Give Me a "D"

Yes, I should probably get a "D" as a grade for my progress so far on my NaMoPaiMo horse, but that's beside the point.  Today I'm taking you back on the alphabetical tour through my collection and introducing you to one of my "D" horses.

This horse is one of the newer ones in my herd.  It's odd, because I used to have a lot more "D" horses but it turns out I've sold a bunch of them.  Nothing against the letter "D" though -- in fact, I still remember the names of some of the horses I've sold: "Dixieland Debutante," "Dustbuster," and "Defiant" to name a few.  But they're all gone now and have been replaced by more modern horses like this week's "D" horse -- "Dudley Do-Right."

"Dudley Do-Right"

"Dudley" is, of course, the Breyer 1719 RCMP Musical Ride Horse, available from 2014-2015 on the Big Ben mold.  I try not to conga the Big Ben mold but it's difficult because Breyer has put it out in so many attractive colours.  I love my original Big Ben (you can bet that I was one of the first to get one when they started rolling them out in 1996) and I can't see myself ever letting go of him, so I have to be very disciplined to avoid adding others to the shelf.

But with "Dudley Do-Right," I caved.  What finally sold me on him were the little maple leaves painted as if backcombed on his hips.  He may have a bit more chrome than you commonly see on the Musical Ride horses, but he just screams Canadiana.  I simply had to have him.

Broke my heart that Breyer didn't have any leftover mini-me RCMP horses to sell after Breyerfest last year as I would have loved to have the "set."  I haven't actively been shopping for it though, as I find it sometimes take a few years after a Breyerfest for prices to come down to reasonable.  Besides, the Classic Stock Horse Gelding is not a mold I really have to have -- I already have a very nice example from Breyerfest 2016.

But back to "Dudley."  As any fan of Rocky and Bullwinkle can tell you, Dudley Do-Right was the name of the dashing but dumb cartoon Mountie who protected Canada's northernmost territories from the likes of Snidely Whiplash as part of The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show.  I would have named my RCMP horse after Dudley's horse, except that the name of Dudley's horse is "Horse."  So my horse, with his admittedly goofy-looking Big Ben face, got the name of Horse's cartoon master, and "Dudley Do-Right" entered my herd.

To my eternal shame, my collection is very shy of RCMP horses.  I don't have Breyer's original Mountie horse, or Burmese, the ex-Mountie horse that was given to the Queen.  I don't have either of the Hartland horse and rider Mountie sets either.  At one time, I had two plastic Made-in-Japan Mountie horses without their accompanying Mountie riders.  One had a saddle and one did not.  Both had appallingly poor conformation.  I hung onto them for a long time as the finding of them at a flea market was one of my favourite childhood memories, but eventually I decided to put them in a flea market myself so some other child like me could discover them and cherish them.  I hope that's what happened.  I didn't sell them myself, but they sold, so I know they've gone on to new adventures.

Those two horses never got named, but if I had to got back in time I might just name one "Horse" after Dudley Do-Right's steed.  However poor their conformation was, it couldn't have been worse than that of "Horse."

Image courtesy of  cartoonresearch.com

They would have looked cute in his uniform, though.

Dissolving My Resolve

In other news, I am not only failing to pursue my 2020 New Year's Resolutions, but have actually begun flouting them.

I had resolved to cut back on model horse purchases.  We're just over a week into February and I've already purchased three new horses.  Two were the WIA horses I wrote about discovering a couple of blog posts ago.

But I specifically resolved to cut back on Breyer purchases, and this week my third new horse and my first new Breyer of 2020 arrived.  I caved in and ordered it on January 31st. 

However, it was bound to happen sooner or later.  When previews of Breyer's new 2020 line started coming out, the one horse that I knew for sure I had to get was the new Classic or "Freedom Series" Horse of the Year -- "Fairfax."  So it was going to happen.  What then was the point in waiting?  Sure, various retailers will probably have sales on Freedom Series horses throughout the year, but the savings are usually small and the shipping is still the same.  I managed to get my "Fairfax" from a Canadian dealer, which kept the price and especially the shipping down significantly.  And of course, I want to support home-grown model horse dealers whenever possible or practical.  So why not now?

Anyway, "Fairfax" is pretty much everything I want in a modern Morgan.  He's got more of a foundation-bred look than the Saddlebred look which was all the rage with Morgan fanciers a few years ago (and still may be, for all I know).  When Stone horses swapped out their old mold, Saddlebred-type Morgan for the new one they called this new old-fashioned Morgan a "Santa Fe Morgan" .  Breyer doesn't have a distinctive name for either this Morgan or the other Classics sculpted by Sommer Prosser, but Sommer's Morgans do have the Saddlebred look to them too -- so much so that Breyer actually started offering the mare as a Saddlebred just last year.

But "Fairfax" has the look of the kind of Morgans I like.  I don't even mind his head-up, watchful attitude as that's a typical Morgan stance.  And while Morgans are usually very conservative in colour, they do sometimes break out into silver bays, which look almost exactly like "Fairfax."  In typical Morgan fashion, he has no real "chrome" on his body, but he does have the most adorable tiny little crescent star on his forehead, like a shy little flash of white just peeping out from behind a dark cloud.

By the way, whatever Breyer says to the contrary, the "Fairfax" I have in my hands is a gelding, not a stallion.  If there were one thing I could add to him, I would have liked to see him with a few dapples, just to draw a bit more attention to the beauty of his colour.  But even without them. he's a real standout on the shelf for me.  I almost hope they don't turn the colour machine on this mold too soon -- the last thing I need is another model horse conga.

Oops -- did that sound a bit like a resolution to you?

Procrastination and Progress

Well, we're officially into NaMoPaiMo (National Model Painting Month) now, so I thought I might as well give you a bit of a progress report on how I'm doing so far.

I've made considerable progress towards coming to the realization that I am a terrible procrastinator.  I always knew this about myself, which is why I have always gravitated towards work that involved deadlines as opposed to more open-ended, creative work.

Although I've known since last year that NaMoPaiMo would be coming around again, and I decided which horse I wanted to paint and what colours I wanted to use over the past two months,  I've let the first few days of NaMoPaiMo pass me by without doing a thing about it.

Ready and waiting ... and waiting ... and waiting.

It doesn't really make any sense, since NaMoPaiMo does have a deadline, and since my goal is to paint more than one horse this time around, you would think I would want to get a good start on my official NaMoPaiMo selection.

But no, if there's a way to procrastinate, I will find it.  This time I seem to be doing it by convincing myself that I still have enough time to reach my goals and promising myself that once I really get working on painting, momentum will carry me through.

At least I know I'm not alone in my hesitation to actually start.

One of the nice things about NaMoPaiMo is the way the experience is shared worldwide by participant updates on the NaMoPaiMo Facebook page.  Last year I used to visit this page for inspiration and to marvel at some of the things that others were doing.  This year, I've already noticed a "confession" thread where a good number of people have posted about not having even started yet.  Some of them have good reasons -- like waiting for last-minute supplies to arrive -- but others are just like me and just haven't started because the mood hasn't struck them yet.

So I already know that I'm part of a larger, like-minded community in this respect.  And as I go on, and start to make some actual progress, I'm sure I'll find others like myself who are struggling with the same issues I'm struggling with, whatever they turn out to be.

Last year my big problem was getting seamless shading on my model.  When I laid the various layers of colour on they looked fine, but after drying the paint looked odd and uneven.  I eventually ended up painting the whole horse again with a solid colour that already had the shading mixed in.  It wasn't great, but it was the best I could do at the time.

This year's NaMoPaiMo model doesn't require as much shading, so I'm hoping things will go more smoothly this time.

That's once things start going, of course!

Wake Up Call

On Facebook recently, I discovered two model horse manufacturers that I'd never heard of before, but probably should have done.

I think I can be excused for overlooking the Lanard Royal Breeds Collector Series Horses.  Prior to these "Royal Breed" horses coming on the market, Lanard was best-known for making hairy Barbie-type horses, and many sets now being sold under the "Royal Breed" moniker continue to be horses of this type.  But four of them -- a Clydesdale, an Arabian, a Gypsy Vanner, and a Saddlebred -- have sculpted manes and tails and have in fact been sculpted by one of our hobby artists: Maggie Bennett.  And I would never have known had I not seen that Facebook post.

The other manufacturer I discovered has been in business for quite some time but apparently I haven't been paying attention.  It was only the other day when I saw a post showing the differences between two copies of their "Gustav" model that I became aware of WIA as a company and its connection to Brigitte Eberl as a sculptor.

In fact, I have not so far been able to find out very much about WIA, save that their products are made in China.  I don't know the exact timeline of their model horse releases, but I think I've narrowed down what they've made so far.

I would hazard a guess that their 1:9 scale offerings pre-date the tinier ones.  If so, the Sommer Prosser/Rebecca Turner adaptation of Prosser's "Windfall" resin as a WIA resin "Fair Lady" would be among the first of its issues, with Brigitte Eberl's adaptation of her own "Salome" resin coming out around the same time.  I'm dating them to around 2014-2016, but have no real proof to back me up.

Coming out about the same time are a set of Little Bit size horses -- the Isabell Werths special runs "Don Johnson", "El Santo", and "Bella Rose".  Of these, only Bella Rose is produced by WIA and is credited to Eberl.  Don Johnson and El Santo are Bullyland horses, but they each bear such a significant similarity to Eberl's sculptures of the same name that I'm fairly sure they are adapted from them.

I have a date of 2016 for the "Bella Rose" sculpture connected to information about its being a special edition of 2500 to benefit Christoffel Blindenmission (CBM), a Christian charity with a mission to improve the lives of disabled people in poverty-stricken regions of the world.

I don't know when "Gustav" came on the scene but he appears to be the latest Eberl to come from WIA and is available in two colours:  dark bay pangaré and black leopard appaloosa.

All of these latter models are available from modellpferdeversand.  I've never shopped there before as I've never felt the need to, but the pictures of "Gustav" I discovered on Facebook caused me to change my mind.

WIA horses "Gustav" and "Bella Rose"

I ended up ordering both "Gustav" and "Bella Rose" as I have always wanted a horse in a correct dressage halt.  Breyer has come antagonizing close to this many times -- with its Stablemate G3 Thoroughbred, its Stablemate "Django," the classic "Jet Run" and even the Traditional Western Horse and Pony (if they didn't have molded-on western tack), Halla, and the Nursing Mare -- but either the legs are all over the place or the head isn't in the right position.  "Bella Rose" has just the stance I was looking for.  I would love to have this horse in Traditional size.

All the WIA "Gustav"s I've seen (and I've now seem quite a few of them), differ from each other in their shading.  Mine is maybe not the best I've ever seen, but it's far from the worst.  He has lovely facial shading, and while his lighter belly has crept fairly high up his sides, I like it better than his having no pale belly at all.

So it's taken me a while to find out about these new (to me) plastic manufacturers, but now that I know about them I am definitely going to keep an eye out for them.  One can only sleep for so long before it's time to wake up to what's been going on all around.