"Which is your favorite horse color for painting?" Topic

I love Blacks and Greys…

Amicalement
Armand

Dark horses cover mistakes, mis-glues and causing the bright uniform and saddle colors to stand out.

Chestnut – it comes out nice over a black base coat.

Hmmm, probably a sorrel, or bay, aka "chestnut" color.

Blacks and greys for me also.

Ever since the horse charts have surfaced here I try almost to make no two alike to make up for my older units brown, brown, brown, white, brown, brown , black, brown, brown, tan.

All the browns.

Well, I could say bay, but the honest answer is "Army Painter Leather Brown."

I prefer the browns. Grays are IMO the hardest to do well.

Bays and Buckskins for me. Black is right up there also in terms of ease of painting.

I tend to do four bays (with various white markings) to one of the rest. My favorite to paint, when I am feeling masochistic, is a dapple grey…………

Bays and Sorrels.

Bays, Chestnuts and Browns are 80% of my cavalry. After they are all painted, I go back and put in the face paint and socks as impulse. Fun after drudergy.

Browns and blacks – I agree with Rudy Nelson – the horse is secondary to the rider.

Brown with dark brown or black mane/tail. Easiest to paint mass production. Occasionally throw in a black or buckskin.

A bay is any colour of brown horse but with black hair. So his/het mane, tail, lower legs and tips of ears are black. Then add in some white socks and face marking as above….provided appropriate for the unit, my favourite and dead easy.

Chestnut has no black anywhere. Hair can be horse colour ranging through to light blond, face and leg markings still but no black. I find much harder to do convincingly.

Dappled greys…if they turn out well….sure. Wonderful. Wash after wash to get the light mottled effect right

Palomino. What's not to like?

Brown. All horses should be brown and done with. I hate painting horses!

But palomino is nice, if someone else paints it.

My wife says ginger… I am not amused…

I've done ~100 Cossacks, so Bay and Palomino are great, mixed in with some Chestnut and greys.

Foundry paints are great for this and are named accordingly !

I enjoy painting piebald, skewbald and palomino horses but they are very rare in my armies, usually reserved for command figures (as are creams and greys).

Most of 75-80% of my horses are bays of various hues, with the rest a roughly even mix of chestnuts and blacks plus the occasional dun or brown.

Browns and black for ease of paint. But white/grey and other light colors look great. But I can't paint them properly.

Pink – I have never had to do too many of those!!!! (I wonder if anyone can quote why one might want to paint pink horses…..)

Chestnuts and Bays for me. They are usually my most convincing of all the types of horses that I paint.

Most of the horses I have on the farm here are bay, with the odd chestnut and grey.
So that's what I paint mime, unless I'm doing say classical Indians then I do more piebald and slewbald with the odd dun thrown in.

Black is the easiest. But I do a variety of mostly solid colors. Except my Plains Indians ride paint horses.

Although bays are my favourite, historically most should be brown or chestnut with some black and grey.

FWIW I have a feeling palominoes are mainly a north American variant. I don't quite get how as the horse was introduced from Europe to begin with, but IIRC they are / were not often seen east of the pond.

4th,
Yes North American horses/ponies/mustangs were more of the palaminoes, skewbald/piebald ( or known as paints over here, where they are a mix of black and white or brown and white) and the buckskins and duns etc. with a far lower percentage of bay type colours in general.
I think once the Thoroughbred started to displace the mustang types in the US your bay colours start to dominate more.

Grey or white or anything that isn't picked out for a reason really shouldn't be there.

With millions of horses going through a 19th Cent armies the chances that the ones in your particular Regiment are going to be exceptional are a bit remote.

Blacks and many kinds of Brown, Bay, Chestnut are what you are going to see.

Look at historical paintings done when horses were every day items. Either great painters were lazy or flamboyant horseflesh was a bit thin on the ground in the average army.

Brown is the winner!. (smile)

Amicalement
Armand

Brown is a good start. However Wiki alone lists;
o 2.1Amber
o 2.2Beaver
o 2.3Beige
o 2.4Buff
o 2.5Burnt umber
o 2.6Chestnut
o 2.7Chocolate
o 2.8Cocoa brown
o 2.9Desert sand
o 2.10Khaki
o 2.11Kobicha (Brown-nose)
o 2.12Peru
o 2.13Raw umber
o 2.14Rosy brown
o 2.15Russet
o 2.16Sandy brown
o 2.17Smokey topaz
o 2.18Tan
o 2.19Taupe
o 2.20Wood brown

You get the picture!
Vallejo show even more!

Sorels, browns and bays. Mix in some black for specific units

Until I discovered 6mm I hated horses.

My 28mm were almost always browns or black. Easiest.

For one of my lord of the rings figures I converted and painted his horse as a zebra. That was fun to paint. I did a pale dun horse back when I was 16 based on some GW horse painting tips. I was very happy with that (old foundry mounted British officer) but compared to my adult style it looks to garish and yellow now.

In 6mm I also go for black or browns for speed with the odd grey or white horse for musicians or commanders.

So are all an idle bunch who just want to get them finished……..shame on you.

But seriously, when done….in your hands….if it has worked out well…….what is your favourite, not your favoured?

Greys for me. Hate the work, love the end result (usually), bays second, blacks or very dark brown next, finally chestnut…..never look great in my hands

Different colours of undercoats can be interesting – try yellows and oranges instead of black or white. Makes the top coats more intense. I also use a dip which enhances musculature

Marc

You don't get any choice if your doing British Cavalry, the regiment you have chosen will tells you what colour your horses are going to be.

The idea of different coloured undercoats………..never even occurred to me……….!

Yes!

For what it's worth, here is my tutorial on painting horses. I don't claim it's the best way, but better than just a solid coat of brown:

link

Love to paint horses… but hate painting the reins and implements of them… (smile)

Actually… I have more than 8 thousands painted…

Amicalement
Armand

He has 8,000. I have slightly more than 180.

Keep up there will you. 8,000 sounds like the entry level to aim for

Liam. Your chestnuts will be far richer over orange, and soft browns go well over yellow. As long as your top coat is not too opaque. Tube acrylics are often better for horses than hobby colours

I agree – I use such kinds of "ground" colours as well, like dark Flesh, or golden ocre, or curry, then with a sort of glaze – in my case I use water colours , by that I can take off the colour where I like to have highlights, in case you add a flow enhancing mix, it paints itself.

As you can see in the pictures above, horses often have an almost metallic sheen (if clean and groomed), especially the darker colors, so, as mentioned in my tutorial above, I sometimes mix a bit of metallic paint into whatever color I'm using.

Metallic paint is genius and never…… ever…. heard of that.

Tube acrylics, I could see that. Plus watercolours and flow enhancing…..this is proving a brilliant topic.

Glad you enjoyed it my friend!. (smile)

Amicalement
Armand

Browns of various shades should make up about 75% of your total horse count.

I tend to paint my draft horses in Chesnut (big suffolk punches!), mules and burros (and camels) are more tan/gray.

I reserve odd colors, like blacks, appaloosa, paints, and palomino for officers and buglers.

flow enhancing use glycerin with destilled water – one has to experiment a bit 1 to 6 up to 1 to 10 – to find which is suiting oneself. The more glycerin the longer it will take time to dry.

From personal observation only, I would guess that most mules are either brown or dark bay.