"Painting horses for a Spanish unit of the WSS" Topic

I have uploaded a video painting a Spanish cavalry unit of the WSS. I have tried to make the horses quite varied and try some different techniques. I would like to have your opinion for the next units!

youtu.be/2r7ugfJUg14

How about some skewbalds and piebalds or maybe some appaloosa.

@JimDuncanUK As I comment briefly in the video, I don't see pintos in paintings of the period and I think that pinto horses and their variants were not at all common in early 18th century Europe let alone the apaloosa typical of an American Indian tribe, so I didn't include any in the unit. Although I did make one with darker spots using a toothbrush but only as a way to introduce texture to a single color.

Anyway, it's something to keep in mind for the first time I paint American or primitive horses, they can be a lot of fun to paint.

I always understood that horses were introduced to the Americas by the Spanish who, of course, came from Europe.

See this quote from Wikipedia:

The word pinto is Spanish for "painted", "dappled", or "spotted".[1]

While pinto coloration has yet to be identified as a wildtype by DNA studies or seen in cave art antedating horse domestication, images from pottery and other art of ancient antiquity show horses with flashy, spotted patterns, indicating that they may have been desirable traits and selectively bred for. Images of spotted horses appear in the art of Ancient Egypt, and archaeologists have found evidence of horses with spotted coat patterns on the Russian steppes before the rise of the Roman Empire. Later, spotted horses were among those brought to the Americas by the conquistadores.

By the 17th century in Europe, spotted horses were quite fashionable, though when the fad ended, large numbers of newly unsellable horses were shipped to the Americas, some of which were sold, while others were simply turned loose to run wild.[2] The color became popular, particularly among Native Americans, and was specifically bred for in the United States, which now has the greatest number of pinto horses in the world.

Very attractive. I find your colors so vivid and rich. Do you think the Model Air range of paints is preferable to the Model colour range? I have not tried Model Air paints. I find the browns achieved using Vallejo Model Colour are a bit too dull. Perhaps it is the white/grey zenithol drybrush that you do over the dark undercoat followed by the satin varnish that keeps the colors so rich and vibrant?

Also, can you explain your basing? It seems some gravel and sand is glued on followed by some flock. What type of flock?

@JimDuncanUK Thank you for helping me understand this mystery. The thing is that in the survey I did of paintings of the period to decide how to paint the unit no pintos appear. I put two paintings as an example, of the battles of Malplaquet and Ramillies. Especially in the latter there are a lot of horses and none pinto. But I saw many more paintings and the lack of pinto horses caught my attention, and I understood that something was happens with them.

Perhaps the explanation for this emptiness is in this sentence that you yourself quote: "By the 17th century in Europe, spotted horses were quite fashionable, though when the fad ended, large numbers of newly unsellable horses were shipped to the Americas, some of which were sold, while others were simply turned loose to run wild" Wikipedia does not tell us at what specific time the pintos went out of fashion, but seeing that in the 18th century paintings they are no longer there, it is plausible that it was in the 17th century itself and that by the 18th century there were not many pintos left in Europe, or at least that they were not considered high enough for a gentleman.

@Wealdmaster Thank you! Model Air preferable? It depends, it works differently than Model Colour and depends on your painting style. It is much more translucent, which allows you to take advantage of the lower layers to create textures, and on a luminous base like zenithal white they look very vivid. On the other hand, you often need two layers, and it is very difficult to correct mistakes, because you can't completely cover the previous layer. At first it took me some getting used to, but now I use Model very little, only when I need a uniform and opaque layer or to create a base on which to apply the final color with Air without having to apply several layers (for example, the yellow Air is especially transparent and I almost always use it that way). In short, with Model you have exactly the color of the can, and with Air you need some practice to guess what color will be seen at the end depending on what color is in the background and how many layers you apply.And you can't light on a dark background with Air!

The base is explained in another video of the channel: youtu.be/KHTiCQevtr0 please visit my channel to see more content: YouTube link The flock is Coarse Turf, passed through a sieve, Burnt Grass from Woodland Scenics.

Acronim, thanks, this is a great set of ideas that I've not thought of before. I will try some of these model air colors as I already do black with gray zenithol overbrushing. I also use some Foundry paint system with pretty good luck. Horses are difficult for me and remain a work in progress.