Friesians finished

Since I brought my boyfriend (who is not a horse person) to the Swedish Nationals Performance show he has had ideas on making an entry of his own. And he didn't plan to start easily. He wanted to make a four in hand driving entry. In stablemate scale... That meant he needed four horses.

He also had quite the vision on how they would look. He wanted 4 Friesians with long manes and he wanted me to do them as he is not a horse person.

So I bought 4 Breyer Sm. G3 friesians and got to work. After removing the original mane and forelock I also decided to remove the original ears as they looked too long and too narrow from the front. Then I started sculpting the mane. The thing about the long mane is that my boyfriend needed it to be slightly lifted of the body so that he could slid the harness in under it.

I then painted them in a few layers of burnt umber acrylics and then started working in pastels. The last few layers wore in solid black pastels while the other layers had been a mixture of browns and blacks. They do look a tad plain in some lights but that was not my choice. I wanted to stop a few layers earlier when I still had some nice dark browish undertones still shining through in some places but my boyfriend wanted them to look even more black so they got a few more layers. The brown shading is still seen a little bit in certain lights. But as long as the customer is happy, I am too 😋.

The sealer barely had time to dry before my boyfriend started dressing up the first horse so I had no time to take a picture of it without tack.

 And the second harness is in the works so no pictures of the second horse without tack either 😋

I can't wait to see them all tacked up! (By the way the harnesses and wagon is all made by my boyfriend. I think he's done a great job considering he is not a horse person and this is his first try!)

These horses are the third, fourth, fifth and sixth horses I have finished painting this year! I might even manage to meet my goal 😊