Good grief, are we there yet???!

Ok, $20 off of their order of him to the first person who has already figured out his nickname & posts a comment of it..

I’m SO BORED with the divot/pin hole part… lol! This is my own dern :D fault (I'm well aware) for not being a better caster yet. My waste mold resin prototype here has had lots of pin holes.. so as I wittled down those legs it got brutal.... hole after hole..

I love his dainty legs though..! To me they just go “stompity stomp stompitty stomp (all petite but the better for him to move his little feetsies around very quickly – it’s a Latin American thing yanno.. he’s got a beat goin on all the time.. clippity clippity, pause, voila!!)..

Here’s a photo of the Criollo who inspired me to sculpt this guy. I have better ones of his body but he was also fighting his man there to get a move on so there’s lots of holding back pictures. There were thousands of horses at this event so he really stood out to me amidst all the pandemonium. I talked to his rider very briefly but he truly did have his hands full.

With that.. off to see if things are dry here yet. ;) Yesterday I had to drive around the countryside to Drs (last year's surgery holding up well, which is good because I've seen more Drs since we moved here than I have in literally the 2 decades before. I like good news thank you muchly!). AND tomorrow I head off in the afternoon for to stand guard in "Artist's Gallery" for an open house event. So I have to be presentable and human and all that. It's probably a good thing. Given my way with a horse like this I'd disappear and not step out of the studio for 2 solid weeks and feel really odd and troll like when I did. I've had this happen with more than a few horses now soooooooo being forced to leave to walk the dogs daily in the park... and doctors and handing out wine??? It's all good for me.

Still... it's obviously getting harder and harder for me not to show off the flipping exciting nuances this fellow has. I just need to have him perfect before I do so. So just another glimpse from afar so far. I can already see MANY things I need to fix in just this little taste. Simple things now but still.. would be terrible to show up close. Ugh. :) Aaaaaaaaand this is where it really gets different from some styles of work I like to do where you don't have to obsess over every little divot. Still, I do loooooove to pour on the detail so yeah... I bring it on myself.

Drums fingers on desk. I guess now would be a good time to take the dogs ot the park today. It's cooler now. & Then maybe I can resume with him when I get back. Whooohoo! :D

___________PS!____________________
The comments are moderated in case folks figure out the nickname there. Just submit once & they'll be timestamped, don't worry. The spammers figures out how to include links in the most sneaky ways... "Great photo - what do you think of mine? [but the link goes off to some malicious spyware site]". So leave it to them to force me to add another layer of confusion to the matter. Anyhow - but don't fret about your answer going through, that's the bottom line. :)

More sketches

Quickly b/c I'm beat. After dinner I did this one tonight (we're calling this our "quality time" lately - couch wind down time... I tend to go back into the sculpting studio after he hits the sack & get a few more hours work.. I'm a night owl. Anyhow, so tonight I needed to do something & I have several frames I'd like to fill for coming events).

So tonight's folly was this;
"Steeplechaser Headstudy #1" (am I like the most pragmatic artist or what? -sighs-)
5 x 7 inches


I am really having fun enjoying the artistic mindset departure from "technical-measure-technical-detail-measure-detail-detail" pressure of finishing up a sculpture to these few hour breaks here & there where I tackle a 'less is more' or "suggestion" of shapes approach.

But whew.. long day. :) G'nite!

Ok ok ok....

The desire to play with wee tack makes me break all sorts of self imposed rules..

This, very intentionally, was taken from a bit of a funny (slightly higher) angle, sorry! It helps me to confirm that yes, there are still more leg/joint refinements I want to make.

Actually there is a method to my madness here. Waaaay back with a sculpture named “Flitwick” I learned a valuable lesson… in part due to my poor photography skills. I was set to release him and took all my sales photos and then really really didn't like what I saw. I literally had the box out for him to go to the casters and everything. I wound up saying "hold the phone" and went back and reworked him for 3-4more weeks until I had gotten the detail more precise and the proportions more to my liking. & The lesson being that if something looked wonky in my studio photos, it’s going to be seen by the eye to some degree or another.. -> don't just write it off as "bad photos". Because when working in scales, any minor oddity is magnified by the photo done right where the eye doesn't see the scale, just the flaws. In other words if I were sculpting a life sized cat I’d probably spot the weirdness just fine by eye. But beyond a certain scale photos are a very valuable tool. Used with care.

Photos also distort on their own as well. I’m NOT saying you should ever sculpt by photo. But I am saying that they do have some value as a diagnostic tool of sorts. Using photo editing programs to figure out what you want to change in real life before you get there.

Anyhow, I’ve taken a lot of photos of this guy lately to tweak the last things I want to.. before putting the veins down & primering. He’s in white resin & I’m using sticky/pasty “super white” Apoxie Sculpt to smooth over spots but I prefer the red (gooey/rubbery) Apoxie sculpt to get the final satin smooth spots. When I was a kid I watched my dad do this with bondo. Now we have something a great deal less stinky & toxic. Oh right, but my point here was that he looks a bit cottage cheesey in areas right now with his 2toned white coloration… so no, no more photos just yet.

But I could NOT resist playing with my tack.

He’s small on the 1:9 scale as a pony (14hh) sized horse. He barely fits into my tack for my sculpture Hazel but imagine how excited I was to see my new Aussie set by Jana Skybova fits nicely.. and that the hair of his forelock works for both the Criollo’s traditional Argentinian style bridles AND a normal browband. I don’t try to sculpt for tack but… well hey, with my tiny tack fetish how could I not have this in mind to some small degree? ;)

More very soon, I swear!

Oh ok... this is one of my quick photoshop trials versions of the changes I want to make still;

I don't do them pretty. I've been doing these since my half passing Duke sculpture and the practice, no matter how much feedback I get from folks, always seems to help me the best. (Outsider's input is invaluable too mind you - other human's critiques are invaluble as well - don't get me wrong!). Combined with photoshop, it's so much easier too to try a change out without messing up your work!

Ok, back to it now. ;)

PS - to be clear though, the tack is NOT a tool/test of any kind. :D That's just me indulging my inner child over here...! ;)

Head revisions and an old art class exercise

Quickly - the head revised. I took a pic today when photographing this morning's sketch. His nostrils & nasal bone end had really gotten smushed up & when I took those last photos the extent of it really was irritating the daylights out of me! Nares & nasal bone back in effect though (he's expirating). :)


The old art class exercise here is to use non-hatched lines to give shape. I failed miserably at it in college. In fact I stumbled across some old line drawings done where you couldn't identify the subject if you tried. Anyhow, but I really enjoyed that approach however in this context (musculature in tension).

Anyhow, so from one of my photos from last April, I did this this morning.

“Running Mates at Stoneybrook”
Pastel, pencil and charcoal on board 17 x 11 inches
2012

Detail from above - if you enlarge you can see what I mean about those random squiggly lines. I am SURE there' s a proper illustration term for the technique but it escapes me...!

Ok, back to work on the criollo now.. I had to let some fumes clear out today so I mucked about quite a bit here. ;)

I just have no self control…

I realized today that I never shared any photos of his off side… sooooo as I’m smoothing the last little tweaks here & there I’ll share 2 more work in progress photos of my criollo sculpture. Right side photos for once.


The rubber is here. The resin is here. The box materials are here. All systems a go. I am touching up last minute little things in clay. The next step is to build the box around him. Cast a prototype. Smooth that up and add the details like veins and whisker bumps. Make the mane and tail cast-smooth friendly (an ongoing learning process for me). And then I shall reveal his name and the meaning behind it. It’s a musical name. He has always been dancing to me, even though he is still for this split second. Mischievously proud of his quick little spunky self!

Anyhow, I know I’d said no more photos till I was done but I just couldn’t resist. I take them for critiquing purposes & I just HAD to… it’s so boring for me to talk about making a sculpture & not share something. ;) So this is his right side (and there is a pole still there that I’ve masked over somewhat).

Like my resolutions to exercise and eat better… I gotta allow myself a little fun & break my self imposed rules now & then! ;)

Warning! Weird workshop ideas in progress… !

In honor of these Breyerfest sculpting workshops now being available to sign up for (click here!)… I guess I’ll share this (cringe for the bad pun coming!!!) bare bones idea with you today (everyone groans). No but sincerely, I’m very excited to be able to teach a more advanced course this time, even if it’s daunting to try and squish a ton of info in within a 2hr format & some restrictions. There are always handouts at least too that people will have in the end if I can’t cover it all, but I am determined to do so!

Now of course people who know me know that I have a fear of public speaking – the thing I’ve discovered (aside from the fact that I’m in good company there, like Barbara Streisand even suffers this!), is that when you love what you do and are excited about the topic it’s not so bad. I don’t like to talk about myself (introducing ourselves to large groups is so common in everyday life), what I’m “thinking” about in doing art (I dread being put on the spot and coming up with intelligent sounding answers because honestly when I work the “thoughts” I have are not in word form so articulating them means trying to translate concepts without easy terms…)… but teaching, especially when you can draw or show in person is a lot of fun. I’m not the best by far but at least here I can overcome this phobia when I have an itinerary! :)

My fiance really digs the skull which cracks me up because it's all smooshy & wrong still.. but it is sorta fun for some reason too... couldn't put my finger on it though!

So blah blah anyhow… I share with you some test ideas I made yesterday while on the phone. I’m not ready to explain what I’m thinking BUT if I have leftovers from the class… maybe someday I’ll sell some. ;) (What a tease – eh!).

Please don’t pick these apart too hard. They were just to try out the ideas being discussed in that phone call. I did NOT measure or really even put all the bones/shapes in there right.. just was going by a cartoony drawing across the room & memory. Packed away somewhere I have the “visible horse” model & that thing ROCKS for bone shapes imo. Now for skeptics, ok ok, I haven’t measured the visible horse's proportions no (and no I don't think I probably ever will get around to that...), & I suppose if I had to guess it’s probably a bit short backed - for the truly picky. :) Still, it rocks for bone shapes imo!

When I get serious about this project I’ll probably want to pull that dude and ALL of my photo refs & illustration/plates out for doing this if I go ahead with it. So these will have to be redone properly BUT (yay!) they did prove to me that the notion of resin cast limbs isn’t too fragile and a wire does fit in there ok. & The skull’s normally hollow portions can sorta be winged & still be “skull like” enough I hope for what I want to do too. The bones (on the limb to each other or limb to head) are NOT in proportion either… again this was just fingers & fingernail playing while on the phone. Again so please don’t take it too seriously/literally just yet! :)

I’m happy I still remember something from college…(don’t we always feel this way? Ah HA! I get to use math finally in real life – lol!). I’m still paying for those courses to this day. In my bio major tract I took several years of anatomy which were also lab cour$es ;) each of which I’ve recently realized had sadly cost more than most of my (better/more reliable) cars I’ve owned still to this day! – ha! Clearly I’m bitter & rue the time I bought a car from a ‘reputable’ dealer.. ah but I digress). Anyhow, but I will have to be more serious about this for the sake of actually teaching anything.

Hope to see some of my bloggers there this summer! Please be sure to tell me your names too – it’s always fun to put faces to online names! And back to work here. I got a ton of mold making materials today & I have other things that I get to address now. Just taking a break during lunch here! :)