Compendium Films

Warhorses: Converting & Painting Model Horses

by Max Longhurst

Reviewed By Jack Kennedy, IPMS# 12511

MSRP: $24.95 Review DVD from Casemate Publishing: www.casematepublishing.com Painting horses is one of my favorite parts of modeling figures. Many years ago when I first got into building and painting miniature figures, I was always captivated by the Historex figures as shown in their catalogues. One of my favorite painters shown was May Longhurst. His conversions and dioramas were something I could only dream of reproducing. Now, Compendium Films has produced a wonderful DVD of how Max Longhurst makes converts and paints his masterpieces. This is a 95-minute, step by step instructional that answers all my questions about how he does his work. In this tutorial Max makes two Historex horses by converting them into different poses. He shows how to change the position of the legs, head and body of each horse. In addition he shows how to use liquid plastic to make more realistic tails, manes and any other areas that show hair. When watching this DVD one can see that these conversions are not such a great mystery. Each step is explained and shown in the simplest of terms so that anyone can do the same thing as Max. After assembling each horse, Mr. Longhurst shows his method of painting his horses. He painted one a dapple-grey and the other a chestnut. He uses oil paints but in a different way than I had been using them He first paints the entire horse with a base color such as burnt umber for the chestnut. He then uses a synthetic sponge to wipe away a lot of the color that leaves the darker color in the shadow areas. He then uses another sponge to add the highlights using orange and yellows. After this he paints in and blends the shadow colors. With the dapple-grey he paints the entire horse grey and then uses the sponge to wipe off some of the grey and then uses white to put in the dappling white on the rump in irregular patterns. In addition to these instructions, Mr. Longhurst shows how to correct common mistakes easily and lists the products he uses to make his fine models. There is also a profile on this miniature master. One thing I was surprised at was the he is probably the same age as me but it seems that he as been around for ages. Finally there is a showcase of his fine dioramas and vignettes. I would highly recommend this DVD to anyone interested in building, converting and painting horses. It is simply the best tutorial on miniatures that I have ever seen. I am looking forward to more from Compendium Films and Max Longhurst. I wish to thank Casemate Publishing and Tara Lichterman plus Compendium Films for giving me this DVD to review.