Custom Model Horse: Fiji!

Instructions

(Click/space/arrows) Hey guys! I'm back with another custom painted Breyer horse! This is a portrait model of Fiji, a Thoroughbred mare who is owned by some of my friends! I made this model for them so that they could have a Breyer model of their horse! The first couple pictures are pictures of real Fiji. I've been kind of bad about remembering to take pictures of my painting process, but I do have a couple. The first one was my first attempt at a basecoat color. I like using a light orange/yellow as the base so that the coat has a nice golden glow, even if it turns out more brown in the end. However, this color was a little too golden. Fiji has some really cool red undertones to her coat, so I wanted her colors to be more red-based than gold. I ended up re-doing the basecoat in a more orange/copper color. The next pictures are of the new basecoat plus some base shading! I only have one more process pic, and that is after I did several more layers of shading. I slowly added darker and darker layers of brown, leaving some parts lighter and some parts darker, until I got this! The rest of the pictures are of finished Fiji! My cat wanted to get in on the photoshoot too lol Things I did well: I'm pretty proud of the color layering/shading. I think I was able to achieve the effect of having her look more brown in the shade and having her red highlights stand out in the sun, like real Fiji. I took some pics in sunlight and in shadow so you can see this effect! I used a similar coloring technique on my Mini Joe model, which was the one I did before this (see my other project on my custom horses), so I think I've gotten pretty good at it now. Things to improve: I want to improve my paintbrush work (white markings, hooves, ect.) I've gotten much better at using my airbrush, but I think I could still improve at using the paintbrush. I want to have less blobby edges to my brushstrokes and have it be neater. I rushed through doing the white socks and hooves, so you can see that the edges are not neat and the sock is not fully opaque. That's the kind of thing I want to make look better and more polished. I'm also still learning how to do muscle shading. I'm definitely improving, but I think there's still room to grow. Sadly, I can't find any good tutorials that are specifically about doing muscle shading with an airbrush, so I'll just have to keep practicing and experimenting! Overall, Model Fiji turned out pretty well, and my friends were very happy to get a model of their horse, so that's a success in my book!