insist on hiring a horse which is far too much for him to handle, for the sake of trying to look good on something impressive. Usually they sneak along slowly at the back for a bit, then take a detour to the pub, where he'll tie the horse up outside and spend the rest of the day seeing how much he can drink. Sometimes he doesn't even remember to return the horse, and most of the dealers hiring them out have started to refuse him.
Red Queen is far too keen on bombing along toward the front of the field to go steady or wander off part way through - she's really going for it, and Aubrey's hanging on for dear life - but for how long can he stay in the saddle?

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Not for long, it turns out! Red Queen's still jumping with enthusiasm, but she's lost her passenger somewhere along the way. Val, in the green coat, is hunt staff and planning on catching the loose horse he's spotted as soon as they move onto level ground. Iris, on the chestnut horse, is thinking it looks quite the powerful jumper, with attitude and bravery, and might go and try it out another day, if the dealer's open to selling rather than hiring.

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And here she is with Iris on their first hunt after the sale went through. With a more effective rider and a change of tack, Red Queen is much more under control and enjoying her job.

Now, on to the creation of her model counterpart. I took some progress stages to show my friend the way the paintjob develops, and thought they might be of interest here too.

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And then a photoshoot all finished -

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But I was never happy with these pictures, cos the light in my garden is so terrible at this time of year, with the sun low near the horizon it barely clears the roof and wall, what does reach in is streaked with tree shadows, and the models themselves cast a shadow on the backdrop if it's held at anything but this awkward angle, which doesn't flatter the horse well.

So, finally fed up with not being able to take pictures of any of my other recent arrivals or repaints, I convinced my mum to drive me and a box of towel-wrapped model horses into the open landscape outside the village, so I could take photos without the problem of catching small patches of light, or shadows on backgrounds! So Red Queen went along too, to see if I could get some nicer pictures than first time round.

And here she is, looking a lot brighter against a beautiful blue sky! It was -4 so the ground was icy under foot (you can see the frozen stripes in the ditch water), I held her up with one hand and the camera in the other and tried not to blur the shots by shivering, or breathe condensation into the scene like fog

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Painting a much bigger horse wasn't too scary, but I think it helped that I was so grateful for the gift, and determined to do justice to the sculptor's trust in my ability, which made me motivated to hurry along and get her painted up. I couldn't have left this one gathering dust for ten years like the others!

Your Red Queen is absolutely stunning! And that is such a kind gesture by your friend, a lovely way to combine two amazing talents!
And I completely agree, I'm like that too, when I have to work for someone or for some purpose my repaints/ sculpts always turn out much better! It was so nice to read the story behind this magnificent horse too!

Your Artistic level is out of this world. It is a honour to watch your pictures and your works. You surely deserved this gesture because this level of ability is also a gift to everyone around you.

George wrote:

And then a photoshoot all finished -

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I really like how the sun has captured the reddish part by her flank/hindquarters and the richness of colour really comes out! The small splashes of white on her belly are superb, and I can also see the thickness of her coat on her upper legs where it has not been shaved. Great details!
Splendid job George and very kind of your friend to think about you with this model.
I like the lively pose too and the big blue eyes, as well as the stripey grey and white hooves. They look amazing.
-how did the right side turn out, I couldn't see a pic?

I'm just wondering - the tail is docked! - does that still happen??

and your drawings of the horses are really superb. I like your style very much. Did you draw them by hand? (computer hand:D)

Not only is this absolutely fantastic model, but your storytelling is brilliant, and the 2D artwork too!
I'm so impressed with your multiple talents! And knowledge about horses and equestrian culture

Thank you for showing your works this way, it's such a joy to see and read about them

I'm also a fan of Tomas's works, sculptures, and felted horses. And now he's preparing 1:12 stable sets, I can't wait when they are available

Again, beautiful work all around. The paint job, the background story, the 2D artwork, and the photography. Everything  

Bonnie wrote:

Your Red Queen is absolutely stunning! And that is such a kind gesture by your friend, a lovely way to combine two amazing talents!
And I completely agree, I'm like that too, when I have to work for someone or for some purpose my repaints/ sculpts always turn out much better! It was so nice to read the story behind this magnificent horse too!

Yes, we found it quite amusing to be combining two art styles, my colouring with his rendition of outline and detail. I've never painted something I've discussed with the sculptor first, we talked about my idea and looked back at the drawings of Red Queen before I even got the paints out, so it felt more like a collaboration project in 3D than the normal customisation process where you buy the blank model to do your own colour idea onto, not expecting the sculptor will ever see it.

Roger wrote:

Your Artistic level is out of this world. It is a honour to watch your pictures and your works. You surely deserved this gesture because this level of ability is also a gift to everyone around you.

I'm very flattered! I think perhaps the fact I'm into horsey art - both creating my historical pictures, and looking at real artists' work from throughout history - that influences the way I paint models. The compliment I get most often is the word 'painterly' and I suspect that's coming through because I paint with a brush, by hand, never any airbrushing or pastelling, which is what the majority of model horse artists use to create and refine their colours. Mine are done just like painting on canvas, blended and smudged and highlights/details applied with various brushes, so there's bound to be similarities with a painterly art style.

sunny wrote:

I really like how the sun has captured the reddish part by her flank/hindquarters and the richness of colour really comes out! The small splashes of white on her belly are superb, and I can also see the thickness of her coat on her upper legs where it has not been shaved. Great details!
Splendid job George and very kind of your friend to think about you with this model.
I like the lively pose too and the big blue eyes, as well as the stripey grey and white hooves. They look amazing.
-how did the right side turn out, I couldn't see a pic?

I'm just wondering - the tail is docked! - does that still happen??

and your drawings of the horses are really superb. I like your style very much. Did you draw them by hand? (computer hand:D)

I never expected to be painting this colour when I designed her for drawing, there's a lot of shading cos her brown really does vary from very dark to very reddish, but it was really interesting to be working from my own pictures rather than a reference photo.
Yes, the clip outlines on the legs are a very specific design choice! A freshly clipped horse will look very stark and naked on the body, the cut hairs are very pale near the roots so the horse's body colour is muted and light. And I didn't want to paint one like that, cos I love the deep colours! Once the clip starts to grow out, with the tips of new hairs coming through with their full glossy rich colour on, the horse is much closer to it's unclipped colour again - but there'll still be the seam lines on the legs where the coat wasn't clipped. That's the stage I chose to paint for her.

The other side is fine, I just picked the best photos from the 'bad' photoshoot so these didn't make the cut!

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Her face marking is nicer this side - I made up a more interesting shape for the side which was going to be seen in the first drawing! But the model having a slight bend to one side, looks better from the other side, all models have a good side and less flattering one and it's almost always to do with the sculpt rather than how well the paint turned out.

No, tail docking has been banned in Britain for a really long time, I think it was made fully illegal in the 1940s but already getting to be disapproved of and unfashionable before that. But my characters are written from the Edwardian to between-the-wars era (these particular drawings are around 1920), and the horse was sculpted as a historical piece too.

They're drawn digitally, with a graphics tablet and pen - not like an ipad-style tablet, the Wacom kind which has high-tech pressure and angle sensitivity, so it's more like drawing/colouring on physical paper. But with the blessing of erase and undo functions, so you can be messy in progress then tidy everything up by the end!

Ana wrote:

Not only is this absolutely fantastic model, but your storytelling is brilliant, and the 2D artwork too!
I'm so impressed with your multiple talents! And knowledge about horses and equestrian culture

Thank you for showing your works this way, it's such a joy to see and read about them

I'm also a fan of Tomas's works, sculptures, and felted horses. And now he's preparing 1:12 stable sets, I can't wait when they are available

Again, beautiful work all around. The paint job, the background story, the 2D artwork, and the photography. Everything  

Thank you! My creativity seems to swap around regularly, at some points I was doing a lot of writing but couldn't persuade myself to pick up a model and paint it no matter how hard I tried, other times I can't draw a thing but can happily paint ten customs in a week

Horses and history are such a wonderful combination of two interests, I love getting the settings and tack details as accurate as possible. I've been researching and reading 'my' era for half a lifetime, reading books featuring from the 1880s through to the 1940s - not just informative non-fiction books on horses, but compilations of satirical hunting magazines, hunter society stud books, Edwardian era farming and horsekeeping topics, and plenty of horsey novels written then, too. The equipment is a special interest, too - I've got whole books on the development and fashions of tack through the ages, and I collect it, too - mostly just bits, for reasons of finding space to keep a collection : it's easier to hang a few hundred bits on the hall walls than it is to set up another saddle rack in the bedroom That saddle Red Queen is wearing, seen best where she's flying over the jump loose without Aubrey, is copied directly from one I own, made between the wars, with a mended seat and the colour wearing off from a lot of use!

I don't paint many customs based on my fictional horses, so I don't get chance to show much of the artwork along with the models. But I do have one in progress for my main hunter Horatio - he's being made out of a Breyer Classic with more milliput filler than original plastic showing

There's definitely no room in my house to start adding stables, but I'm still looking forward to seeing them!

And thanks, again. This was my first time trying outdoor photography with the real scenery instead of background pictures, and although it was freezing cold and the landscape wasn't really ideal, it was a success. I might try again at some point in summer, if I can think of some prettier areas to pose them in - and convince my mum she wants another trip, cos I don't drive and can't safely carry models on my bike

I miss english words to tell how I admire your talent and skill to paint your models, so:

George wrote:

I never expected to be painting this colour when I designed her for drawing, there's a lot of shading cos her brown really does vary from very dark to very reddish, but it was really interesting to be working from my own pictures rather than a reference photo.
Yes, the clip outlines on the legs are a very specific design choice! A freshly clipped horse will look very stark and naked on the body, the cut hairs are very pale near the roots so the horse's body colour is muted and light. And I didn't want to paint one like that, cos I love the deep colours! Once the clip starts to grow out, with the tips of new hairs coming through with their full glossy rich colour on, the horse is much closer to it's unclipped colour again - but there'll still be the seam lines on the legs where the coat wasn't clipped. That's the stage I chose to paint for her.

The other side is fine, I just picked the best photos from the 'bad' photoshoot so these didn't make the cut!


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Her face marking is nicer this side - I made up a more interesting shape for the side which was going to be seen in the first drawing! But the model having a slight bend to one side, looks better from the other side, all models have a good side and less flattering one and it's almost always to do with the sculpt rather than how well the paint turned out.

No, tail docking has been banned in Britain for a really long time, I think it was made fully illegal in the 1940s but already getting to be disapproved of and unfashionable before that. But my characters are written from the Edwardian to between-the-wars era (these particular drawings are around 1920), and the horse was sculpted as a historical piece too.

They're drawn digitally, with a graphics tablet and pen - not like an ipad-style tablet, the Wacom kind which has high-tech pressure and angle sensitivity, so it's more like drawing/colouring on physical paper. But with the blessing of erase and undo functions, so you can be messy in progress then tidy everything up by the end!

ah alright! now I understand George, it's because of the era you prefer! I thought of George Stubbs immediately (or that 'era'
It's good to see lambs with long tails in the fields too.

thank you for explaining about the just clipped hairs being lighter. I understand the fine attention to detail that you take note of.
And about the coat just growing in and being darker. It makes your models so much more to appreciate when I read all the details and stories that went into them. It's like I am privy to this exciting unfolding and the spectacle at the end.

I just want to say that her face has a beautiful sea swirl (crashing wave) of white under her eye. It looks so beautiful on her! and I love the extra white splashes on her stomach. So pretty!

I've never done any digital drawing, thanks for explaining. I can see why it is way more convenient when making changes and alterations to your horse.
I've only ever used photoshop on a pc but that was over 10 years ago. And never with a 'pen'.

I'm trying to catch up on posting, here's the other 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, but I've only just got round to cropping and uploading the pictures.

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.

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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 love and cuddles', which is pretty adorable in a world where horses can easily be passed on and forgotten when they stop winning.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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A big spotted bottom!

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His black bits aren't quite jet black, which made him much more interesting to paint - his nose is especially shaded.

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The other side, cos I often neglect the 'wrong' side when a mould looks better from a certain direction

And finally, one more CollectA custom, the Yakut horse

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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

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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!

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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

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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!

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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!

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

Very beautiful paintings on Frodon, Harley and that Yakut horse!

I really enjoy all your customs, stories and pictures. However, I think I get more excitment when the horses being used are CollectA. I'm not intending to tell they're better than Breyer and in the end, they're Breyer too.
It is because I'm more used with them or because they fall into a size range which I collect.
Despite my better knowledge about CollectA moulds, I'd never guess one of them is the American cream draft. It looks so incredibly different. I think I've also never noticed how beautiful is this Yakut. Those colors show much better the virtues of this sculpt and it even looks the model gained a new atitude. The contrasting hairy parts and the rich color of the body fits it perfectly.

Those are lovely! I love the subtle tone changes on a clipped Frodo(n) color. Funny how it's well visible in certain light conditions, and other times it's almost not noticeable.
Harley looks super, very beautifully painted and this is a perfect mold for his portrait indeed!
And a lovely color choice for the Yakut horse too

More beautiful customs! The colouring on the CollectA Yakut especially is stunning!

The Yakut horse has wonderful shading. Although it is a bit stylised, I love the Breyer Thoroughbred sculpt. With your more subtle and detailed painting, they become very realistic. How funny that there was a virtual Grand National. Could people better on the winner? I am surprised how small the real Potter's Corner. Is this common for a steeplechase horse?

What an amazing repaints! The CollectA draft and Yakut horse looks way better in their new coats. I especially like the portrait of Harley, his pattern suits this horse great.

Caracal wrote:

Very beautiful paintings on Frodon, Harley and that Yakut horse!

Thank you! It's nice being able to pick up the paints and create a new colour mode, especially when it's the one I think the company should have released in the first place

Roger wrote:

I really enjoy all your customs, stories and pictures. However, I think I get more excitment when the horses being used are CollectA. I'm not intending to tell they're better than Breyer and in the end, they're Breyer too.
It is because I'm more used with them or because they fall into a size range which I collect.
Despite my better knowledge about CollectA moulds, I'd never guess one of them is the American cream draft. It looks so incredibly different. I think I've also never noticed how beautiful is this Yakut. Those colors show much better the virtues of this sculpt and it even looks the model gained a new atitude. The contrasting hairy parts and the rich color of the body fits it perfectly.

Ah, but CollectA are only distributed by Breyer within the USA, here they're still supplied separately from different wholesalers and sold by different stockists, ours are even still stamped and labelled the old way without mention of another brand made or the 'corral pals' term, I don't think UK collectors would connect the two companies at all.
They're definitely a more familiar size for the majority of collectors on here, though, you can imagine how these would look and feel in your hands.
Yes, the Yakut seems to have a much different personality than my original finish one! I think the colour brings out the detail of the mould and gives the eyes more expression. It's a pity they didn't use the new-style paintwork designs on all the recent releases, so many of them got detailed faces and eye colours but the Yakutian missed out.

Ana wrote:

Those are lovely! I love the subtle tone changes on a clipped Frodo(n) color. Funny how it's well visible in certain light conditions, and other times it's almost not noticeable.

I love how painting racehorses has forced me to really vary and concentrate on the everyday 'boring' colours like bay, not painting them in too formulaic way cos I know what worked before and what was easiest to get right - the fact so MANY of these horses I wanted to paint are the same base colour of bay, but also so varied, and need to look like their real selves, that's pushed me to make my bays more varied and give each one the little subtleties of shading or clip to match the photos.

Bonnie wrote:

More beautiful customs! The colouring on the CollectA Yakut especially is stunning!

Thanks! He's up among my favourite CollectA repaints now, some customs just work out exactly right somehow and he's one of these.

rogerpgvg wrote:

How funny that there was a virtual Grand National. Could people better on the winner? I am surprised how small the real Potter's Corner. Is this common for a steeplechase horse?

I can't remember if there was betting - probably, even if it was the unofficial sort done between people by phone apps if the shops didn't offer it? To be honest I never bet on the racing, I just like watching it to see the horses.

And I think that photo might be a bit misleading for size, cos he's not standing beside a jockey (or trainer, who are often former jockeys) - that's his owner, who's a Welsh rugby player, and therefore probably about a foot taller than the kind of person we normally see beside a horse for scale!
I know the horse's height wasn't something highlighted when he was racing - the commentary team will pick up something like a horse being unusually tall or short and work it in to how they refer to him, and I don't remember them talking about him as a small one. So I think it is just cos he's standing with a big rugby bloke and not a short jockey!

Katarzyna wrote:

What an amazing repaints! The CollectA draft and Yakut horse looks way better in their new coats. I especially like the portrait of Harley, his pattern suits this horse great.

Thanks! Glad you like them, I always enjoy giving horses a new coat of colour anyway, and it's great when they can be portraits of real horses I've liked, too.

Thanks. Yes, it may be a tall man rather than a small horse.

I love them all! I think Whistlejacket is my favorite!

I am very behind on seeing your customs, all of which are the same excellent quality as always, but I want to especially congratulate you on that resin! She is absolutely stunning, both as a sculpt and the paint you gave her. What a beautiful rich bay and such cool markings. I also like that she is an established character. I follow a lot of people on DeviantArt who did competitive roleplay art for horses (HRPG), and the art if often incredible! Did you participate on that platform? The digital paintings are just as excellent as the model painting. The multiple horse scenes with humans and backgrounds - holy smokes, that are so difficult and time consuming and intimidating. You're such a talented artist, I'm so glad you share these with us.