"DON'T PANIC!"

:) A little nod here to Douglas Adams although I’m actually listening to a book on tape by Stephen Frey right now. I’m quite annoyed with it frankly (but that’s another essay/rant/ramble). .. In the studio I listen to books on tape and I float between medical and corporate type mystery/thriller genera books. Usually mysteries and similar style writing keep me riveted in the studio. Whereas TV or radio in the background serve as negative background noise because these make me get up more often to “stretch” when commercials come on (repeat commercials are especially grating).

Anyhow, Frey writes financial corporate style books. I was musing about that corporate/financial side of my past life tonight when doing barn chores (happy grateful-not-to-be-there musings!) :) You would think “webmaster/graphic designer” wouldn’t have much to do with boards of directors and investors & the like, but unfortunately my position did. Assisting with materials right down to a bankers dinner once with the top execs (very posh little affair but I think they just needed more female representation more than anything). In the end, when the department was down to me and this other fellow for the most part, my responsibilities became both a lot more involved (sometimes more interesting), and sometimes extremely stressful as I hadn’t handled all the project details in previous years because the prior manager was extremely good at her job. My last & final manager/coworker/partner in chaos however was this Yale edumacated pharmacist (who mentioned his alma mater ALWAYS when meeting anyone –can you say puke?!!) who’d decided to become a marketing manager because retail pharmacy was boooooring (boohoo – still doesn’t make you qualified to be a good manager imo). Well if you have a Yale degree you can do anything, right? :D Have you seen “Office Space”? He stood around a LOT with his coffee cup ALL the time asking Bill Lumbergh-esque questions and otherwise said “everything is great” when anyone of importance asked. Anyhow, the prior non-Yale gal who filled his shoes managed things quite efficiently & the way you might expect – making lists, checking them off, following up.. apparently Yale however teaches you that saying “everything is great” makes it so.

Righto, so flash forward to the annual investor’s meeting being held in the same city (thank god), early one morning. The evening before I asked about the meeting’s annual report agenda. This was something that was printed out nicely at a printers (in the past) with a very formal feel (think graduation or wedding hand outs perhaps if you are trying to fathom what this is?). My part of the deal was the create the document, pass the file on, and the manager either printed it in-house on specialty paper or had this small publisher in the city do it. That year however, to save money, we’d discussed having it printed in-house on thicker paper. Well that was my biggest contribution really to the matter. Sure I helped polish up the CEO & CFO’s presentations.. but mostly, I provided a few printed materials for these particular events. Righto – so I ask him “are the agendas all set?” and he says “don’t worry [holding coffee up with a smile], everything is all set”. Next morning I turn to him outside the conference room of the hotel and ask where these agendas are …and suddenly he gets a blank face.

Dude. It’s less than one hour before the event.

Right. Don’t panic.

I do however RUN.

Plan forming as I’m dashing down the stairs. I have to retrieve my car from a parking garage below the building. As I shoot out onto the street like some sort of gangster movie stunt driver I’m calling the ONE woman at the company who can save me: the I.T. administrative assistant. The I.T. assistant is blessedly there. She confirms she does indeed has file access permissions that allow her to get into my files – one of the few, because she’s I.T.. She confirms she also has file access of course to PRINT to any printer in the company – another thing only a few had access to. The crazy plan just might work! I give her the IDs of three printers over in my branch. I am also driving like a maniac. Tires squealing around corners and blowing through red lights when it won’t cause an accident with any oncoming traffic. This is a long drive through the city streets even though it’s only a few miles as the crow flies away. This miracle woman (who saved our jobs really), gets “the plan” in a heartbeat and queues up the file appropriately to all these printers. Next call – to the administrative assistants who sit closest to these printers. Bless them all too for knowing how serious the situation was. They run to the printers, inform me they’re printing ok, and – ready???! -> Because it gets more complicated (!!!) they then pull the sheets out and FLIP the printed pieces over properly in the printer to print two sided folded copies so the next queued printings appear on the back (delicate 1x only chance to print in the right direction & coordination with the woman back in the other branch). They coordinated this tricky part with her – and they all worked like a team that had done this (never before done of course) print/flip/print maneuver like they did it every day. Madness. Then they pull them out and fold them. Meanwhile; I have miraculously also gotten a parking spot on the first floor of the branches parking garage. I am literally running in my leetle heels past the security woman who eyeballs me but knows it’s got to be serious so she says nothing. Up a painfully long elevator ride and I am met at the door by an admin who has (god bless them all!) run to each printer and admin and collected the 2 sided, folded agendas that are all burning hot and damp still from the printers. Back down. Back out. Another rip roaring ride squealing around corners. Back to the hotel. Back up the halls. The meeting is starting - the doors are almost ready to be closed and the CEO’s admin gratefully takes them from me calmly walks away and passes them around to the investors like nothing ever happened (she knew damn well how close it was) and passes them out to the investors calmly while I back into some corner and catch my breath.

I can’t say for certain that the SEC requires agendas for annual meetings but they are certainly very very much expected by investors at the very least. Let alone the CFO & Finance Director who both laid out what needed to be on these in great detail with me (requiring a few rounds of proof-reading and approvals). In short: it would have been quite a BIG issue for me had they not been there. That’s all I needed to know.

Honest to god, Mr. Lumberg-Yale-man was still standing around casually with his idiotic coffee cup dopy demeanor and looking at me like I had messed up. And truthfully I had: I listened to him. DOH! In all candor, to this day I’m honestly not sure he didn’t do it intentionally as sabotage.. it was near to the time when the next group to lay off was being selected and we had a lot of overlap in our jobs at that point – so it’s hard to say. He said “I’ve got it all under control” all the time and he truly just could have been being daft and not paying attention. Or he could really be a brilliant little slime. Dunno – don’t care. Bottom line was shame on me really for not following up more thoroughly on it by asking to see one.

In summary however; even though I was stressed – I wasn’t “panicked”. I was merely in a state of an extremely high adrenaline surge. Hahaha! And I am a bit of an adrenaline junky. ;) It’s quite amazing though how if you don’t panic things have a funny way of working out.

Reflecting further though, in truth the Lumberg dude’s “everything is great” is a philosophy that works too. It became so. Hahaha!

Today I had a (chuckles) “bad” brief moment (it’s so hysterical what I now consider stressful), when I lost my credit card I’d used this morning. I was replaying my day over and over and thinking of where I could have left it. Again, “Don’t panic” sprang to mind as I drove my same-poor much older and more dilapidated car home. I decided I would find the card in due time. And I did. Because saying it made it so. :D Now I am just nicer on my vehicles and don’t feel the need to put my life in danger with reckless driving. I’m learning to keep repeating to myself “everything is great”. Even when the chips are down and things seem quite dire. Because sometimes saying it makes it so.

SO! I hope all reading this are having a nice sane and panic free day out there. J I am working up to having many exciting VISUAL things to actually share here soon… but until then, wishing you all the best.

Anniversary saddle! :)

Angry Mego® Man is happy!


The good boyfriend has spent the last month (!!) sneaking around in his shop trying to hide his making of this Tandy leather kit saddle for me. It's not intended to really be a legit prop -> I've been teasing him since I gave him a huge leather tooling kit in Nov that he ought to make my donkey a pack saddle. I guess he figured he'd try a kit saddle first. He also says this will be his last mini scale leather anything. (I am laughing so hard - I loath making mini tack myself having attempted various projects back in the 80's).

I should add a little explanation about the resculpted Boreas. It's a collaborative work-in-progress started by DeeAnn Kjelshus (I bought it from her several years back).

Anyhow, here are some close ups.


Real ties! It's really quite impressive for a first effort and he made some of his own modifications to the materials.


Then he helped clean stalls. Woohoo what a great day! :D

I am now off to go make a treasure hunt around the house... my gift pales by comparison (inexpensive and not hand made). :( I suck. I need to go add some creativity to make it more fun.

Meanwhile - they are STILL wrapping up my bathroom. So this crimps my treasure hunt planning (until the man is gone for the day - hopefully for good!). I also can't really work in the studio (again - a mego Arrrrgggh!), until they get their equipment out of the way. This is really old after 2 weeks now. Anyhow, wish me treasure hunt planning creativity! :)

(oh, it's a 4 year anniversary from our first date in case yer wondering). :)

Ooo! Almost up to 100 posts...

I dunno. I just noticed that and was amused.

This one is for Jackie. (waves) :)


Yes, the ear was moved again a while back. I figured out from fiddling why it looked so dorky before (attachment angle and was related to not having the left and right side matched up better basically).

I am DOING THE DETAILS baby! Woohooo! This is definitely my favorite part. Sadly (fortunately as well I suppose) it goes REALLY fast. Here are a few close ups that sorta show some... I haven't done the shoe clips yet and the nail grooves on the bottom aren't "real" yet as I'm still getting the width right.

(this pic is pretty large and yet it's a crappy photo - sorry!)
I have made the executive decision that the next priming will "go red". It shows detail better and makes smoothing easier. I've only been using the grey b/c I'm using grey colored epoxie... but the grey primer has this "dusting" tendency that destroys details pretty easy. The last 3 sculptures I've finished were grey but frankly in looking through those past photos I see a lot of detail masked by that very neutral color that didn't show up as much until people started painting them. White is just a miserable, annoying and disappointing primer in any brand imo (very thick and latex-y - clogs detail too much), and the 1 sculpture I've finished in white was terribly hard to photograph on top of that. I remember five years ago LOVING the red though and I've really liked priming horses to paint with it b/c of it's smoothness too ... soooo... (prays for ease in smoothing the final product & crisp details!). Wish me speed & success please! :D

Photography is an adventure..

At least for me it is. For each and every painted horse or sculpture. I have yet to find the perfect lighting set up for either Hazel or this Bosco artist's proof ... whine whine I know. Sincerely though, when you take the time to put in labor intensive detail, having is show up in photos is important.

and a close up of this photo above is below...


Meanwhile I will share that one large factor is that I do not have the camera on the steadiest tripod possible. One artist I know swears she can only take her pics with a remote because the act of pressing down the shutter imparts just enough movement to prevent perfectly crisp photos. Some day I will get more camera equipment. For the time being, having the hardest surface possible seems to be the best solution for me. This means either finding a long enough table for both the horse and camera (apartment is carpeted so it has too much give)... or laying down on the kitchen floor (which skeeves me - rather entertaining and ironic really given how much filthy manure and likewise soiled animals I deal with daily). Anyhow. Like I said, whine whine. I did manage to capture soooooooome of the coat details today. The mane hairs though don't show all the crisp detail they have yet though. And forget really seeing the blending of the dark and white hairing throughout this coat.... arg.... nevermind my propensity to DISTORT (lol - gee that's not an issue for a sculptor).. ;)

Clinky news at long last!

I have to say I really admire Tom for sticking to this project. Three years ago he licensed my Deputed Duke sculpture to be produced in china. The company he chose was notorious even then for being slow but then the master finishing artist (glazer? truly not sure of his title), died very shortly after completing the first 3 prototype colors. It was incredibly tragic and upsetting news to all of course.

I have to admit that I was fully willing to cut my losses - from my end these would be the 3 Dukes given to Tom for finishing to be used as references for the glazes, and 2 to the china company for the making of the mold (50 peices! I cannot imagine!), and a week of time invested to make sure that the one to be actually cut up and cast was as smooth & detailed as humanly possible. Now that Dukes are harder to obtain sure that sounds like a lot of money, but in all honesty - when people die and businesses crash you just have to move on. It's very upsetting and being stingy about monetary losses is bad for ones karma imo. I was deeply saddened while at the same time honored that master finisher Anthony was proud of the 3 (seen here) he did create shortly before his passing. I've seen them in person at a Breyerfest and it touched me to know this. Some things are just priceless to know and I'm simply honored.

Anyhow today I am so glad I entrusted such faith in Tom to eventually make sure it was worth my while - he's quite an honest business person to work with!

[from his yahoogroup: thomasbainbridge@yahoogroups.com]
Hello everyone! I am so excited to share these quick photos with you. We *finally* have the first production bone china Deputed Duke (sculpted by uber talented Morgen Kilbourn) finished and photo'd below. Donna Chaney rules the house today, with this masterful creation she has provided me with.

This project started several years ago with Mark Farmer/Alchemy. The first three prototypes came along very quickly (photo'd here: http://www.artbymorgen.com/bainbridge/china_duke.htm ) and then we seemed to hit a brick wall. Mark told me repeatedly that he was producing some horses for the patient customers and yet I never got any product. Well, as most of you know -- last year Mark bailed ship and sold his business to my delightful friend Donna Chaney. Although I was out some significant money invested with no product, I was hopeful that perhaps I could finally get some bone china Dukes produced thru Donna.

Mark always said that Duke was the most challenging piece he ever created - and that turns out to be true according to Donna. At first Donna could not promise me that she could produce him due to his complicated position (performing a half-pass) and his delicate connection to his base. So Donna and I made some creative alterations and he has came to life. It has been a difficult road, to say the least, Donna suffered several failures before this first success. It was all very disappointing as the amount of time invested in each of those pieces were significant and a complete loss when they went wrong. Donna, being the true "pit-bull" she can be was determined to have success, and she finally succeeded.

We decided to produce him so that he can be displayed off the base or on the base, depending on what the owner likes. So he is now produced so he stands freely without the base, thanks to a sturdy acrylic rod that is discreetly inserted in his right hind hoof. When displayed on the base, two hooves fit snugly down into the base and the peg rests within the base for stability. What is so genius about this, other than the option of being baseless or not, is that it will make shipping him so much easier and secure. Before, (the prototypes) were permanently attached to the base --- that was a very small connection area and the weight of the base and the weight of the horse frequently snapped off at the small connection points. So, now we have versatility and stability ... thanks to Donna's ingenuity.

This first piece was also decorated by Animal Artistry main decorator Lorraine, who did a stunning job getting his colors rich, vibrant and "spot on". Doesn't he look stunning in this satin finish? There are several more Dukes molded and getting ready for decoration as we speak. This is a labor intensive job and takes literally weeks of multiple firings to get this finished result. Production will be slow but steady, thanks to the Animal Artistry crew!

What does this mean? Well, it means that those few people who made the initial purchase of Duke and waited out the lengthy process will be rewarded with a lovely heirloom piece of art work. Many of those who bought Duke when I first offered him eventually lost confidence or interest and asked for a refund, which I could not blame them ... goodness sakes, three years is a long time. But a few had confidence in the sculpture (Morgen did such an incredible piece!) and that it was just slow going. Those few will be rewarded on their investment. They will be taken care of first, as they should be. When all orders are filled and the buyers happy, he will be offered for sale only when completed and ready to ship. However, his price will see a slight increase due to the time involved in producing him, the strength of the British pound against the American dollar now, the increase in all postal fees - both international and domestic, plus several other factors. I will still really strive to keep him as affordable as possible, but producing work on this scale in not something that can be done in the Orient for pennies on the dollar folks.

I got into this project as I am a true china head by nature, it is my first love. I wanted to make a product that would excite fellow collectors and make future generations awe at it's quality. We have succeeded ... Morgen, Donna, Lorraine and myself. This is not a money maker for any of us, it is a true labor of love. As this piece gets into collectors hands and exhibited, I am confident he will become legendary in his status. It will make all the blood, sweat, tears, frustration, anxiety and so much more all worth while. Special thanks to Morgen for her incredible sculpting abilities, Donna Chaney for being a great friend first and for making this dream come true secondly and Lorraine for her lovely finishing skills.

So I am very proud and happy to finally provide my customers with the first production piece. I welcome your feedback as always. Have a great weekend! tom

And the photos of the first one off the press completed!






Big kudos to Tom of course, but also to Donna for her tenacity to take on that crazy mold, and to Lorraine for taking on recreating Tom's incredible colors.

I really love this fellow - what a rich look that finish has.

Anyhow, this isn't something I'm dealing with directly. However how excited am I to see it coming to fruition after all these years! :D

Grace Jones has nothing on this fellow..

No time to chat. Clearly I'm doing productive things in the studio however, eh? ;) (I've mentioned before that the desktop clutter is unreal, right?) :)

Philistine or a Bohemian?

Before I launch into my philosophical musings of this past week (I’ve been jotting down some things in my limited spare time).. first, a HOORAY!

I am now playing with her hair (in photoshop.. to decide what I want to do there):

Her feetsie details are coming in…

Here I show off those sexy pecs I was talking about!

Annnnnnnnnnd her face still needs matching up (sighs)

Ok…Am I a Philistine or a Bohemian…

phil·is·tine

Show Spelled Pronunciation[fil-uh-steen, -stahyn, fi-lis-tin, -teen] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation

–noun

1.	(sometimes initial capital letter) a person who is lacking in or hostile or smugly indifferent to cultural values, intellectual pursuits, aesthetic refinement, etc., or is contentedly commonplace in ideas and tastes.

Bo·he·mi·an

Show Spelled Pronunciation[boh-hee-mee-uhn] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation

–noun

2.	(usually lowercase) a person, as an artist or writer, who lives and acts free of regard for conventional rules and practices.

In my family I am sooooomewhat of a black sheep with this sculpting for “collectible collectors”. And I gladly rebel against the concept that art should be refined and make a statement about society. And yet I *do* feel that my art ought to invoke some feeling of what’s being expressed. It’s an interesting conundrum. I think my past posts show enough about me that any reader would get that I’m not a conformist. Yet I also have a major disdain for intellectualism taken to the point of judging others by such measure.

My family has artists and art teachers who’ve taught and sold works of great acclaim – and it’s all very stylized. Obviously I’m attempting to do the opposite: and investing great great time in trying to achieve the realism. Realism is synonymous with conformity to the fine art world and it’s greatly frowned upon.

I was raised with all the cultural input my family could provide. Classical music, art, world culture exposure where ever possible. The works. I wanted riding lessons. I even wanted gymnastics as a 2^nd choice. I got violin. I hated the violin. I think the only violin piece I’ve ever wanted to play was ala Charlie Daniels (“Devil went down to Georgia”). Instead I was bombarded with Paganini nightmares and Strauss waltzes that I just wasn’t into at that age (I started at 4 and went until I was 13 years old with the Suzuki method).

Anyhow, the importance of “culture” and “music” training was big in my family so I went along with it. Frankly I just wanted to do horsie things and nothing else. I never practiced. It was a constant hour of torture to go into lessons each week and be confronted by my lack of practicing/improving. My teacher was a Quaker and I’m not sure if it was that or just her very direct/honest manner in general but I definitely got the impression she knew I could do better and wasn’t impressed by my fibbing along with no practice and weekly struggle to get through the painful sessions. The girl before me was the talk of the town. This is incredibly important to the whole point of my musings here… see, my teacher would uphold this gal’s example to me and point out how much SHE would practice every day for hours whilst I floundered along not improving much at all each week. One day I was feeling contrite actually and asked if this girl (who was maybe 7 years older than me and started after me but progressed to levels far above me in a few short years).. I asked anyhow if she would practice if she had a broken arm. Remember my sassing there distinctly b/c that’s how annoying it all was to me.

Righto. So aside from that gal being the star of our statewide Suzuki group.. was her mother. I distinctly remember how “stuffy” her mother was. That’s about all I got as an impression at my tender age. Just sort of “watch out for the uptight mom”. She yelled at us sometimes after concerts for making her kid look bad. She was a bit of a culture fanatic. Hence my point. Her daughter cracked in her teens and had her boyfriend kill the mom. Sincerely. Google searches can tell you the rest of the story:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22Aparo%22+%22Beyond+Obsession%22&btnG=Search

There was a book (which I’ve read) and a movie (haven’t seen it) about that poor kid (Karin Aparo) who my violin teacher used to point out to me as an icon of the dream student.

Damn glad I’m not a dream student, eh? ;)

I felt similarly in marketing.. sometimes people are a leeeeeeeeetttle too uptight about appearances imo.

Perhaps it’s the Libra in me (needing balance). Perhaps I am just a tad bit too plebian.. I just don’t fit the Bohemian mold.

I was reminded of this whole cultural disdain I have at times when I was listening to a book on tape in the studio, a lecture series. 14 Classes about music history. The professor was droning on about the need for music listeners to “develop their ear”. LIKE HELL I say! It behooves the artist, composer and performer to bring out their artistic expression in a way that “does it” for people. That grips them and gets their attention and makes them forget things and feel what the piece is bringing to the table.

I have just never bought into this with my own art. Some very cultured members of my family have lamented that some of my more realistic horse sculptures aren’t as full of character as my childhood drawings. Well certainly. My childhood drawings were filled with technical exaggerations and often were drawn from memory (so I remembered saddlebreds for instance as having knee action that nearly touched their chins and thus drew this). ;) It’s an interesting musing to find the artist within ones self that still HAS expression within the bounds of realism.

When I go to the Kentucky Horse Park the only point of interest to me is really their art museum. I adore looking at some of the realist art that might be called “low brow” art I suppose. But to me there are certain works out there that just stop you in your tracks and take your breath away. If you are an animal person, you just recognize that the artist “felt” that animal’s presence.

That is what I aim for. Perhaps I should describe myself as a pragmatic corporealist. :D

I was driving along the other day and heard “The Devil went down to Georgia” and thought of how I’d still really wish I could play that. ;)

Public Service Msgs.. lol!

I just posted this over on a UDBB (dressage bb) thread about accidental replies to all.. figured it would be a fun post to throw here too (and since I've been mostly working on wee detaily things (painting and sculpting wise). I'm going to go dig out some links and share em below as well though. First the PS msg:

Be careful also if you have "send to all" privileges...

When I worked in marketing after the first company lay off someone had left a note pad with lined paper that said "Sh*t List" on the top of each sheet. I laminated a couple from the pad and we used to hold it up to folks with a sharpe and joke around about who ought to go on it. Crude humor but the "laminated s*** list" had a little fan club I guess. Lots of bitterness of course after a 30% layoff so I'm sure you can imagine we needed our dark humor props.

Anyhow, I also used to never leave my desk for lunch. I just was that kind of employee I suppose. Anyhow one day the marketing crew and someone from another office were volleying emails back and forth about meeting somewhere in between for lunch (place was a lot quieter and lonely after the first big wave of layoffs). When one gal I hadn't seen in a while heard I was going she replied "OH! So Morgen has taken me off her laminated s*** list" (note that she DID use the asterisks - and of course she meant it in the context that this was because I never came along to lunches). Since this was a literal object and not a figurative euphemism I found it rather funny, not snarky. In fact anyone who knew this gal couldn't have found it snarky - she was just not snarky. So the email volley goes back and forth some more - we were very entertained that she remembered this plastic imfamous object and thus kept referring to it and how, yes, she was cleaned off of it.

Then my coworker, hit the letter "a" by accident in the sender box.

Outlook did it's awesome "find close match" feature from her contacts list and replaced "a" with "all".

And it went out to the whole company. HR. Board of Directors. Select recipients in the CEOs family. Persons we even in investor relations only knew of as person "x".

... I got a call from a giggling Bioinformatics VP who said "gee, am I on your laminated s*** list too?"... that's when I knew it happened.

All.

I ran over to her desk and found my coworker on the floor crying until an HR person came upstairs laughing and told us to relax, it was damn lucky we had all decided conservatively to not actually swear outright and use the asterisks.

But wow was that a blunder. I still laugh though thinking about the stupid thing. I bet I have it tucked away somewhere.

Ok, lessee. I've been making great use of a Bob Langrish poster book and other great big high res pics of legs in my dear Hazel's position of late. I also have been really trying to pin down the exact muscling where the pectorals tie into the sternum. I don't have any great links of that - the Langrish photos of Iberian and Friesian horses have been the best help there.. I want horses who are really throwing their shoulders forward so that the pecs are big and meaty and straining back with a big groove to that tie-in point (since horses don't really have a collar bone set up like humans - which allows them a lot more movement forward and inward some too).

Anywho, so here are some links of fun at any rate. :)
http://slawik.com/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=73283 (not nearly enough forward but you get the gist I hope of what I was saying above)
http://www.menorcahorses.com/photos/displayimage.php?album=39&pos=3 (also not much lift up/fling forward but nice for other reasons)
http://www.terrimiller.com/gallery/gallery.php?galleryid=1093&photoid=TipTop7DAD-5466 (here I think I was just admiring his beefiosity! lol!)
http://good-times.webshots.com/album/562037082ZscAMN?start=24 (and a whole album of skijoring which I think ought to be a more commonly shown performance sport for showers!) :D

Hope everyone is getting some reprieves from the weather - we are right now! It was 50 degrees warmer than it was last week - woohoo!!! :)

The Meaning of Life... Monty Python style!

First off, lets just have a shameless plug for some items I'm selling in case anyone is interested: http://www.modelhorsesalespages.com/sales/searchlist.asp 6 resins left there (sculpted by other artists) And on to .. The Meaning of Life... I always think of this quote and giggle when I'm painting tiny tiny details:

Dr. Livingstone: Ah… I think I'd… better come clean with you about this. It's, um… it's… not a virus, I'm afraid. You see, a virus is what we doctors call "very, very small". So small, it could not possibly have made off with the whole leg. What we're looking here for is, I think — and this is no more than an educated guess, I'd like to make thathuge, razor-sharp teeth about eleven feet long, and of the genus felis horribilis — what we doctors, in fact, call a tiger. clear — is some multicellular life form with stripes,

Really I mostly think of the man as he describes "very very small.. So small, it could not possibly have made off with the whole leg. "

Anyhow. At the moment in the studio I've been absorbed in painting something with details that are very very small (and that could not have possibly made off with a whole leg).

"Painting" involves acrylics, pencils, smudging tools and a lot of patience to make roany hairs and blended white details. Today I've moved on to the more grand scale (well not microscopic at least) oil paint layers which will add highlighting now and thus can step away for a few days whilst that dries and share these pics. :)

Tada! (I'm really having a lot of fun here)