I've gone and done it.

Done what? Well, gone over to the dark side of clinky ponies. Blame Karen Gerhardt. Or thank her. :)

Here's the thing with ceramics. You kind of need this rather important piece of equipment. Absolutely mandatory. A kiln. And for me, coming up with the expense of the kiln was the dam in my creative ceramic productivity. I knew I wanted a programmable one so I could let the thing go about it's business while I went about other business. I was wanting a small, but-still-large-enough-for-my-biggest-sculpture Skutt KM818 kiln, and have been searching for deals for the past year or so on Craigslist and other internet areas. Then, earlier this month I found the deal of the century. Seriously. I stole this thing. While it was much much larger than what I had planned on purchasing, we had the room and the price was too good to pass up. You really have no idea. 

So, one trip to Falcon, CO later and I am now the proud owner of this Skutt KM1227. The outside isn't all shiny sparkly new, but it's in working condition and the deal was good enough that I didn't care if it had some clay and glaze bits and bobs on the outer metal walls. One of the central elements needs replacing and a few of the bricks need replacing as well but that stuff is super easy. It's really remarkable how simply a kiln is built for the job it does. Repair on these guys is easy. 

My new (to me) Skutt KM1227 in it's place of honor in the front corner of our garage.

Obviously the crap around it will get moved during fires. :)

Here's a little size comparison - 

I'm 5'6" and as you can see the thing could easily fit me inside it!

So what am I doing with this Mama Jama kiln? I'm happy to share. :) For a while, it's been a dream of mine to see my sculptures cast in ceramic. Especially after Karen let another hobbyist and I play with her Boreas molds a couple of years ago. With the experience I've gained from resin casting and the knowledge I've been gaining on ceramic molding, I knew I could create my own plaster molds. 

Since Darcy was the first piece I produced myself in resin, I thought it fitting she be the first I produce in ceramic. She is ideal for the project as she is pretty simple as far as sculpture goes. She doesn't have some huge whipping mane or flying tail, and her body doesn't have a lot of undercut areas. All that makes Darcy a great "getting started" horse. 

Molding for ceramic is much different than molding for resin casting. Instead of being able to use a flexible material like silicone rubber, you use plaster. This means no undercuts as, unlike rubber, the plaster cannot bend around them to demold. What does this mean for Darcy? Well, unfortunately for her, it means this...

Now, some of you with light constitutions may be horrified at what I've done. But, like you do in bronze casting, it's easiest to separate the sculpture and it's protruding limbs and just mold things individually. This way, I'll only be dealing with 2-5 piece molds rather than some monster with 20-something pieces. Karen G actually just posted a fantastic blog update for those of you who want to see the process of casting and assembling an earthenware piece. 

My first extremity to mold is Darcy's head. I figured it would be the most complicated mold of the sculpture so if I could handle it, I could handle the rest of the sculpture! The mold ended up being 5 pieces. This is because I left the ears on. On many of these molds, the ears are one of those items that would get dissected from the body. In her case, I was inspired by Karen's "Optime" mold, which has this little backplate type deal. 

The working head to decapitated Darcy.

The end result - Darcy's head's 5-piece mold cube.

Below are shots of the individual mold pieces. There's some primer that stuck to the plaster in areas if you were wondering what the red and dark gray areas were. I'm really happy with the result. No air bubbles thanks to my vacuum chamber I use for my resin molds, and everything locks nice and tightly into place the way it's supposed to. 

The bad news is that now I have to wait like a month for this thing to fully dry before I can even think of pouring in the slip and get a casting. And I've got to finish the rest of the molds for this one sculpture. I've got her right front leg done and the rest of the legs will be easy so I decided to work on the body mold. At this moment, I'm half way finished with it. 

Works in Progress

So, since my website at this point is horribly out dated and I don't see any time to get to it in the near future, I'll post some WIP horses here. I'll actually be giving the website a nice facelift when I do get to it, so there'll be that to look forward too as much as the new photos that will be on it! 

These guys were the two I took photos of today for their owner to get a progress report on. That's the only reason they get their own post. There are many others in studio in various stages of progression. This first guy up is an Eberl Adonis resin getting a red chestnut tobiano paint job. I don't know why, but I tend to do things one side at a time. This side as you can see is nearly complete. The other is still only base-coated. X^D Things left to do on this side will be to smooth the body color a bit more and maybe touch up with some dry-brushed oils to bring out shadows slightly more. The chest, neck, head already have that on. The white is not completely finished either, nor have I shaded those areas or done all the mapping yet. I tried a new mapping color and am very happy with the way it came out!

The second is SMB's little Oliver. He and Mom are getting painted like Exmoor ponies. I'm experimenting with glazes on this guy rather than going with my normal full on wet-on-wet shading for the overall body tone. I think it will work out well in his case because of the extensive pangare. His legs, eyes, and nose still need the black shading. He's going to be done before momma as she's still sitting in primer waiting for these two to get complete before she gets her new clothes.

Out with the Old

I'm so happy to say that I've finished off the oldest horse in studio! A *big* achievement! The resin is Brigitte Eberl's Lorenz and he's been painted a medium to light dappled gray. This guy is jam packed with hairing detail that doesn't show in the photos. He's off to his owner Monday. Below is just a fraction of his photos but you can get the idea. :) Enjoy.

I leave for Washington D.C. Tuesday for the week. I have a chestnut Mini Pearl resin that was also just completed and I think I'll give her her own blog post too after I'm back in studio so the blog doesn't stay so outdated.