My Custom Model Horses!

Instructions

For about two years now, I've been custom-painting model horses, and I figured I should share some pictures of my horses on Scratch! I am a huge lover of horses, and I have had a large collection of Breyer models for a long time. I had previously painted some model horses from painting kits using a paintbrush, but two years ago, I got an airbrush and was able to start painting model horses at a much higher quality! The airbrush lets me paint much more smoothly, rather than being able to see all the brushstrokes of a paintbrush. I still use a paintbrush to do all the details on these horses, but the airbrush is very useful in getting the basecoat of the horses to look smooth and blended. I've included pictures from most of my model horse projects over the past two years! If you want to just look at pretty pictures of horses, you can just go look at the project now (click/space/tap to change to the next pic). But if you're interested in the backstory and process of making those horses, keep reading! The process of painting these horses is pretty similar for each one, so I'll just give a summary of the steps here 1. Find a model horse! I've used some that were blank and unpainted, but I've also painted over some already-painted Breyer models. 2. Prep and prime. This involves using sandpaper to sand off any seams or imperfections on the horse, and then priming it with a primer that gets it a solid base coat and a good surface for paint to stick to. I use a light gray Vallejo primer that I put into my airbrush and spray on the horse. 3. To actually start painting, I airbrush the whole horse one solid color. Many brown-colored horses have undertones of light gold/orange, even if they're a darker color. So, to get that nice glow in the coat color, I usually start with a light base and shade on top of that. 4. Shading/layers. This step varies from horse to horse, but it usually involves using darker colors to shade the horse's muscles and add depth to them, and to darken the horse's coat to the desired shade. This can take several layers and airbrush sessions! 5. Details! For this, I use a paintbrush to paint the mane, tail, hooves, eyes, and extra markings. For white markings, I use several layers of watered-down white paint to make the markings blend in better (I didn't do this on my early models, and their white markings look less natural). I add highlights and shading to the hair detail to give it depth, add some texture to the hooves with varying colors, and paint the eyes! With the eyes, I usually paint them white first, so I have several pics of horses in their "zombie eyes" phase, before I add the dark parts of the eyes. 6. One of the final steps is sealing the model. I use a matte Rust-oleum sealant to protect the paint from coming off. This protects it from scratches and from rubbing/washing off. 7. Finally, I gloss the eyes with clear nail polish to make them shine, and take lots of pretty pictures of my finished model! I like to take them outside to take pics, since natural sunlight lighting is great! I won't describe each picture individually, but I'll now give a description of each horse project and some of the things that went into making them! 1. My first airbrushed model was a golden bay quarter horse mare. Show name: Makin' Magic, Barn name: Magic This was my first exploration into airbrushing model horses! 2. Right after painting Magic, I painted two plastic horses that I had lying around. Primer was very important for these ones, since they were very smooth plastic and weren't meant to be painted! I painted a palomino and a black-and-white overo pinto. For the pinto, I painted the base white and put painter's tape over where I wanted the white markings to be, and then pulled it off when I was done. It was very satisfying! Even though these were some of my earliest models, I think they still look good (especially the palomino!) 3. My next project was Legend (show name "Legendary Hero") I finished painting him on the same day I beat the final boss of the Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword! He is a sooty dappled buckskin American Saddlebred with a badger face marking. In hindsight, this project was a bit more ambitious than I was able to do at the time. I tried to airbrush on dapples, but I didn't have as much precision with the airbrush and they don't all look good. Also I didn't look at that many references while doing dapples. References are important. More pictures of him in his completed form later!