Saturday, April 28, 2007

Now I'm at that point where...

ALL I want to do is sculpt. When I was like this with my Bosco sculpture I didn't leave the house for 2 straight weeks ... it was like I entered some alternate dimension. I didn't have the barn managing gig then so there was nothing forcing me to go out. I walked to the store to get the few necessities I had to. I just woke up, sculpted, ate when I was too hungry to continue, slept when I could sit up no longer. Burned through my VHSs a friend gave me of the X-files series (so amusing to see those old commercials, movies and news trailers).


How it feels, I can sort of explain: you can "see" the final result in your mind. You can "see" the detailed, refined horse perfectly. "See" all the tension in certain muscles and "see" the facial expression. I am so excited to be feeling that so fully now! :D Ok, well in truth, I don't see it in the mane and tail yet tho. :/ Note that I just stuck the wire back in for fun. I need it removed so I can work on the hind legs area better now.


A wonderful customer sent me some terrific pictures last night, they have great details that I can't wait to print out for references. (also out of ink tho and that's another 'must have' since I've got 20 resins to mail out and need to print out shipping labels..) Anyhow, I'm most excited about this one I've put here in the subset- it shows the hind leg gaskins and hocks very crisply. Woohoo!!! Thanks "H"! :D


I don't want to shovel all this poop today. Whine.. whine whine.. lol! I also have a little vacation coming up in a few weeks & while I could use the break from the obligations and back strain ugh! how hard it will be for me to pull away now that I'm in a groove. So I rush off now to work my butt of before that... toodles! :D

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Squoosh & moosh...!



Oh my what has happened here, eh?



I have shortened the cannons. Chopped the poor gal in half through the girth and shifted her whole front half up more (which shortened the back a shade while still giving her a strong croup and "tight" topline). Added to the heartgirth (the elbow was too "low" looking because the measurements didn't match up right before). Added more bend to the right hock and pastern to recreate the pose. Made the left hind starting to break over (hoof still needs reshaping tho). And I also cut through the scapula and around behind the elbow through to the chest. It was driving me crazy how narrow chested she looked. She's a mare, sure, but when those legs come forward the points of shoulders point outward a bit more. She didn't look like any of my hundreds of frontal references of even my most narrowest breasted horses.



Much happier. It's a lot easier to "find" the refinements now that she's more overall where I want her. She's not as wasp waisted as the real deal but she's definitely more towards a draft cross than a TB cross looking beast now. Yay! :D


Things I do to entertain myself. I swapped the hind feet. I was pretty impressed that they matched up perfectly in most all proportions - shrugs- I haven't measured them out yet b/c they aren't refined enough though. I can also measure out a perfect 1oz shot and it's a fun party trick I suppose. I don't drink but it's a useful skill in my life as a barn manager. ;)

Speaking of fun tricks and drinking.. here is my boy insisting he sample the dread water before I hose him down the other day.



We've had great weather so much of my time has been outside tending paddocks (gotta keep that back strong) before the grass sprouts up and the going gets difficult. We've pretty much had a 30-40 degree temp increase, being tossed from winter to summer now. :-P

Sunday, April 22, 2007

Coffee musings again..


Planting the foot down..
It's not quite as all-out a gallop as dear "Daisy" or "Annie G" (plate #8 of the sequence here: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Muybridge_race_horse_gallop.jpg ) of Muybridge fame. And while she's a bit more bowed & sagging underneath now (riding term is called "inverted") like "Sallie Gardner" ( plate #6 of this other galloping sequence: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:The_Horse_in_Motion.jpg ), I don't want her "flinging" either. I want her as round and as strongly bridged through her back as possible. Much to muse on still. Sooooo much left to do.

Paint drying & cement setting. I warned ya! ;)

Saturday, April 21, 2007

Hazel is just MAD now.. lol!


Well here we have Hazel being messed with once more.. poor gal. Thus she spent all day threatening Bosco.
I have much else to say but essentially the "big change" from my previous intention to have her be more floating is that it just wasn't conveying itself as much to the masses. There are many a sculpture out there in this pose and while I wanted her to be very different and as animated as possible, truth is that right hind leg just doesn't photograph well in that position, it looks best on a horse going around a corner with the leg more underneath when it's off the ground. Thus I planted it and bent the joints a bit. Now resculpting the upper half to match up to measurements will be the next stage. I went through this with my Traditional half passing horse who looks to have 4 different sized feet in all photos. lol! Horses legs don't move on a straightforward plane but sometimes you have to assess reality and say "that's not worth sculpting". In this case that certainly is true I've decided. And a second confession here is that I wanted to reduce the # of pegs. I will next look at if/how I can lower the front peg and still have a horse who's moving with impulsion & has an uphill topline b/c she's utilizing her abdominal muscles to the max.
Spent the day in the odd thing called sunshine! & Hazel ought to be ready (epoxie cured) for working on now. :D

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

LOST is on while I post...



lol - so I had better not try to say too much.. fiddled with quite a bit to add back the "strength". Still see some things I could balance better.

New Gallery CLICK HERE

(ps "LOST" is the only show I watch on TV besides the random PBS documentaries I come across.. and the weather of course!) :)



[added Wed after the show..]

here's a quick idea of her size compared to Bosco taken before I primered today (Bosco is another one of my sculptures that stands ~9" tall):


Saturday, April 14, 2007

-sighs- so much to do.. so much...

Well just a quickie here since I have to go clean some stalls.. looks like the neck needs quite a bit more topline removal. I won't go as far as the real mare (since she's too young/undeveloped to have a performing horse's topline). Still, I made a little comparison of the two pics (sculpture is very photoshopped) to see what/where I want to do. I've messed with the sculpture's neck, face a tad (want those nostrils a bit different and wondering about the areas around the eye). Shoulder really was what I was looking at the most. Fiddled some with her topline/depth around the croup and hips too. The photoshopping isn't perfect but it helps me see all the same where I'm at.. which is: LOTS left to do - lol!

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Look! I am Yann Arthus-Bertrand now! (lol)





(for those not familiar with that awesome photographer, his web site is here: http://www.yannarthusbertrand.com/yann2/affichage_bestiaux.php )

Ok, well I had to primer, sit down with the camera and see where I stood on this gal. I took a lot more photos than these. I am also sincerely wrestling with the idea of buying a new camera in the nearish future. See I took some pics of an old custom (recent pic for those interested) and showed what it looked like in 1984 (see pic taken with regular Nikon back in 84) and was rather dismayed to see how freaking distorted my camera is! :(

Anyhow, so that's discouraging.. :(

Sunday, April 8, 2007

Happy Easter! & How not to start a sculpture.. ;)


I was musing this morning that some of the folks who've signed up for this live feed but may not have seen the yahoogroup posts I initially made about this work might be hoping that this is a 'How To' type blog for sculpting.. ABSOLUTELY NOT in this case! lol! She started out as a 1:9 scale Morgan mare in a walking pose..! Once I'd built up the armature I realized that the commissioner and collectors did not want a work that big. Compared to Breyers and other artist's resins she would stick out, for all the wrong reasons! ;) I then used her as a "spare epoxy" horse for years and occassionally fiddled with her movement as she became the drafty mare I was aiming for. That's right, I went from petite Morgan horse to Draft mare! ... and then when I decided I wanted to sculpt Hazel, the real horse at the barn, I figured it would be fun to convert this "body". After measuring the real horse, I was surprised at how easy it should be so I gave it a shot... -snorts- hahahah!


If I had stuck to the walking pose and draftier build it would've been not so bad. Anyhow, I just didn't want to - I am a sucker for a real challenge. In theory, (too funny looking back now!), it should've been like a simple customization of a Breyer with refinement primarily. In reality, there was a LOT more I wanted to 'improve' upon. Especially after I did a photoshoot and really studied the photos.


Anyhow, the bottom line is this is NOT how anyone would normally do it. This is just one of those circumstances where you have something sitting in your studio that you want to tackle. ;)


Well there ya go, some Easter musings prior to family time. Hope this finds folks staying warm and having fun! :)

Happy Easter!!!

Saturday, April 7, 2007

I *think* I accomplished something.. here at least!

It really only took about an hour and a half to figure out how to add a generic link off to the side there (orange square) that allows people to do the RSS feed thing and thus THIS:




This techonology is definitely intriguing, but hopefully it will be useful (mind you I do not want to see yahoogroups go down again of course!). :)

In the meantime, since I'm in a hurry this morning, here's a quick pic of "Hazel" and "Bosco" follies on the studio shelf...

(a quick update without going into too much detail about what is so clearly needing doing still!)

Friday, April 6, 2007

Archive link! Switchover thoughts...

For archived notes & pics of my beta page/first version of this sculpting live journal, go here: http://www.artbymorgen.com/galleries/sculptingjournal/index.asp

I have gotten quite a few requests to venture into the RSS feeds for this journal. It makes sense, people follow along on artist's progress but the months and years go by and sometimes one gets wrapped up in other things and misses out on a horse they had seen in progress and wanted. So, for those folks, and also for those who find it infinitely amusing or at least interesting to watch my daily struggles with something I really ought to have down pat (I say this sheerly in jest b/c I am my own worst critic and expect more of myself with each piece)... here ya go!

OH! Comments: I have been warned that utilizing these through any blogging site invites spammers so I disabled them from view.. HOWEVER please feel free to write me all the same! It's just that I get several hundred spam mails a week and already have to view email in text only format.. no need to further drive myself crazy with some random spammer going wild off of this web site too. All the same, I am a very receptive audience to critiques however and really appreciate anything anyone has to say: even the most uneducated eye can spot "odd" and "wonky" in my opinion - and the most generic/vague thoughts still are quite helpful! :)

SHOULD something happen again with yahoogroups, and their mailing list go down/become terribly unreliable, I will shift gears on this blog to go from a live journal to a newsletter update format too. I am doubtful though that yahoogroups will totally fail - however their history has proven to be frustrating at times, most recently a short update msg I sent out went through 10x and annoyed some folks to no end. I was pretty horrified about that episode and it left me musing on alternatives to keeping folks updated on sales at large. I will still use it, it's the most commonly utilized sales method in my niche; scale equine sculptures for incredibly appreciative and savvy collectors. :)

Off to go check out my other fields to give more info on before I go link this up to my site... cheers! :D

already this has made a duplicate.. lol! hmmm..

Well here we go.. let's test this baby!

I'll throw in an image to make it interesting..