Painting Horses

No I haven't taken to sneaking out into the fields with a pot of emulsion,  I'm not that stir crazy yet from the Covid-19 restrictions (stir, emulsion see what I did there).  However, I do seem to have been painting a lot of 6mm horses of late.  It's my own fault really I did decide that it was time to upgrade my Late Imperial Romans and to give them some credible (and period specific) opposition.  As most of that opposition was well provided with mounted troops I shouldn't be surprised by the amount of horse flesh on the painting table.  Currently I have the last of the Sassanid Persian cavalry waiting for a spray of primer, some Gothic Feoderati for the Romans, and some actual Roman heavy cavalry on the painting mat.

I have never been a fan of all the horses being a single colour so I tend to vary the mix as much as I can.  To make that easier I usually have around 50 castings being worked on at a time.  That lets me mix up a colour and then do one or two horses in each unit in that shade, so that I don't waste paint.  Of course the whole point is to get horses that look like horses so the trick is to get the colours right.

I mostly use Vallejo paints because that is what is easiest to buy locally.  My go to colours for horses are Chocolate Brown (70.872), Light Brown (70.929) Khaki (72.061) and German Grey (70.995).  I use the grey as the base for black horses and for manes and tails, Chocolate brown for browns with a the addition of Flat Red (70.957) and Orange Fire (72.008) to create chestnut shades.  Bone White (72.034) more of a cream colour than a white can be the base of light horses or manes and tails for others.  I particularly like Bays, Duns and Chestnuts as the darker tail and manes sets the look of the horse, but I do add to the mixture by including Blacks and the odd Grey.  For Generals I also add the occasional white as well.  For me the key is to mix my own colours as the variation I get from batch to batch gives a nice variation in tones, when I blend a chestnut or a brown the more red I add to the chocolate brown and orange mix the warmer the brown becomes which is great for that particular coat colour.

Horses - Any colour you like as long as its brown (or black or grey).  Painting WiP

I select colours from a book I was recommended many years ago called 'Horse by Horse - a field guide to horse breeds'.  It’s similar to a Blandford's uniform guide in layout, it starts with an explanation of horse colours and markings and then follows that up with colour illustrations of different horse breeds on a one per page basis. Lots of really useful reference material all in place.  Best of all it was available at the local book remainder shop at a knock down price, I don't recall what I paid but the recommended retail price was a mighty £1.95 so probably about £1.00.  That was probably a couple of decades ago (I just checked, try first published 41 years ago!) but it has been my go to reference since I got it.  I know similar guides are on the web nowadays but there is something about having a real book to leaf through that still appeals to me.  My copy falls open at the page covering the Mongolian Wild Horse, which probably says something about the type of horses I spent a lot of time painting when I was into 25mm figures.

According to Amazon it was published on 10th August 1979

Nice useful images inside too

In the modern world you would probably find it easier to have a web page open on a phone or tablet showing a cart of coat colours but any guide is useful to have available,  It stops us from creating that fabled 'Horse of a different colour' that never existed in nature!

Oh come on! Who wouldn't want to see The Charge of the Light Brigade mounted on these (Other My Little Pony models are available)