Tuesday 6 May 2008

Grappling with dapple… again!

Well it had to happen didn’t it? I did say that I was only 90% happy with the painting of my Scots Grey’s horse and things only got worse when Mrs S said she didn’t think it looked very good either. That was it – the more I looked at it the more it began to resemble the spotty dog in the Woodentops*.

So it was back to Dallimore to re-read his tips on painting dapple grey’s – “not as difficult as you may think” he says! With that, some tranquillisers, and a few pictures of horses I Googled I was ready for another bash.

By starting with a darker grey as my base tone and putting black socks on the legs I seem to have achieved a slightly more realistic result. This time the finished article looks less like an extra from Mary Poppins and a bit more like a menacing trooper from the Royal North British Dragoons. I hope you agree but to put me out of my misery please feel free to leave a comment!

*If you don’t know who the Woodentops were click here.

7 comments:

Sharon said...

This is much better, you should realise that if you are only 90% happy with something then it's probably not good enough for you!

Anonymous said...

I suspect all of your regular readers, at least in the UK, are familiar with spotty dog, looby loo, rag tag and bob tail and of course little weed.

I thought the first one was OK, better than I can do anyway. The second one is an improvement. Is that because the dapple doesn't go onto the legs?

In any event, it is a lovely figure and immediately takes me back to the cover of Advanced Wargames.

John Preece

Steve-the-Wargamer said...

...second one is definitely better.... nice job :o))

...perhaps a slightly darker mane and tail would help further??

Anonymous said...

Very nice. I sometimes put a white "drop shadow" inside two sides of the dark outlines.

P.S. How can anyone forget "Hector"?

Matt

Stryker said...

Dear All
Thanks for the comments.
John - rag tag and bobtail, now that really was a good one!
Steve - I'll give that a try on the next one.
Matt - I don't think my skills are up to producing a superb grey like the one your Russian General is riding on your blog. As for Hector, I think that places you a few years younger than me!
Sharon - right as always, of course...
Ian

rpardo said...

Haha... this grey horse looks very real ...
Congratulations...a good job
Rafa

old-tidders said...

Nice blog; it's good to see some Hinton Hunt figs again.

-- Allan