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

Thank you!
And I'm so glad you spotted what I'd done with her eye; there's always a little moment of pausing to think 'which way is this one looking?' as I hover my brush to drop in the pink highlight (the first layer of paint which alters the expression/direction of the eye, beneath that it's plain black), there's usually some thought behind it :)

Wow, so many beautiful customs! And the last two are especially amazing! I love these two breeds a lot And I like that you added a rope halter, looks perfect for a Camargue horse.

Do you participate in any model horse photo shows? Your customs are so great and the photos are also perfect. I think you would do great

Glorious repaints!!!

Thank you both!

I used to do photo shows regularly, when they were advertised on forums and entered by email or by uploading photos to hosting albums like photobucket, but these days almost all of them are held only on Facebook, so I can't take part any more.
But really, I just take the photos this way cos I still like doing it, rather than with the hope of ever showing them!

What a pair of stunners, and each so different. I love what you did with camargue especially, how you were faithful to the somewhat wild and unpampered look. The brand and the rope halter are especially nice realistic touches. And that eye looks so real, it brings the little horse to life. Such attention to detail!

The campolina is also really beautiful, a perfect color for him - so stately and dignified! And again, those little details, like the primitive markings, they're all so delicate and lifelike.

George wrote:

Thank you both!

I used to do photo shows regularly, when they were advertised on forums and entered by email or by uploading photos to hosting albums like photobucket, but these days almost all of them are held only on Facebook, so I can't take part any more.
But really, I just take the photos this way cos I still like doing it, rather than with the hope of ever showing them!

Oh, I see! I've actually just started with photo-showing this year. And not on Facebook! . A friend of mine has created a website for photo-showing. It's been made from scratch and it doesn't ask for any personal data and it's free. Once your horses are uploaded they can participate in any show hosted on this platform. Maybe it's something for you too?
I like it also as a way to catalog my collection

Jill wrote:

I love what you did with camargue especially, how you were faithful to the somewhat wild and unpampered look.

We have SO many models of show horses and performance horses, spotlessly clean and polished and braided and trimmed, and I do collect and enjoy those too, but I love horses who are just ordinary grubby scruffy horses living more like nature intended, and we don't have nearly enough models of those!

Icelandics are one of my favourite breeds to paint, partly because they come in such a wide range of colours. Many breeders have websites with accurate and well explained coat colour information, incidentally providing a handy wealth of knowledge and reference material for model painters, and proving that colour genetics are fully understood and rationally dealt with in the Icelandic horse world (unlike, for example, the stubbornness over incorrectly registering as 'dun' because 'buckskin is an Americanism' in some British breeds!)

A few years ago, one particularly unusual Icelandic stallion called Ellert hit the headlines - a new colour, never seen before in the breed! A foal from solid colour purebred parents, who should've been a plain bay dun, but came out with a wild white sabino pattern - genetic tests proved he had a unique variation linked to the dominant white gene. Icelandic horses are notoriously pure and ancient, with strict rules against importing or cross breeding since the 10th century, so there's no doubting it spontaneously and naturally occurred, without human interference.

You can read about him, and see plenty of photographs (from clear and steady standing poses, to artistic shots and fun candid snaps from his owners), in this excellent article from CNN.

He now has several offspring of his own which carry the same colour, and in future it'll be interesting to see how his genes spread through the population, giving the chance for more flashy patterns down the generations.

Ever since his photographs first did the rounds in the horsey corners of the internet, I've thought what a nice custom painting project he'd make - his historic new colour being a worthy subject to bring into the world of model horses too.
I avoided definitively adding him to my to-paint list for a little while, just because complicated colours are, well, complicated to paint, but having mentioned it to a fellow collector and customiser, I felt like I was only delaying the inevitable, and would have paint him next time I got a Breyer Stablemate Icelandic body - which my friend then offered to sell me in a mixed bundle, and that was that - now I had to make it happen!

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And here he is! Because his colour is so mixed up and roany, it was daunting - but not so tricky as the sabino patterns with distinct patches and sharp edges, and I'd had some experimental practice with my model of Paragon. Some fine-brush detailing and some soft smudging, dry brushing over the bay dun base coat, and a little reworking with the dark colour over the top.
You can also see he's got a single egg-shaped solid spot just below his hip, which was painted on last because I couldn't figure out any way to mask it without risking peeling the body colour underneath whatever I stuck on!

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His head seems to have a more chunky speckling of colour than the rest of him, possibly because the coat is shorter there and the white blends less with the brown - a bit like how you can see the edges of face markings in more crisp detail than the edges of pinto patches, even if it's the same horse.
I do think it looks like I painted his head a different day to his body and didn't manage to match my brushwork very well, but when you compare to the reference pictures you can see it's on purpose rather than heavy handedness!

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Luckily, I managed to find nice clear photos of both sides, rather than just the famous side-on shot of him being held by his owner which appeared in most articles, so I didn't have to guess at what the markings of the 'wrong' side would look like!

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As well as the roaning, he's got high white stockings and a very big white face marking, which just catches the corners of his eyes, causing a bright blue flash in each iris. I tried catching that in the photos, hoping this one with the blue sky behind him would bring out the eye colour, but it's more noticeable in hand than in pictures.

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I've decided to call him Ýruskjóttur, the name given to his new colour in Icelandic : it translates to 'speckle'. Not only because the colour was the reason for painting this particular individual, but because many names Icelandic horses are given in real life translate as colour descriptions, things like 'palomino with a blaze', 'brown pinto', or 'yellow dun with a dorsal stripe', so there's nothing wrong with naming a speckled horse Speckle!

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And finally, here he is joining my home-painted herd of Icelandics. From left to right : Gullinbursti, Falhófnir, Háfleygur, Jarpskoni, Tviserkur, Alsk​ær, Ýruskjóttur.

What a stunning heard of Icelandics and a beautiful repaint! I love your delicate style, it's so realistic and you always manage to incorporate so many shades into the coat!

First, thanks for bringing to my knowledge the information about this new color of horses. I wish [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] watches this topic once she is our Icelandic expert. It is an excellent idea to make a custom of something so special and you did it perfectly. Actually that's a beautiful color for a horse. It could be new but not attractive but it is exactly the oposite.
Very beautiful pictures too!

That's a very cool occurrence and a really beautiful horse and an amazing custom! Incredible that they have diligent enough records to be certain this was a spontaneous mutation. That dominant white gene is something else, what a bizarre genetic rabbit hole to fall down . . .

I love how you paid so much attention to all the details, like the nifty unmarked patch and his bicolor eyes (I especially think it's neat that the blue of his eye seems to follow the angle of his blaze). You did such a nice job with that wild 'roaning' sort of effect of his sabino. He looks gorgeous in that incredible line-up! Some really, really tricky looking colors to create in your Icelandic series there, but all masterfully done!

Stunning repaints!!!

As always, beautifully painted. Extra special that it is painted after a real horse, and a pretty unique one too.

Beautifull repaint! I remember the big news about this horse special color How wonderful and unique!

What a handsome horse, I love that unique coloration! Really great job on this guy!

HOLY HAMSTER !!!!!

Imagine I never heard of Ellert before

Very, very interesting and wonderful !
I would not have believed that this colour would be inherited if I had not read the article !
I still remember the "striped" stallion, and the chestnut one with a black blaze. Their offspring never inherited any of that.

So this is wonderful, and the model you made is awesome

BTW : Do y'all know what "Ellert" is in Danish ( Maybe also in Icelandic) ?
It is a small, three wheel elecric car
In Wikipetia they call them "CityEl"

Very interesting to learn and very beautiful repaint job!

Thank you, to each of you who's commented! I've been painting a long time, but have large gaps in between, stretching to years when I don't even consider dusting off the bodies or picking up the paintbrush. Your feedback and positive comments really help, in making me feel good about my painting, and keep me eager to do more and more, rather than let it fizzle out and go dormant again. I think this community feeling of looking at other people's custom work really helps, I've missed it since all the model horse forums I was on went offline in favour of Facebook groups, so thank you, to all of you, for encouraging me to keep painting, and keep on making ideas happen, so I have more to show to appreciative model fans :)

I didn't know that meaning for the word Ellert, I wonder if that's where they got it from?

What colour icelandic should I plan for my next body? I'm thinking my line-up is low in dark colours, perhaps a black-based coat, but plain solid black all over would be boring to paint so I might go for splash pinto! But I don't actually HAVE any more of this breed in the body box, so I'll have to go wandering through some other country's horse breeds for inspiration next...

Wonderful post, George. It really makes me happy! We are a small but friendly and resilient community and it is a honour to have someone like you among us.
Being from Portugal, I'd suggest you to repaint the Sorraia model Schleich released recently. It also shows primitive markings and it is a non domesticated horse. I'd say it is our Icelandic. Among its colors, the mouse dun, caused a certain controversy because it was sometimes translated as grey on Portuguese litterature about the breed and there aren't grey Sorraias as far as I know.

You are a beautifully talented horse painter- don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

I like Rogerio's idea of the Sorraia, with all the primitive markings the breed historically displayed.

Yesterday I decided to paint some smaller-than-usual models for my custom collection, a couple of Breyer Mini Whinnies moulds I got in a recent batch of bodies.

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This is the mini Justin Morgan mould, but I think it makes a nicer Iberian horse than morgan, so I'll probably give him a name in Spanish or Portuguese to emphasise the breed change! Dappled grey is a lot less scary at small scale, cos I don't have to get it as detailed as there's room for on a bigger horse

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And this was a pink pearly unicorn, changed into a metallic sooty buckskin akhal teke. This is a real colour, here's an example! For a long time I'd been wondering about the possibility of adding the golden dapples with a gel pen rather than using paint and a brush, and it seemed easier to try this on a mini than the bigger Stablemates models (and also less of a loss to wash it off and start again if it didn't work!) The result is fine for this size, but I think wouldn't look good enough on a larger model, so I'm glad I picked a tiny experimental victim.

Here's how small they are :

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(the euro 5c coin is about the same size as a UK or US penny, and pennies/cents in a lot of other countries too, as this is such an international forum I chose a coin size which would be recognised worldwide )

they look fantastic!

Really stunning transformations! I love the second one most though, what a unique color!

Tiny beautiful models, so much detail for this smaller scale!

They're really beautiful with amazing colors.
You're right, that head surely does not work for a Morgan. The Portuguese name for Justin is Justino, a very old fashioned name.