NaMoPaiMo 2025 – LIONINTHETREES

I have a list of personal projects I want to accomplish in 2025 and one of them was to officially participate in NaMoPaiMo. In previous years, I’ve tried participating but never in an official capacity because I was afraid of committing and letting myself down by not finishing on time. Both horses I wound up finishing but not until month’s after the event was over.

A classic scale model horse done on a mold that is rearing up painted to resemble Kazegami, a red and white horse from the Okami series.

A stablemate scale Alborozo done in a rainbow pinto pattern mimicking the traditional Breyerfest Special Run Pollock model horse

But this year, I wanted to commit and actually push myself into finishing. And to help me with that, I signed up for Heather Bullach’s introductory oil painting class. I felt that having a class-like structure would allow me to stay accountable with my piece, and I would actually learn how to properly paint instead of winging it.

The model horse placed on top of a piece of wood coated in grey primer

I chose the stablemate scale Alborozo mold, because I felt that working at a small size would help make this project a lot more manageable. The class was centered around learning to paint black horses, and so I chose to use Black Beauty from the 1994 film as my reference horse.

Still from the 1994 Black Beauty film of the horse standing in a field with a small person

I haven’t touched oil paints since I was in college ten years ago. I remember being so annoyed at having to wait for the paint to dry, and favoured acrylics instead. But ten years later, I’ve come around to appreciating the slow and steady nature of the medium.
And I think I like the patience that oils require given how everything in our culture today is so immediate and running and a breakneck speed.

A photo of the primered horse sitting on the kitchen table with all of the paint supplies in the background.

The horse with the first layer of a dark grey painted on

The horse with a second layer of dark grey added.

The horse painted with a darker layer of grey/black

The horse after having interference blue and copper tones added. It gives the black coat a purple shimmer.

Photo of the horse in my hand to show it's scale. It's very small and can fit in my palm. You can also see more of the purple/blue effect in it's coat.

The finished model set on top a piece of wood in the same location as the first picture.

Ta-da! He's all finished! I actually debated on whether or not I should write individual blog posts sharing my progress, or if I should save it for one big post. I ended up choosing the latter, but maybe with my next horse I'll do individual posts instead.

There are obviously things I would do differently (I wish it were easier to see the blues and purples in his coat so I may need to push that in the next one), but I'm just celebrating the fact that I actually did what I said I was going to do and finished this little Black Beauty a week before the deadline.
This has made me fall in love with oil painting horses and now I'm looking at artist resins to paint!
My wallet, unfortunately—

Ralph Wiggum I'm in Danger meme. The screen shot features Ralph Wiggum, a young boy featured in the tv show The Simpsons, in the back of a bus happily chuckling to himself, "I'm in danger!"

It's also got me wondering if I can somehow experiment with painting and ceramics?
That's something I'll have to explore in the future.

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all images and text unless stated otherwise ©SHIRLEY JACKSON / LIONINTHETREES