Wee Dan and Wee Cuillin (b.21 January 2010)

Just before I went off to California (more on that story later!), I received an order from Pamela through my Folksy shop. I had recently made up a listing for Custom Wee Horses, and she ordered two to look like her gorgeous horses, Dan and Cuillin.

An exchange of emails and photographs followed, and I got started on then when I came back. These are beautiful horses - Dan is the bay and is a 17 year old retired race horse. The chestnut is Cuillin (I think called after the Cuillin ridge in Skye), a 5 year old Welsh Cob with beautiful markings.

Dan was fairly straight forward to make - I spent a bit of time getting the colour right, and mixed up a lovely blend of browns, black and a touch of red. For Cuillin, I wanted to capture the gorgous, rich russet red of his coat, and for that I brought in a metallic copper clay, as well as some browns, oranges and a touch of black.

For Cuillin, I also introduced the concept of white socks - the first time I've done that on a custom Wee Horse. The real horse has such gorgeous socks, it seemed such a shame to leave them out! And I'm really happy with the results - who would have thought that a small disc of white clay could actually convey the impression of white legs?!

Cuillin's white narrow blaze was made from a very thin hand-cut strip of white clay, which I then carefully blended by rolling a thin knitting needle over it. This can be a bit trial and error, as by blending the clay in, it increase the overall area of the white, so it's important to keep the white clay as thin as possible to avoid significant distortion. Cuillin's muzzle was cut from a dark gray clay, and I created the nostrils by putting a circle of the same clay onto the face and pressing it in with a ball clay shaper.

For the manes and tails for both horses, I added some chocolate brown to black to make it a more natural 'black'. Both horses are about 3cm all round. And here are the original models, which are a little bit larger than that!

Pin It