Accuracy and documentation

Because I show a lot of uncommon breeds (and common breeds in uncommon colors), I am a fan of providing documentation. Creating short, informative cards so that a judge can better understand what my model is intended to portray is a challenge that I enjoy. 

Here is Lascaux, the model in the picture. 

Sarah Rose's Libretto painted by Kim Naumann

I show Lascaux (and other horses with Iberian type and appaloosa patterning) as Spanish Spotted Saddle Horses. Because that is a relatively new breed, and because the name is easily confused with the (very different!) Spotted Saddle Horse, providing documentation with the entry is important.

The Spotted Saddle Horse is an American gaited breed closely related to the Tennessee Walking Horse

 

Here is a close-up of Lascaux's documentation. It is typical of the documentation I use as a shower, and I prefer to see when I judge. It covers the very specific information I believe the judge needs to put the entry in context; it is not a book report on the breed.

I have written a lot of articles and a handful of books about breeds and colors over the years, but it never occurred to me to offer pre-made show documentation. I know that others have begun doing this, though, because entrants have told me they purchased their documentation. I learned this when I asked about incorrect information, and the answer was, "Oh, I did not write that." 

Usually, the errors are minor. I have joked that I am going to make custom Post-it notes that say, "This is not a silver," to attach to all the misidentified photos. Using sooty palomino or liver chestnut to illustrate the existence of silver dilutes in a breed is not going to change a placing—assuming, of course, that the breed really does have silver dilutes. 

Nope, not a silver!

Also not a silver.

More recently, however, I encountered documentation with errors that were on a completely different level. I am always hesitant to share details about negative situations because I do not believe publicly shaming someone is helpful. In this case, however, even I do not know who created the documentation. The exhibitor said she received it with the model. What I do know, though, is that it opened my eyes to the potential for a problem. 

That's because the phrase I usually hear right after "I did not write that" is "But the horse placed well using this at the last show."

As judges, we often take documentation at face value. After all, the whole point of laying down documents is to give a judge information that they might not already have. We expect almost encyclopedic knowledge from our judges, but there is so much out there. Documentation is supposed to help make the job more manageable. 

But what if judges cannot trust what is provided? What if exhibitors, or documentation writers, are just making things up? 

The "tobiano" Finnhorse

The model in question was a copy of Emilia Kurila's Ukko, painted in buckskin tobiano. He was being shown as a Finnhorse with documentation that claimed that the breed could be pinto-patterned. That is not untrue. Finnhorses sometimes have flashy white markings, and some do have belly spotting. There is even one instance of a dominant white stallion with a near-white phenotype. 

Vekselin Ihme, a near-white Finnhorse born from two chestnut parents

This is also the breed where splashed white was originally described in 1933. Although the color was thought to have been lost, it was later confirmed to be present in modern Finnhorses by testing. 

Illustration from the 1931 paper that first described splashed white

Finnhorses do not, however, have the gene for tobiano. The idea behind Valto Klemola's 1933 paper was that there were two different kinds of pinto, one dominant (what we now call tobiano) and one recessive (what we now call Splashed White 1). The form of splashed white present in the Finnhorses, Splashed White 1 (SW1), behaves in an incompletely dominant fashion. Horses with one copy look like they have 'ordinary markings', which is why Klemola thought of it as recessive. The horses looked like pintos when they had two copies of SW1. That was what made it different from the dominant (tobiano) pinto. 

Klemola used pictures of Scottish cart horses (the article was written while he was at the University of Edinburgh) to illustrate the tobiano pattern. The splashed white horses were descendants of the Finnhorse stallion Eversti. The whole point of the discovery was that there was a pinto pattern in Finnhorses that was not tobiano. 

Needless to say, finding a tobiano Finnhorse on the table was not something I expected. Finding documentation claiming this horse was proof was something else entirely. 

The documentation claimed that the horse in the picture was "Gold Charm," a Finnhorse stallion "standing at Blazing Colours Farm." None of these things are true. 

I recognized the horse. That's El Dorado Gold Charm. You can see this picture and more from the same photo shoot here. He is a registered American Saddlebred. I knew about him because one of his tobiano lines (he is homozygous) is a bit of a mystery. He's also buckskin, which (unlike palomino) is a little uncommon in his breed. 

The real eye-opener was the claim that he belonged to Blazing Colours Farm. A lot of model horse hobbyists might recognize that name. More would likely recognize it if they saw the stallion at the center of their logo. 

That is Sato, the 2011 BreyerFest Guest Horse. Blazing Colours breeds colorful Thoroughbreds and sport horses. They do not breed coldblooded trotting breeds like the Finnhorse. Interestingly enough, they do have a cremello Thoroughbred stallion named El Dorado, but not Gold Charm. 

The documentation not only named the farm, but also provided a link. Because everything about the claims was throwing huge red flags, I did check the link. It was dead. (Most judges do not have access to the internet while judging, so do not do this on your documentation!)

The whole incident left me deeply uneasy. Horses with incorrect breed attributions have become increasingly common thanks to sites like Pinterest. What made this one unusual was the full-page backstory that went with its breed designation. I could not figure out how someone could mistakenly identify a buckskin tobiano Saddlebred stallion as a Finnhorse (a coldblooded trotting breed) owned by a famous Thoroughbred farm in Canada. 

I still do not know how the documentation came together, but I would like to urge entrants to check the accuracy of anything they did not personally create. As much as I dislike saying it, I would also recommend that judges not necessarily take papers next to entries at face value. At a time when what is real and what is not is harder than ever to determine, it doesn't hurt to be a little skeptical. 

NaMoPaiMo - Week 1

My friend Sarah sent this guy, Itza Hoot, to me. He was one of her 2024 retro vintage customs. Sarah makes a group of them for National Retro Vintage Month (NaReViMo). Sarah has been encouraging me to get playful. It is one way address the urge towards perfectionism that many of us grapple with when creating model horses. 

Her NaReViMo horses are supposed to be fun to make. They also have to be completed in a set amount of time. I looked at the goal (playfulness) and the constraints (small time investment) and decided that it sounded like a great fit for National Model Painting Month (NaMoPaiMo). 

The Idea

I wrote about splatter painting last summer. Roans created using this technique always remind me of my early days as a customizer. I do not have any of my own examples, but I still have one done by my friend, Judy Renee Pope. Judy and I were very active in a mini model club in the early 1980s, which is when she made Nejmet es Subh. 

When I saw Sarah's 2026 NaReViMo horse, Romper, I knew I wanted to try a retro-style splatter roan. 

Romper is a classic roan with a dark liver chestnut base color. I wanted the sort of heavily roaned sabino pattern that the Nejmet has, but with a dark chestnut base color similar to his. The result would be a model that captured some part of two good friends—Sarah and Judy—who were also big influences on my artistic life, a bit of nostalgia for simpler times, and a color variety that has captured my interest for decades. 

The Plan

I do a lot of things that seem excessive or fussy now, but are about making less work later. One of those things is creating a written plan. I haven't always done that. I got into the habit when I started working in earthenware. Ceramic underglaze is unforgiving, and for most of the process, you cannot touch it, so complex colors require a lot of planning. It has proven to be helpful for traditional painting, too. With all the distractions out there, my memory for what I used to create this or that color or effect isn't what it used to be! 

I also assembled my reference images. The pattern I was after was most like the Arabian mare FV Alarazzl Rose. I have a handful of similar Arabians and a few Welsh Ponies for reference, but I plan to reference pretty loosely. Splattering is unpredictable, and I don't want to get set on a particular idea too early. 

First steps

My preference is to prime the horse white, then do a base layer in acrylic craft paint that is close to the final color. While many artists disparage craft paint, I find that the chalky surface makes it ideal for applying other mediums. 

Because this horse will have extensive white markings, I will use a warm white for the face and legs. These will be masked when I base coat the body dark brown.

The airbrush is great for getting smooth, even coverage, but the downside is that building up a dark color often leaves an edge where the masking ends. Since the borders of the leg markings were going to fade into the roan pattern, I needed a way to soften the edge.

My solution was to wrap the very top of the legs with a bit of pipe cleaner before using Press N'Seal to mask off the lower leg. The adhesive on the wrap stuck well enough to the fiber to hold it all in place. I suspect I could have just as easily used a scrap of felt or fleece—anything soft that could fit under the wrap—but the pipe cleaner was handy.

I airbrushed a bit of pinking to the muzzle before masking it with liquid latex. I find it easier to visualize the face if the markings aren't stark white. Here she is after I wrapped her feet, but before I added the latex to the face. 

This is her after the brown acrylic was airbrushed over the body. I've reapplied the liquid masking to her face and wrapped her feet with tinted plastic wrap to keep those areas clean while I use oil paint to get the major shifts in her body color. 

That is where I will pick up next week. With luck, I will have her body color where I want it by the time I leave to judge at Sunset Coast!