Roses are Bay

I finished this gal up a couple weeks ago, but have neglected to find time to put her up on the site. So, she's a great excuse for a blog post! And because I've been lax in my blogging, I'm putting a veritable smorgasbord  of photos up! Rose is a commission piece and is not for sale.

But you know who is for sale? This fabulous *ceramic* Darcy! This is #1 in the edition of 25 and is up on eBay now as a benefit auction for Laura Behning's SouthCon show. 

Click HERE to go to her auction page with all the photos!

Earthenware Darcy #2 Up At Auction

I'm thrilled to finally be able to start circulating these gals! While she's #2 in the run, this is the first earthenware Darcy finished by myself. Karen Gerhardt beat me with the first finished one out there period! ;) She has been done in overgrlazes to a nice red chestnut. Read all about her and see more pictures on her MyAuctionBarn page as she's up for bidding for the next two days!

http://myauctionbarn.com/auction_details.php?name=Earthenware-Darcy-CGd-x-Scott&auction_id=148557

A Simple Saturday Update

JerryLynn's Sencillo is up next, leaving on Mini Darcy left from the early group batch. 

JL ordered up a graying smutty buckskin overo and I, along with lots of you I'm sure, will agree this is a great color for Sencillo. He did very well at a local show she took him to the day after completion!

I'm thinking that my lighting was a bit off the night I took all these photos before I handed the horses off to their owners the next day at Springamathing. I'm really not happy with how any of these photos came out. It just seems like they're not as sharp as usual and don't seem to be picking up on the amount of depth and shading in these pieces. 

In the above photo, the interference gold and metallic gold dustings he has are really picking up the light, causing certain areas to get a yellow hue. He's really a lovely tawny color in person. 

It is apparent to me that my painting technique has now far transcended my photography skillz! I will have to work harder to take more flattering photos!

In the Storm

Since there's a storm going on all around us, I thought it befitting my next completed horse showcase be of the Stormwatch resin. This guy is a lot of people's favorite resin and it's not hard to see why. He has an enormous amount of presence! And frankly, his head is probably the finest in the hobby.

He was a long time coming for his owner! I just kept finding little spots I wanted to fix up. There comes a point when you just have to learn to call a model done or you will have it for the rest of your life though. I think I'm like that with just about all my grays. 

There is a lot of detail in this guy, though it's really hard to spot in the photos. Many individually painted hairs exist on this piece!

On come those fantabulous head shots. You can kinda sorta begin to see the little hairing detail this guy sports. I love the way his paint job came out on his face!

Is it even possible to put a bad paint job on this face? Probably not.

Stormy was a commission, but I do believe his owner is getting out of the hobby, so you may see him come up for sale shortly!

Next up...Reiner #4

My brain muscles got a work out at work today so while they'll be superman strong tomorrow, tonight is sadly lacking in the thought department. Hence, boring title. Pictures will make up for it!

I figured I'd move into the next Colorado horse, but then I realized that every horse photo'd with the exception of Dainy Darcy in that group shot was a CO horse. Funny how that worked out. Either way, Jane's Reiner is next. 

 He's the fourth Reiner I started, and I've still got a few more to paint. He's another I took off the base and then added Rio Rondo slider shoes on back/reg shoes on front. And another that didn't photograph near as well as he looks in person. 

 It's the layering thing. You can kind of get an idea of the depth of color in the angle shots where the eye gets a different angle through the color rather than looking straight on. 

Jane and I were talking about how we both agreed that all our favorite Reiner heads had nice big blazes. They really do look good on this horse! And I kept his a little interesting with those jagged edges.

Until next time!

A Round of Photos

So, since the website is down for major updating, the blog gets to be the star child here in posting a batch of those new photos for all the models I finished lately. I'm still learning the little differences between CS2 and CS6 (oh my) so photo editing is a bit of a pain right now. By editing, I mean cropping, adjusting color to get it as close as possible to the real model, and adding my copyright tag. My camera and light setup get me pretty close, but not 100% there. 

Last update you got a peek at the lineup. Well, more have been added since that photo, but let's start with those, huh? First up...drumroll please... is Roundapony! If you click the link you'll see Roundapony is a collaboration of sorts between lots of Colorado gals. He's Karen Gerhardt's Roudabout cob resin (I think she has only a couple of these left in resin if you want to buy one!), and is actually one of the master waste mold casts. That cast made it into Jennifer Buxton's capable hands where he got transformed from a Classic scale British Heavy Show Cob to a Traditional scale pony because 1) Jennifer has a *bit* of a *thing* for ponies, and 2) she only shows Trad. performance. Lastly, this cutie made his way to me! 

I am a huge fan of well-done customizing. To me, not only does the customizing have to be realistic, correct anatomically, and done with professional caliber, it has to "match the piece." It has to be changed, but remain the same if that makes any sense. How Jennifer managed to take a horse that was meant to be a British Heavy Show Cob and turn him into a cute little show pony and keep him ultimately the same horse I can't put into words, but she did just that.

This guy's color is so shiny and glowing in person I'm a little disappointed that the photos can't get that kind of detail. Seems to be a constant problem of mine. /Whine. 

He has such a cute face!

The braids came out great! Jennifer did such a nice job on them she gets to do more of them for me on another model! :D

I love how nicely he looks with his hunter clip too! And it was *so* much fun to paint! That pinto pattern really helped me show it off too with that white hair contrasted on the body colored ones!

As you can see, all that Colorado work really came together nicely on this piece! I'm always hoping to do more stuff like this as it's fun to work with ladies like Jennifer and Karen. Stay tuned for the next model up! You'll just have to wait and see who it is!