Still Workin' Sunday

There is a live show coming up at the end of May. Live shows are probably the best motivation for me to finish horses. There's just something about the excitement of it that pushes me to work harder and do more. The real job has been hectic lately, but I've been putting in really late nights for the models to get things done. It leaves me pretty tired, but very satisfied! 

I've got about 9 or so horses I want to finish. They're all in various stages of completion, but the majority are pretty close to done. It seems to be how I work. There's usually not one horse finished, wait another month another horse finished, etc. It always seem to work out that I finish a small army of horses at once. And when I do, it's FANTASTIC! I can almost hear the hallelujah chorus now. 

These two just got oil layers on recently so they're the stars of the show for today. The first is a Sencillo resin. This will be the second that I've painted. I sold off half my very limited amount of personal copies which I had originally planned on painting, leaving me with two left. One will be used to mold the ceramic edition, the other will be for my personal painted collection - which consists of like three half-painted horses. X^D. Anyway, I don't plan on taking any more Sencillo commissions, so the two gals besides myself that have these painted-by-me Sencillo's will have pretty rare items on their hands. 

The owner of this guy requested a old graying sooty buckskin overo. He's pictured below with his light and medium tones finished, and he's now at the point where I can drybrush on some shadow and soot. The photo was taken at night with my iPhone and while the color is close, he's slightly more gold in person. The soot and shadow will make a big difference. When the body color is the way I want it, I'll start penciling in those old gray hairs. I found a fantastic reference photo for this! Then I'll add the overo markings to take him over the top. 

This next piece is Roundapony. You've probably seen this pony before on Jennifer Buxton's blog. I really enjoyed reading her progress on this piece as she took him from a really rough master cast to a fantastic customized "pony". Jennifer has a bit of a thing for ponies. ^_^. So when she got her hands on a master cast of Karen Gerhardt's Roundabout resin, she knew where she wanted to take him. Jennifer is also a trading model horse goddess. She's fantastic about trading services with, and since I hate prepping so much lots of my rough guys end up over there. In exchange I get to pick a model from her amazing nekkid collection to paint. When Roundapony was one of those options, how could I *not* pick him?? Sorry Tiffany Purdy, but I get this one!

He's shown in his first layer of oils too. He's got a long way to go before he's just right, but he's making a good start. And I'm happy to say that he's being a good little pony and is probably one of two horses out the many in my studio that is not giving me fits getting him painted. 

I love the fact that this guy is hunter clipped! I've not painted anything like that before and it's just a fun little change. Again, still a long way to go to get that body smooth and glowing in both the clipped and non-clipped areas. You'll see what I mean when the finished photos go up later.

Isn't his face *adorable*?! He's just a cute little stinker and I'm really enjoying myself painting him. When the bay body is where I want it, Jennifer also wants some tobiano markings on him. It just dawned on me that pretty much all my commissions left over are pinto horses! You can definitely see what's en vogue in the hobby.