Painting horses is one of those things that we just do, as wargamers. It’s a strange thing too, because while we’re normally willing to make the effort to find reference images of uniforms, we don’t extend the same consideration to horses. White horse, black horse, brown horse, some complimentary colors, and that’s enough to get it over with. Besides, it’s not like the horses will complain.
All of the tutorials I could find for painting horses took that same “good enough” approach, so now I’m writing my own.
I am the Dead Man – I speak for the horses.
(dumb intro; Shut Up & Paint Already! ~ed)
Painting Bay Horses
Painting Dun Horses
Painting Grullo – and dapples!
Painting Roan Horses
Reviewing the Firelock Kit
The Pryor Mountain Mustangs
Since I am painting horses for Blood & Plunder, I wanted to find references for horses in the American colonies. History tells us that the majority of these horses were brought from Spain, a “breed” known as the Spanish Colonial Horse. The Spanish Colonial Horse is not synonymous with the Spanish Mustang, and all of the wild herds in the Great Basin are heavily intermingled with later draft and cavalry horses introduced during America’s westward expansion.
Enter the mustangs of the Pryor Mountain herd. This herd has ranged along the Pryor mountains in Wyoming and Montana for more than 400 years. They are possibly the last, most pure herd of Spanish Colonial Horses on the entire continent. Genetic testing conducted in the 1990s proved that the horses were descended from Spanish stock, with a healthy genetic variance and virtually no outside influence in their breeding.
Today, the herd is federally protected, and you can visit their preserve in Wyoming. I urge you to do so, if you have the chance – climate and habitat degradation has been hard on America’s wild herds, and these mustangs are living time capsules back to the Americas’ earliest colonial history and the foundation of the “American West” mythos.
The Amazing Technicolor Horse
Horsehair comes in two colors: black-brown, or red-yellow. All other shades are the result of genetic variation that either increases, reduces, or mixes the pigmentation. The extremities (called points) like the ears, muzzle, and legs, are often the most affected by this variance. White markings are distinct, and applied over the underlying colors.
Eye color is also affected by the genes which color the coat, but most horses have brown eyes. A darker coat will have darker eyes, and lighter coats lighter eyes. Blue eyes are possible but extremely rare. Hoof color is also determined by the same genes, usually grey or grey-brown, or grey-black on black horses, and darker or lighter as the coat.
Knowing these tendencies towards certain colors, and the way the variations and patterns are applied in layers, helps us to know how to base and shade our colors when we’re painting. These small, imperceptible details like shading with a warm or cool tone, go a long way towards convincing your eye that what it sees is “realistic.”
As we’ve seen from the Pryor Mountain horses, these genes and markings are unique to distinct horse populations, herds, breeds, and regions of the globe – so it pays off to research the horses in the same way you would research a uniform. For example, the horses that I’ve painted would work for Spanish armies in Blood & Crowns, or the Latin armies in Blood & Steel, but German horses for Blood & Valor would have been a different stock.
A Quick Word From Our Sponsor: SpeedPaint
Just kidding, Army Painter still hasn’t given me an affiliate deal. But I’m calling out Speedpaints especially here, because along with GW Contrasts, they have become popular for painting horses.
I don’t like to apply Speedpaints across a whole area – I apply them selectively. For me, they are an easier way to achieve smooth blends and shading. Furthermore, any time during this tutorial that I call out “thinned paint” – I mean using Speed Medium, not water (I thin my paint with water before working with it, but no more than necessary)
Just Paint Already!
Enough about history and reference images, let’s paint! What follows are pictures of the Pryor Mountain herd, along with my models and quick paint recipes for getting the right look. None of the techniques that I use are particularly difficult, and you are of course free to swap out to roughly equivalent colors from your favorite range.
bay Horses
Bay horses are red-brown horses with a gene for black points. Their coats can range from red, to almost-black with red highlights. Bay is the second most common color in the herd at Pryor Mtn.
Base coat: Chaotic Red
Over brush: Oak Brown ~ a “warm” brown, heavily drybrushed
Highlight: Dirt Spatter ~ a red-brown, drybrushed over all
Mane, Tail, Legs: Grim Black Speed ~ applied to the legs and feathered upwards to blend
Dun Horses
The dun gene applies over the base color, and lightens it while leaving the points, mane and tail in the original, undiluted color. Duns are unique for their primitive markings – a stripe down the back and sometimes on the shoulders, and zebra-striping on the legs. Dun is the most common coloration among the herd. Colors can range from golden, to more reddish. When the dun gene applies to black horses, it creates a grullo.
Base coat: Kobold Skin
Mane, Tail, Legs: Leather Brown + Speed Medium ~ feathered onto the legs and applied in a stripe running along the back. Also painted into the areas of darkest shadow.
Wash: Flesh Wash (left) or Seraphim Sepia (right) ~ an all-over wash to tie the colors together and provide shading
Grullo Horses
When the dun gene affects a black horse, you get a horse which the Spanish call Grullo (grew-yo). A mare in this coloring is a Grulla. Although applied over black, grullo horses can still have “warm” coloring that strays toward brown, as seen on Ursula (right, facing away). Remember, the dun gene leaves the points in the original coat color.
Base coat: Fog Grey
Over brush: Mummy Robes ~ a “bone white” light tan, heavily drybrushed
Wash: Flesh Wash ~ applied all over, blending together the colors and warming the grey
Mane, Tail, Legs: Gravelord Grey Speed ~ a “dirty” grey with shades of brown and green
Dapples are another feature determined by genetics. The most common dapples are lighter shades of the horse’s original coat color, caused by the presence of the two types of color genes. Chestnut-colored horses specifically do not develop dapples.
I added dapples to this horse by stippling on Matt White. I worked in 2 passes. After stippling the first layer, I dabbed it with a brush loaded with water. This thinned and “blew out” the pattern to more of a general highlight. Once dry, I stippled again with paint.
Roan Horses
Similarly to how horses develop dapples, Roan is a modification to any other color of horse. It’s the equivalent to salt-and-pepper hair, which many of us probably have by now (if we still have hair). Several hairs on the horse’s body grow in white or grey, and give this salt-weathered look to their coat.
Base coat: Chaotic Red
Over brush: Leather Brown ~ heavily drybrushed
Highlight: Desert Yellow ~ this is where the khaki-green is coming from
Extreme Highlight: Kobold Skin Mummy Robes ~Mummy is a pale white
Mane, Tail, Legs: Gravelord Grey Speed ~ applied to the legs and feathered upwards to blend
About the Kit
The miniatures in this article are from the Firelock plastic cavalry kit. It is a solid kit, on par with their Soldiers and Militia – not difficult to put together, but occasionally baffling.
The decision to put the rider’s butt flat on the saddle and then leave the legs as separate pieces drove me bonkers. Firstly, because it creates odd poses, but second and more importantly, because it means that it’s annoying to paint the riders. I usually mount my cavalry on a stick up between the rider’s legs, paint him, paint his horse, and then glue them both together. You can sort of do that with this kit, painting the upper body. But you’re still left to figure out the legs.
The kit also only has 3 horses, and 3 poses for riders. You have:
:: Guy pointing gun to side
:: Guy pointing gun forward
:: Guy galloping with sword
And be careful, because each body and set of legs only matches to one horse.
I kept my conversions to a minimum, but wanted some extra poses so came up with the models shown above. There is some cutting involved.
:: Body B17 (center) – use lance arm B7. Retain arm B16, but cut away hand at wrist.
:: Body B20 (left) – use arm B13. Cut sword-hand from arm B19, at wrist. Transplant sword-hand B19 to arm B16 above
:: Body B14 (right) – use arm B16 w/ Hand B19
On the battlefield, I use the flag bearers to track different units. In my Historicon list, the banner color “Red is for Reformado” – go check it out.
If you want a chance to win a box of Cavalry for yourself, and try them out in your own games: Give the blog a Follow using the sidebar, and link me a Forcebuilder list that includes at least 1 mounted unit, in the comments of this article. I’ll pull a random winner at the end of August, and send them a box of Firelock Cavalry.
This is great! I’ll be saving this as a bookmark for when I paint any Cavalry units.