No Time Like the Present

The next question is: where to start?

Tempting as it is to start with a bit of autobiography detailing how I got into the model horse hobby, I think it's best if I just start by telling you where I stand today and revealing the rest through a series of flashbacks over time.

My latest model horse endeavour had me painting a Breyer Stablemate for NaMoPaiMo, or National Model Painting Month, the brainchild of Jennifer Buxton.  I've never met Jennifer, but I feel like I know her through reading her blog, and she's certainly someone I'd love to spend time with.  Like so many people I've met in the hobby, she strikes me as being a thoroughly good person.

Anyway, this was my first year participating in NaMoPaiMo.  I decided to jump in for a couple of reasons.  First, I've been enjoying Jennifer's blog so much that I wanted to give back to her in some way for all the pleasure she's given me, and supporting her project seemed a good way to do that.

Also, 2018 and early 2019 found me painting more models than I've ever attempted before.  This is primarily because I'm a sucker for the Breyer website grab bags that go on sale throughout the year on special occasions (for Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, Easter, Fourth of July, etc.).  Because of those I have ended up with a bunch of "paint your own" models that I normally would not buy.

I suppose I could have just left them all blank, but blank models always look so sad to me that I want to at least paint their eyes, just to put some life into them.  So anyway, I ended up painting a bunch of them over the past year and doing another one for NaMoPaiMo didn't strike as too much of a hardship.

Ha!  It was actually a lot harder than I thought it would be.  Rather than starting with a blank model, I started with a G3 Jumper I had that had faded badly in the sun.  I had already tried selling him with no takers, so I decided to fix him up myself.  I wanted to do him in a colour the G3 had not already been released in, so I chose black, but I wanted it to be a shaded black as doing a flat black seemed like too much of a cop-out.

At the end of NaMoPaiMo I did have a finished model, but I'm not sure I've solved the secret of shaded black yet.  It didn't help that I have no photography skills and an uncooperative camera, so I was unable to take pictures of the work in progress and ask for help. 

Let me assure you, Ollie-Oop, as I named him, does actually look better than his picture, but there is certainly room for improvement.  However, I did have fun working on a project at the same time as hundreds of other model horse enthusiasts across the world, and I look forward to doing it again next year, hopefully with a little bit more finesse.