No WIP photos available, but the custom breyer I've been working on now has three fully feathered legs (only one left!) and a partially resculpted head! She also features proper anatomically correct genitalia and there's a chance I might chop off her tail and sculpt her a new one as the one she's got really messes with her line of action... if I'm insane enough to do that. Anyway, so far, so good - she's really starting to look like an elven horse and I'm enjoying this project. I can't wait until I can prime her and start adding some colour!
The image is what the model originally looked like. Ruffian herself was a real horse with a very tragic story. She lived in a time of civil unrest due to the female fight for equality and when she started beating all of her races, people started thinking of her as something of a heroine and a bannerman for the cause of gender equality. Ruffian was undefeated in 10 career starts and things came to a head when she entered an unofficial match race with North America's top colt in 1975, Foolish Pleasure. Famously, Ruffian's jockey was a regular rider for both horses, but when he was asked to choose between them for a race, he chose not the big strong colt, but the filly Ruffian, saying she was the fastest of the two. With their match race billed as a battle of the sexes by the USA, Ruffian and Foolish Pleasure entered the starting gate. The bell went and they were off, Ruffian eventually gaining a half-length lead over Foolish Pleasure but she never got any further than that, her right foreleg giving beneath her. So great was the filly's will to win that even with her right fore flopping uselessly and only three good legs she was still trying to win. She was taken into surgery and her leg was repaired, but tragically, she had to be euthanized when she would not stop trying to get up. Ruffian was buried with her nose pointed at the finish line at Belmont Park. She was only three years old.
Shivra's story is a great deal different from Ruffian's; she's not a race horse but an elven one and she's rather neurotic, not truly brave at all, but like Ruffian, Shivra is a horse with a lot of heart. Though she's a nervous horse she's unwaveringly loyal and when she puts her mind into what she is doing, she can be quite powerful despite herself. Fast, enduringly sure-footed and with great stamina, Shiv would be the ideal war horse - if she was brave.
In the real world, the closest approximation to what the elven horses in mine look like would be
friesians.
The plan is to make Shivra pure black with slight dappling and dark blue eyes as per her species.
Click to see a full body shot.
Click to see a full body shot.
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