Splatter Painting

Ibn Monsata, Arabian stallion customized by Sarah Minkiewicz-Breunig from the Classic Shetan and Sagr molds.

The horse above, Ibn Monsata, is one of Sarah Minkiewicz-Breunig's NaReViMo horses for 2025. Sarah posted about the kind of splatter technique she used to create him and a (yet-to-be-revealed) roan on her blog. That post, "Speckled Sparkle: Painting with a Toothbrush," is a helpful read if you want to try this out for yourself. 

Sarah was recreating the look Tom Bainbridge used to get with his fleabitten greys. Here is a close-up of Monsata. You can see LunarVerse, Tom's Classic Arabian Stallion, that Sarah used as an inspiration here. I think she nailed the look with her new guy!

A close-up of Ibn Monsata 

Like many vintage artists, I experimented with splatter painting. This is Janx Sandpiper, a bay roan Walking Pony I customized from a Stablemate Morgan Mare. He would have been made some time between 1986 and 1987—during the peak of the splatter trend. (If you look closely, you can see he was also part of the string mane and tail trend.)

Janx Sandpiper, inspired by Judy Renee Pope's Walking Horse Janx Spectral

Splattering paint (or masking material) has a technical advantage. It creates a truly random pattern. That's surprisingly hard to achieve. It's also just fun.

I decided to experiment with splatter painting and ceramics last year. I used the same toothbrush technique Sarah describes in her article, only with ceramic underglaze. Usually, I use translucent underglazes, but for this, I used opaque colors. Because the opaque colors have a heavier, chalky texture, I could go back and lightly etch the speckling to better reflect the direction of the coat. 

Here is a finished Hadrian glazed this way. 

Splatter techniques were on my mind later in the year when I visited the Breyer factory. Paint splattering is how we did the belton spotting on the black 2025 Ambassador Model "Salud!". Splattered resist was used to create the roaning pattern on the black tobiano-salpicada version. I got to experiment with both types of splatter while I was there.

Here's one of the experimental models from that trip. I wanted to see if I could use layers of resist to create a variable roaning that might read at "varnish roan." I am not sure it worked, but maybe he just needed more varnishing to look less like a grey. 

I haven't decided how to finish my NaReViMo horses yet. Chances are they will sit in primer for a very long time. That's how things often work here at the studio! It is tempting to pull out the toothbrush, though. 

Nostalgia for Big Hair

Calypso, Stablemate customized by Sarah Minkiewicz-Breunig in the 1990s

I found the picture of Calypso (above) while I was unpacking boxes for the new studio. 

He had come to Alabama in 1993 with the rest of Sarah's show string. I had seen one of her Classic-scale horses in person and was in awe of the small details like wrinkles and veins. It was pretty revolutionary at the time. I had heard she did the same with smaller scales. I wrote and asked if she had close-ups of her Stablemates. She didn't have pictures, so she sent the models in the mail so I could see them for myself. 

There is a lot of nostalgia wrapped up in the picture. I didn't know Sarah well at the time, so the letter and Calypso (and his box-mates) were how I met one of my dearest friends. The photo itself was taken at our first home, the original Blackberry Lane. It was easy to get a clear blue sky—something 'proper' show photos had back in the day!—because our farm was surrounded by acres of cotton fields. Within a few years, those fields sprouted subdivisions instead. Last year, the little blue farmhouse was demolished to make way for a neighborhood park. 

Like our old farm, the hobby has changed dramatically since that picture was taken. I didn't know it then, but the two things that would have the most significant impact on the community, resin-casting and the internet, were ready to take off. Casting our own horses was a long-held dream, but there is a part of me that misses the time when we were all making one-of-a-kind customs. 

National Retro Vintage Month

Six years ago, Sarah encouraged everyone to get nostalgic and create a vintage-style custom model in August. Patterned after Jennifer Buxton's popular National Model Painting Month, she created National Retro Vintage Month. Almost every year since, she has created multiple models for the event. Tomorrow I'll be debuting one of her 2025 horses in a post about retro-style splattering. In the meantime, here are some of her pieces from years past. 

This is Rafiq, an Amazigh horse from the first year's event in 2020. Sarah stressed that NaReViMo horses were about rediscovering 'play' in model horse artistry. Rafiq and the other horses made in 2020 set the tone. 

Rafiq, an Amazigh stallion customized by Sarah Minkiewicz-Breunig from the Breyer Proud Arabian Stallion and Black Foundation Stallion

Here are two from 2022. The first one, Permian, was another Proud Arabian Stallion custom. As hard as it might be for younger collectors to imagine, that mold was once the epitome of Arabian type in the show ring!

Permian, Arabian stallion customized by Sarah from the Breyer Proud Arabian Stallion and the San Domingo

Nurmyrat, an Akhal-Teke stallion customized by Sarah from the Kelso and Man O'War

Sarah did this Proud Arabian Mare custom for the event in 2023.

Bint Alfajr, an Arabian mare

The next two are from NaReViMo 2024.

Bint Alfidat Alsawda, another Arabian mare from the Proud Arabian Mare mold

Farzad, Persian Arabian customized by Sarah from the Classic Arabian Stallion and the Man O'War

What all of Sarah's NaReViMo horses have in common is that they are haired. For me, that is probably the thing I most associate with the "golden era" of customizing. With only a few exceptions, my customs almost always had fiber manes and tails. 

Snow Angel, customized by Lesli Kathman (then Jeffreys) from the Stablemate Morgan Stallion in 1990

Knowing my weakness for big hair, Sarah sent temptation my way for this year's event. As I will show in a future post, there is no way I will finish my horses in the one-month time for the event. But Sarah ensured that the poor beasts weren't keeping their plastic manes and tails. Just look at all that hair! 

Samples of ramie, alpaca, and viscose for hairing model horses

I was especially taken with the ombre and mixed colors shown in the foreground. If you look at Rafiq, Sarah's first Retro Vintage, you can see the subtle mix of colors that modern fibers have. The two Proud Arabian Mare customs show the kind of drape that we just couldn't easily obtain back then. We might be "going retro," but we'll have better hair! 

Now I just have to finish some horses so I can experiment with it.