Show Stoppers: Traditional Customs

Of my 1500 or so models, 98% of them are original finish (OF). There are some amazing custom artists out there, but for whatever reason, I’ve never grabbed onto them as a collector the way I have OF plastic. Thus, when I’ve gone to shows, I’ve only had a handful of customs to take with me.

Here are the ones from my Traditional show string. I’ll get to the minis in March.

 

This model is the first custom I ever owned. He started life as a Stone Thoroughbred and was customized into a Warmblood type by Tiffany Purdy. I’ve been a sucker for gray tobiano horses since I saw a gorgeous one at the Ohio State Fair in the mid-2000s when I was living in Columbus. I saw this model for the first time at a local show in December 2010 and instantly fell in love; almost exactly a year after I saw him at that show, he popped up for sale on MH$P, and I pounced. He has a crap-ton of NAN cards from his previous owner and from his show career with me - 17 breed cards, 4 workmanship cards, and 2 performance cards, along with a few champ/reserve rosettes. His show name is Synchronicity.

 

 

This guy is the second custom to join my show string (though not my second custom, as I’d started painting a few of my own by the time I got this guy). He’s a Breyer Big Ben by Sheryl Leisure. I picked him up from a seller on Model Horse Sales Pages in August 2012.

 

 

The tiny details on him are pretty spectacular. 

Breyer has released a lot more competitive warmblood breed molds since I bought him, so he doesn’t show much anymore, but I adore the Big Ben sculpt so he’ll continue to look pretty on my shelves. His show name is Baratheon.

 

 

I bought this Stone Arabian as a nekkid body for $15 at one of the Equilocity events between 2011 and 2014. He stayed sans clothing until early 2016, when I decided it was finally time to do something with him. I sent him to my friend Myla Pearce, who turned him into this incredible dappled bay with tons of shading. She had his base color done in time for a show in April 2016 that we were both attending, so we stuck him on the table and eyeballed him for a little while to decide on leg markings. We turned to each other pretty much at the same time and said, “Something really low on the back right and that’s it?” So that’s what he got.

His show name is Altero, which is Italian for haughty. I thought it was fitting, given his raised head and the expression on his face.

 

*****

In December 2016, Copperfox listed some “blank canvas” models for sale on their website. I’ve always liked their Irish Sport Horse, so I bought one.

 

 

As soon as I opened him, it was clear that he wasn’t just a blank. Someone had started painting him at some point, then abandoned him and hastily slapped on a coat of primer. And I do mean hastily - some places had very little primer coverage, resulting in a lot of texture, and other places had runs and drips from how thick it was.

I knew I wanted a dapple rose gray and that I wanted Sheryl Leisure to paint him. I completed a commission form on her website in March 2017 to see if she was interested. With the submission, I sent a ton of pictures of his poor condition and told her that I would be happy to compensate her for whatever extra time it took to prep him, or that I could send him out to another prepper first if he was too much for her to do. She didn’t hesitate to take him on and didn’t end up charging me any extra for the prep, even though I’m sure it was extensive.

 

 

Four months later, here’s what she did with him! I left his white markings as an artist’s choice, so they’re all what Sheryl thought fit him best. I’m so pleased with how he turned out. I show him fairly regularly; his show name is Maserati.

 

 

In 2019, my friend Beth asked for some help cataloging her collection. Being the utter spreadsheet nerd that I am, I asked her to send me pictures of her shelves and I’d put something together for her. As I was looking at the pictures, I noticed this custom Breyer Silver, painted by Julie Kuiper. He’s part of that weird glitch in my brain that goes, “Dislike cream dilutes. Dislike pintos. OOOOOOO LOVE cream dilute pintos!” I sent her a bunch of heart-eye emojis about him.

A couple months later, in September, Beth said she was willing to sell him to me, but I was short on funds after only working part-time that summer, so I said maybe someday in the future.

That “someday in the future” turned out to be a month later, when Beth and I attended the QH Congress Model Horse Show and Beth just set him on my show table and said, “Here, he’s yours.” I don’t remember why she insisted on giving him to me for free - I had a full-time job by then and could have afforded him - but Beth refused all of my efforts to pay her.

Sometimes friends are just awesome like that.

His show name is Maximum Overdrive.