Mature White Gray

Advantages of Mature White Gray:

Classic representation of the breed, easily recognized by audience.

Minimum two sprayed colors: 

1. White to brighten the body and cover any hard spots from pouring

2. Medium or Dark Gray on the delicate face skin, hair, and oblique directional body shading

Go heavy with the Gray on darkest points of face, joints, rump, inner tail.

Keep Black handy, in case you have a Gray paint run; it will look realistic and cover the run's hard edges.

After spray, easily gripped belly to spine, to minimize rubs. Gray in a real horse progresses from top downwards, so the uppermost surfaces are always the lightest/no spray.

Has a wide range of variation, which means wiggle room for saving errors. If the Gray spits or runs, hit it lightly with Black to cover. It's Natural gray variation, as long as you match it on the other side of the horse.

NO dapples! Less labor.

Sells the sculpture with contrast. Gray muscle shading across body and hair detail attracts the eye, and appears to have movement. 

Spray Guide

I use an Iwata Eclipse syphon feed airbrush, not very fancy, and it's about 10 years old. The Iwata size for passing underglaze/glaze is their .5mm needle and nozzle (the cone-shaped part). I can't get pencil-fine lines, but I don't need to.

1. Spray with White, to cover seams or hardspots. Allow to dry.

2. Spray with Gray, using the following pattern. It looks long, but it all happens very fast, in broad body sweeps and quick leg touches.

Hold horse by tail and start on underside. On a real horse's underside, the sides of sheath are white:

Spray butt cleft and genitalia, holding airbrush perpendicular to target surfaces (90 degree angle). I draw a spray line from just in front of sheath to where cleft meets tail. It is OK to get overspray on underside of tail, it will be getting more spray, later. 

Spraying a line leaves white on either side of sheath, but puts Gray everywhere it needs to be. 

Spray chest and front of neck wrinkles from below.

Advance peek at combination of the horse's side:

Ignore the tail, for now. Start with hindquarter, from behind, airbrush spray angle oblique to surfaces. It can be darker on back of butt and from below; no gray on top or spine, just leave that pale.


Spray back of hock, but only the front of hind fetlock and cannon bone. Leave white showing, when viewed from sides.

Continue same oblique angle along body, leaving flank and armpit as white as possible. Catch back of forearm and elbow, avoiding the armpit.

Oblique angle pointing toward neck crest and head, to catch just the undersides of each shoulder muscle and neck wrinkle line, leaving the throat, top of neck near mane, cheek, and ears WHITE.

From base of withers, use oblique angle moving airbrush along neck. At halfway up length of crest, swing nozzle up and away from horse, to catch the edges of the mane crest without darkening ears and top of neck.

Spray bottom edges of hooves, leaving pasterns and coronets as white as possible. Some overspray is OK.

Spray the underside of the jaw, from oblique angle. The airbrush body will be about parallel with the shoulder blade. Get gray well on the chin, both behind and front of it, using the side margins of the oblique spray. 

Spray the sides of muzzle from angle below jaw and chin. Just catch edges of nostril. 

Spray lightly up the face veins (avoid Gray on cheek) from beneath to shadow them, and catch the eye and eye wrinkles in same sweep.

Spray gray on fronts of ears to represent the openings (on this mold, the openings are flat for molding ease). As long as overspray on forelock is retouched to look continuous with hair direction, it won't harm. I tried to leave as much forelock white as possible, then shaded it from below.

Switch to horse's left side. (Tail on both sides will be last.)

Same procedure until the transition to mane. 

From base of withers, spray mane at oblique angle to catch all the detail. Do the same nozzle swing away from horse, as you go up the neck, leaving the top of mane crest and fronts of mane curls (nearest head) White.

If you get pooling or runs in the hair, do not panic, those can be hidden with Black, later.

Be careful when catching shoulder muscles from below, as the farthest reach of the spray at that oblique angle is also catching and pooling in the white parts of mane and the throat. A little goes a long way, here.

Then, Gray on jaw, nose, face, fronts of ears, as before.

Switch grip from tail, to pinching the horse between spine and belly, thumb and forefinger.

Pointing airbrush into tail towards behind the horse, oblique angle spray Gray in underside and middle of tail. do both sides. Leave top, back edge, and very bottom of tail White. (The Gray is the optic effect of the mix of white hairs and the last clinging black hairs in the tail bone's underside.)

Optional: Black can be used to realistically enhance this real horse pattern, while covering Gray spray runs and spits. No two horses gray at the same rate; some hang onto to their original pigment longer. It is realistic to spray Black only over the following areas, using same oblique directions as for Gray:

backside of butt muscles

hocks, sprayed from back to front

knees, sprayed front to back

underside of jaw, highlighting lower surfaces only

underside of tail

Note this example, which got Gray airbrush pooling in a hard spot on the elbow and forearm. As long as I matched it the Black direction to the real horses, and on both sides of the same horse (both elbows), it is salvageable.

Now you have a Mature White Gray horse with lots of contrast and detail, hiding a killer flaw but retaining the natural origination points of pigment.

Ears- light spray only

Real gray ears are white all over the backs and "bulb" of the ear. The ears are often one of the first parts of the horse to "gray out" and turn white. Only the front opening has gray shading. Gray or black all over the ears and spilling onto head is unrealistic. Customers have asked that be amended on future grays.

Here is a vintage HR example that has gray on the front openings of the ears, and white on the backs and bulb of the ear.

Room for Spray Variation

Knees can be gray on the front, and on the same horse, the hocks can be black from behind! Grays are funny! 

However, they must match side to side: knees must match each other, hocks need only match each other, etc. A horse grayed asymmetrically (side to side) is considered a bad thing, and it is a turn-off to collectors. 

The mane and tail do not have to match on the same Mature Gray horse. Each horse grays at a different rate.

Handpainted details

For simplicity, I painted the eyes solid black. An overly-thick application of black paint causes the glaze to go matte or bald on the globe of the eye: it is glaze resist. Glaze resist eyes were cited by collectors as a turn-off; they won't buy a horse with them. The lack of shine and pale pupil "makes the horse look blind".

When I get glaze resist eyes in a load, I dab fresh glaze over the bald spots and refire. 

On the insides of the legs, there is a sculpted, raised lump. It is a residual toe pad. It is called a leg "chestnut", but for clarity of language, I will say, "pad". It just takes a dab of Gray or Taupe paint, not Black. 

Paint is applied to surface of the lump only, not spreading or surrounding it. I paint just on the surface that sticks out the farthest; the glaze pulls the paint to meet the leg, and not flow over.

So, the only handpaint details on this colorway are the eyes and three leg pads (one hind pad is not painted because the tail hair obscures it). That comes to five dabs with a brush, two Black, three Gray (or Taupe). Simple and realistic beauty.

***

To add Realism, and make variations, two Optional sprayed colors: Pink and Butter/Cream.

Pink on muzzle between gray shading (not hand-painted pink)

Past HR decorators attempted the pink and gray muzzle, as shown on these vintage examples. These are not realistic spray angles, but it shows you the precedent at HR.

Collectors do not like hand-painted pink on noses. They prefer it sprayed, or none at all.

To make it a realistic portrayal, using a white-sprayed prepped model. Using a flesh pink color, let just the outer edge of the spray hit the muzzle end.

Exaggerated spray color for spray direction illustration only.

I don't use this shade of pink!

Spray pink from one side, getting the middle of the nose by oblique edge of spray.

Then, spray from under the jaw forwards with Gray. The Gray covers any side mist of Pink. Repeat on other side. 

Continue to shade the face sides, as usual: oblique angle up the veins and eyes.

The result is accurate gray skin flanking the pink marking. No masking required. Many real Spanish horses have a blaze that disappears when the gray out, and all that is left is the pink skin contrasting with the gray skin on the muzzle.

The pink is limited to muzzle, only. It should not spread up the sides of face or get on the neck. It represents the breed acceptable, modest lip markings. Pink is allowed asymmetry, unlike the rest of the coloring.

Cream or Butter shading on end of tail (none on mane)

As the tail hair grows out, the longest ends are the oldest and prone to yellowing. Mane ends are more frequently trimmed, and less prone to yellowing. NO yellow spray on mane.

Pink and cream/butter are NOT REQUIRED, just nice extra touches, if you want to shake things up in future batches. I did not put any on the test horse.

Variants for the future, using same spray directions

What if there is a Light Gray paint accident that completely floods in the mane and tail? Don't have to make it solid Black... Easy way to make that piece saleable to fill an order, and make it a real horse color:

Shade Dark Chestnut brown color spray over just the mane and tail, minimal Black on leg joints, as indicated. It is OK if a little brown overspray gets on the crest of neck and lower buttock, as shown on the real horse photo. It is now a Mulberry Gray. Collectors love Mulberry Spanish horses, even if it is a more rare color in real life.