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!

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!

In the Works Wednesday

It's late, the light is bad, and I'm squinting because of it. It's a good place to stop before I can't see to go upstairs to bed! 

I've gotten my highlight/body color on a new face: Amelia's Eberl "Rose" as well as the first layer of dry-brushed shadow. This horse's reference is this amazing dark bay with these bright dapples. The lower shoulder/elbow area got a little sampling of it tonight, but I was starting to pull off that first dry-brushed layer. It's kind of a fluke that it wasn't dry enough to rub on it. Usually those thin layers dry pretty quickly. I'm thinking it's because I added some linseed oil to smooth the edges out more for a better blending zone. Something I'll have to keep in mind for next time. The much softer edges are well worth extra drying time though! 

Rose is one of those pieces that really changes when you put paint on her. This sculpture is extremely nice, but doesn't really come across that way being unpainted. I was shocked at how much I fell in love with her when she started to get her color! I'm excited to show you all how nice a "simple-colored horse" can look!

And, some more work done on JerryLynn's Sencillo. While the crappy lighting doesn't do anything for him, the main reason I posted this photo is the sections of different progress. From his head to his withers/elbow, his oil layers are finished. His tummy area shows the initial shadow layer. Lastly, that rump shows where I started with the highlight and body color oil base. You can see that the burnt umber adds a nice blanket of warmth to him. The raw umber gives him that "soot" look my customer wanted. 

JerryLynn also wants him graying and battle-scared on top of the overo markings. I found some great photos of old horses (mid 30's) that showed their gray gene only just starting to kick in. There was a high concentration of graying around the face, in the flanks, behind the elbows...the usual places that go first. I've laid down some white hairs in oil in the front section that has the final raw umber rub. That area will get lots more hairs added individually in pencil. Then comes the overo markings, and then those scars. Then I get to happily hand him off to his patient owner!

One last thing to share about Sencillo. While glazing a ceramic Darcy in linseed oil, I started trying the removal of color to reveal the dapples instead of just "outlining" them in dark tones. While it failed miserably on china (though a swap in mediums solved those issues), the same technique is fantastic on resin/cold-painting. I find it gives me a great irregular dapple, and by using a somewhat worse-for-wear brush I get this amazing soft hair look. It doesn't show in the photo near as well as in person (possibly because it's wet and very glarey) but the effect is much more realistic than the technique I was using before. I'll try to get a good closeup when he's finished so you can see what I'm talking about.

Now I hear my bed calling...

New Sales Piece

So, I've finally completed the moderately customized Weather Girl! She's now up on AB! Click Here for her Auction. Remember AB links can be finicky so just hit the browser's back button if it doesn't work on first click.

And yes, those shoes are "forged" and not sculpted.

Honestly, it was fun to transform a horse into something that was still a Weather Girl, but at the same time completely different. I don't know if I'll suddenly switch from painting resins to completely customizing plastics, but it was a nice change of beat. I have a Valentine here in studio who I've done some slight customizing to. I want to finish her at some point. Maybe next month. Too many commissions I've got on the table to get completed this month to fit her in. :) There's also a Breyer Classic scale Hanoverian and a Stone Trad. Paloose that I have big plans for. I might even have to push Valentine down the line a little to make room for that Paloose. He's going to be something. :D

That's all you'll get from me for now. Back to painting and casting and cleaning and website updating! Oh my.