Birth of an idea

So I got an idea to make a horse. I found this great photo of a stretched out American Saddlebred and thought, "Hey I wanna do that!" So after looking at several ideas I decided to make two. The first though would be inspired by a photo of the horse Winter Sultan. I tend to be weirded out by the giraffe neck that a lot of ASBs seem to have and it is hard for me to wrap my head around. So I found several horses with head at a lower angle yet still parked out.
Step One : Secure horse so that dismemberment is easy. Here I have put the horse in a table top vise clamp and just started sawing. Since he's so small (He was only about 2.5 inches tall before changing his position.) I had to use a small hand saw and not a dremel as I usually would so that there was still material left and I didn't ruin something that would be a pain putting back on.

Step Two : Take all of your pieces and survey the ultimate destruction you have caused to a model horse that did nothing to you. How could you! You have mutilated a horse shaped object. What if you can't make it look half way presentable again? Feel sadness and put away. (Also by the time I was done cutting him up, I had cut him into nine different pieces. I also cut him hind legs apart and his tail off and his face in half. So yeah, I was a little intimidated.)

Step Three : Start gluing back together. I used a soda glue mix here and cut paperclips up to use to hold him together. I have glued the front legs together and the back legs together so that I know that he is standing square. I also heated up the pasterns to get them so they are flat on the ground. I also shaved down the legs a bit since they are really out of proportion and make him a little ponyish. Then I put him against something to act as the body to see how it would look when put together.

Step Four: I attached the body to the front legs with soda glue and paperclip pieces and then filled in the gap with soda glue. Then once again I used something to hold the body to the hind legs to visualize the angle I needed to achieve to attach him. He is a little off in the photo though now that I look at it.

Step Five: Once the hind end is connected I use a paperclip measured to the right length to attach the head and use some painters tape to find the shape of the neck that I want. Then I bumped the head and realized that the neck moved and had to find out where it went again.
Was he looking over his shoulder?

Was he doing an impersonation of a giraffe reaching out for a tree?

Was he looking down?

There he is. He was looking to the side kinda.

Step Six: Now that I know where I want the neck to go, I fill in the neck and shape it with apoxie. I also fill in his tummy with apoxie and somewhere along the line I chopped his face in half and soda glued it together again to lengthen it.

Step Seven: All that is left at this point is to sand and try to carve details and add those little extras that make him go "POW!". Well, maybe not pow. actually I'll be happy if he's horse shaped by the end of all of this.

Step Eight: It's also helpful to take a look at what you started with and see how far you have come and that it is still somewhat recognizable as a horse shaped object.

Step Nine:
Here he is all done up in primer. You can see that he is much more smooth than he really looks with the black apoxie on him.

Experiments wih Salt and Watercolors

So I heard through the grapevine....well....from a friend...that if you use salt with a water soluble paint it will make it do really neat and crazy things. So here's what I created with my experiment. Oh these are Artist Trading Cards so about 2.5 x 3.5 inches.
I'm not sure that I like the splotchy way that this turned out, but it's not entirely sucky, right?

I really like the way that this one turned out a lot more. It's got so many different things going on in it that it really seems interesting, even though it is the same colors as the previous.

Now this one I love. It has a little of everything going on and has it evenly spread throughout the painting/picture and draws your eye. It conforms to my ideal blend of chaos and conformity. It's hard to explain, but this kind of well done chaos appeals to me and really makes me wanna try this technique even more and get it down. Tame the chaos!

Then I decided to make a fish and use the technique to make the scales on the fish. So I showed those close to me and my mom promptly decided to claim it to put on her desk at work.

Lone Star Live 2012

After about 11 years of not showing model horses (and the last time being my first), I decided to dive back into the fun. So a trip to Fort Worth with my mother was planned out and began a sad gloomy Sunday morning. I had decided to only show the AR/CM divisions in Halter and skip the OF's, since I only have a limited amount of OF's worth showing and about 100 in AR/CMs alone. I took 50+ (probably closer to 70, YIKES!!) and headed out.

I ended up missing a foal class, missed callbacks for a resin that got a first, and eventually got a Division Champ in Doc's Black Card.

While I was anxiously awaiting the callbacks for Overall Champ I got caught up with the Mini Resins, which had started and I had twice as many as larger resins. I had been showing anything above SM size in non-mini and found out I could have done that differently. Ugh! Anyway....distracted and crazy I think I barely made callbacks, but my Tango resin Unwritten Law made a Division Champ in his callback so I had my two pretty boys in Overall callback.

I hadn't really expected to even get a Division Champ and had only hoped maybe a Division Reserve Champ at best and by some fluke, since the competition was amazing. Plus I wonder what my Ziryab, which my mother named at the last minute and won and is now stuck with that name, would have done if she got to her Division callback. In the end, Doc's Black Card got a Reserve Champion Overall in his first EVER show.

I was even asked about his story since he's not painted by Carol Williams (don't ask I don't know it, but wish I did) by a judge, which was really neat. I met some people I recognized from ModelHorseBlab and saw some horses I've only seen in photos. Overall, it was a great and fun time, even tho the vendors ran out of coffee and I thought about falling asleep driving home. The highlights: Reserve Champion Overall - 1 Division Champions - 2 NAN Cards - 19 I think it was worth going and having fun and a great end to an 11 year lapse of no showing or even for my second show.

Fatale Mystique?

I decided to start sculpting again. I'm kinda stuck on the clay and making it more detailed so I decided to try the Sculpey clay. I had tried a long time ago, but it just didn't work for me. I think they have made it a lot better now. Once again I'll do the steps of what I have done so far.
Step One: I made an armature of a horse skeleton. Now I have decided to do an Arabian so this might end up looking off since they have one less vertebrae, but I am doing a longer version and pose so it might not make a whole lot of difference. Hopefully.
Step Two: I mixed 75% Firm Sculpey III and 25% of the Super Sculpey. This took awhile to measure out as they come in different sizes and I didn't want a whole lot of clay left over.
Step Three: I took the clay and tried to make a kind of skeleton on the armature. I made a neck, basic shape for the head, spine, shoulders, the pelvis, and the base of a ribcage. I should really be calling them their real names, but I think everyone can figure out what I mean. That's about as far as I have gotten with him so...here he is finally.

To grey? Or not to grey?

Well I guess I decided to grey, or else this post wouldn't really be truthful. I wanted to paint last night, but all I got around to doing was primering three horses. So my victims...I mean...test subjects... (Does that really soind any better?!?!) ..anyways...are a Pipsqueak, a Mindy, and a Mini Crusher. I tried Mel Miller's techniques off of her blog...kinda. I adjusted my colors a little bit from what she suggested, tho.
Here she is after my first few boats and come blocking done around the tops of the legs.

I've got some shading going on here and I really like where this color is going. Not sure how I'm gonna go about putting dapples on it. I kinda feel that would ruin the color I've got going on here.

She is darker here. I guess you're gona have to trust me on that one. Kinda looks the same, huh? Have I mentioned that I really like this color and wish I had more oil painting brushes so that I actually had brushes I'm suppossed to have and there weren't any brushstrokes in the paint work. Ugh! Stupid brushes.

Well, here she is at my stopping pont. Such a pretty color. If it weren't for those @$^&#! brushstrokes! Oh well...I can only advance, right? Hello?!? Anyone?!? Crud!!!