Tag Archives: horses

You can lead a horse to water in LEGO

There’s a truism among artists that horses are impossible to draw. In life and imagination, they’re majestic beasts, but as soon as you try to recreate that unique form, the proportions are all off. Capturing a horse’s distinctive majesty is doubly difficult in LEGO, but brick artist Vincent Kiew stepped up to the challenge with a splendid steed drinking from a stream. Vincent nails the horse’s muscular build with excellent shaping from head to hocks. Samurai helmets make for a very clever solution for the horse’s hooves.  A detailed patch of meadow rounds out the scene with lovely flowers, brush, and ladybugs adding to the pastoral beauty.

By the river

What a beautiful portrait. Wait, it’s made out of LEGO!? Even better!

This gorgeous build is a collaboration between brothers, Isaac Snyder and John Snyder. Together, they have produced this visually stunning piece, demonstrating the inventive ways in which LEGO can be used to form shapes. The model mainly relies on flexible tubes to portray the outline of the horse, with claw pieces creating the pointed hair ends of the horse’s wavy mane. In order to maintain the bends of the tubes, rods have been inserted in just the right places to create curves in the rubber. It is an elegant creation that may require a second glance from the average person before they realise that the portrait is actually made out of LEGO.

Horse Line Art

Hold up! We want to talk to you about your wagon’s extended warranty!

It wasn’t always dysentery that did you in on the Oregon trail. Dmitry has created a microscale wonder in “The Road To The West”,  a build full of great details and part usage. A few that caught my eye right away were the use of hubcaps for the spoked wagon wheels and the really clever combination of small parts in the horses. I also adore the slight gaps between the sections of the coach’s cover. Those allow for a wind-swept look that enhances the scene’s already great sense of motion.

The Road to the West

This scene feels like a small part of a larger story. What happens next? Maybe Dmitry will share another build in the future that fills us in. Otherwise we’ll just have to look at some other great Western-inspired creations and make up our own legends.

The Medieval Speed Shop for all your horse and wagon needs

Any car enthusiast knows that the Speed Shop can be a vital place to give your car that extra bit of oomph. Sometimes just a little more horsepower or even flashier rims will do it. Even a new air freshener can turn your ride from a zero to a hero. (Thanks, Vanilla Ice!) But LEGO builder Stephan Gofers has your solution for when you had a need for speed back in the horse and carriage days. This Medieval Speed Shop has everything we look for in a great LEGO creation. It has neat colors, nice parts usage, awesome build techniques, and also goats. Did I mention before that goats equal the formula for success here at Brothers Brick? I’m pretty sure I did. This isn’t the first time Stephan tickled our fancy. Check him out in our archives.

The Medieval Speedshop

Sketching famous paintings in LEGO

Have you ever gone to an art museum with a notebook, ready to try how artists started creating their masterpieces? Have you also drawn a rough sketch with a pencil to get the fastest idea of the artist’s process? Tobias Munzert has done exactly that, but by using LEGO pieces. In this triptych, he recreated the motifs of three paintings by German Expressionist painter Franz Marc – Red Deers, Blue Horse, and Red Horses in black and white to emulate pencil drawings. Talk about blending LEGO and art!

Franz Marc Drawings – 3-in-1 LEGO IDEAS Project

Each drawing is laid out on a field of white bricks acting as a blank canvas. The minimalist black “sketches” are made up of various thin parts in black held by clips. Tobias really utilised his NPU skills, and has given us a good idea on which parts to make curves with. See if you can spot each unique minifig utensil and animals appendages used to create the intricate shapes of Franz Marc’s animals.

Check out more LEGO creations depicting horses!

From animation to automata [Video]

In 1878, Eadweard Muybridge studied animal locomotion and took a series of pictures of a trotting horse to see every phase in a stride. How? He placed 24 cameras around a racetrack, each 27 inches apart. As the horse trotted past, a tripwire each shutter was snapped. Combined, those pictures became a precursor to motion pictures, and technically, the first GIF. In honor of this, Tobias Munzert has built a mechanical LEGO version that gallops in stride with the original animation.

LEGO - A horse galloping

The mechanics are timed really well to get that genuine look of a horse in motion. If you look closely, you can see that even the head pushes forward slightly. You should also take a closer look at the excellent parts usage on the neck, head, and feet!

While you’re here, check out some more cool horse builds, and other mechanical models.

The horse of pestilence

Did you know there is an urban legend about the position of a horse’s legs on a statue? If the horse is rearing, both front legs in the air, the rider died from battle. If one front leg is up that means the rider was wounded in battle. If the horse has all four hooves on the ground, the rider died outside battle. If that legend is true than we might assume that the rider of alex_mocs creation was wounded in battle. His statue to remember his bravery however didn’t stand the test of time. The rider is completely gone (if there ever was a rider). The horse itself is quite okay except for the pestilence growing across it’s back. This creation shows that there can be beauty in decay. I love all the different shapes of the mushrooms and making them white adds a nice contrast to the black horse.

Pestilence

The folklore of the past is today’s fake news

I can’t help but wonder if in the olden days, tales of wonder and awe that spread through the tongues of villagers would somehow be dubbed as fake news today. I’m so glad that the fake news of the past centuries (AKA folk tales) still stands today though, simply because it’s harmless while capturing the imagination and awe of magical creatures like this Scottish Kelpie by JakTheMad. The shoulders and thighs and tail structure are accentuated by parts from buildable figures quite appropriately. And of course, you can’t go wrong with a horse rearing pose, although it requires some mad skills for balancing the centre of gravity with such a build.

Scottish Kelpie

Build your own horse, Lucky Luke!

What’s even more difficult than creating just the perfect LEGO minifigure for your creation? Crafting the perfect character in a small scale without using minifigures. Well, ok, this build by Marion Weintraut actually uses a lot of minifigure pieces, just not how you’re “supposed” to. The long-running comic strip hero Lucky Luke and his horse Jolly Jumper are wonderfully gangly and full of cartoon whimsy. From the perfectly placed hollow studs for Jolly’s nostrils, to the small slope for Luke’s bandana and the minifigure pirate hook for his cigarette, there are so many techniques to love here.

Lucky Luke + Jolly Jumper

Although, while I’m always a fan of unorthodox techniques, I do detect a slight twitch in my eye at the way the minifigure arms are connected for Jolly’s tail. Let’s both pretend we didn’t see that, and enjoy the rest of this splendid creation.

LEGO horse puts on a show

Using LEGO bricks to capture the organic curves of a well-known animal is no mean feat. It’s all too easy for observers to spot when the proportions of a limb or torso are incorrect. They might not be able to articulate exactly what’s wrong, but they’ll know something is just a little “off” about the whole thing. Vincent Kiew‘s showjumping horse, however, is spot-on — a triumph of poseability and shaping. The mane and tail, the ears, the curves outlining the horse’s musculature, are all excellent. But to deliver this in a model which looks good in so many different poses is testament to the builder’s skill. The jockey is as well put together as her mount, and looks comfortable in the saddle whether trotting, galloping, or jumping — the pair are putting on quite a show, as is Vincent.

Equestrian

She called me a steed

Contests bring out a different side in builders. I cut my teeth in the LEGO world making fantasy-based castles and the like over in the Guilds of Historica on Eurobricks, but for contests I have been building out of my comfort zone. First there was some Star Wars builds last May, then more recently a Neo-Classic spaceship, a pirate ship, a butterfly, and a bird. They’re quite different from what I got used to building, and they required different approaches. Most recently, I (Benjamin Stenlund) built an American Mustang, and no, I’m not talking about the muscle car, but about the horse that roams some parts of the Western USA. Though maybe I’ll build some cars soon, too, just for kicks.

The Stud

Building him (and he is a male, if you look closely, a stud stallion) required patience in shaping like grey castle walls don’t. A plate or two of difference in the legs, the angle of the head, the girth of the chest, all these things required fine tuning and frequent adjustments. I built the head first, because if you start with the body, scaling the head to it becomes a nightmare (or is it a night stallion?), but even so I had to redesign the body multiple times. And pulling apart reddish brown pieces is a harrowing experience, never knowing when one could snap. And then supporting the weight of the whole horse with the tail required some Technic structure; I admit I fudged it a bit, and things did not quite line up, but it’s a custom creation and not an official set, so who cares? It was built for the studless category of the Style it Up contest (hence I made a stud) but I threw in some gratuitous minifigure-leg cacti to enter it into the Iron Forge, too. Now hopefully I can go back to building castles for a while…

Who says paintings have to be 2D?

Up next from TBB Auctionhouse, we have this magnificent piece, “Canvas Warrior”, ABS on canvas, by the brilliant artist Markus Rollbühler, circa 2020. Bidding will start at $1M. Do I hear one? You, with the itchy nose. Please note the American Western style, with the Native American astride a horse, riding out of the picturesque Rocky Mountains. Do I hear two? Ah, you, scratching your eyebrow. Note the rippling pectorals, made from a LEGO minifigure torso. This could be the cover of the latest Nora Roberts novel. Do I see a hand for three? You there, lady with the cough, yes. Three million. This is a fine example of stereotypical Wild West art, folks. There’s buckskin fringe, a rifle, even some scrub bushes. Four million, from you, Mr. Itchy Nose. Wonderful. Five? Do I hear five? The impressionistic landscape even includes some plesiosaur flippers. And that horse! It will leap out and impress all your guests? Five! Yes, you on your smartphone. Five million! Going once, going twice, sold!

Canvas Warrior