The world needs more…

Swimming horse sculptures.

Today I asked myself, “how do I make my horses look more buoyant”. I was looking at the fabulous work of the “MadSculptor” (link) and wondering how I might make a horse look as if it’s defying gravity. I looked through many photos of my bucking/leaping & otherwise generally cavorting horses & said… meh. It’s all so ORDINARY.

Then this little “ding” went off in my head. Well hells bells, I mean if I WANT to make ahorse look like it’s floating in water, I should simply sculpt a horse .. in the water, no? Floating (swimming).

The motion of a horse swimming just thoroughly captivates me. It’s a VERY unique quadrupedal movement; 1, 2, 3, 4 unlike the canter or the trot. It’s extremely punctuated and literally striking! :) Individual jabbing motions of each limb while the others return to a tucked position. If I were to animate a flying horse, I’d use these motions rather than land thrusting motions, the action of pushing against the fluidity of water is utterly unlike any other.

I’ve been lucky enough to go swimming with a horse. (& Interesting side note, DO NOT SIT on your horse, allow yourself to float. Otherwise you’ll drown him! It’s VERY hard for horses to keep even their little noses there up above the water!) Anyhow, it had been one of my “bucket list” items of my childhood’s “things I hope to do with horses someday”. Of course inspired by this scene above from The Black Stallion.


Which is frankly where my inspiration for this sculpture comes from. THAT said, I don’t think I want to go with Arabian. I am unsure what breed so far but I”m thinking more Warmblood in build. I want to have very clean chiseled legs… it will have to be smaller. To at least work in resin form. Small classic perhaps, much bigger than say my dinky duke sculpture was. I’ll have to investigate scales but I can see this working with a nominal attached base & bits of acrylic that would get glued on after the sculpture is finished! On my little sketch here I’ve done some notes on how to make a base that actually can hold up said sculpture.

I should really note too that in the end my “final vision” actually involves taking something like a cold cast bronze & encasing it in a block of Lucite/clear acrylic of sorts.. with bubbles throughout. That’s not exactly a hobby resin sculpture I can sell but sometimes making something with a goal of where it will sell is NOT the way to go with art. I have a vision. I hope I can figure out a way to fund it. And that’s that!

Off I go! Weeeeeeeeee!!!!!

Max Meets the Welcoming Committee

Kipling (the fearless mini) gets right up in the face of the new stallions on the block... giving a pushy little "gee hello, who are you?" sort of greeting.  I have my very own Pixar stories going on right here! ;)

Just taking a second to share before I leap into boxing & packing madness.   Mostly lately I've been thoroughly immersed in projects I can't share & may be for some time.  Aaaaand I've got a ton to do (just in general) today so I need to get back to it.  But here is a brief shot of life on the shelves for fun!

I Has a New Logo! :)

 And yet another domain name too…

Soooooooo this past week I finally stepped up and finalized a logo for myself.  This is what I shared with my yahoogroup and email subscription list about that;

Introducing “Kilbourn Studios”!

www.kilbournstudios.com 

Yes, it really is the same as artbymorgen.com and (because the man registering it for me made this very common ‘a’ in my name mistake!) artbymorgAn.com… lol!

Ah but see I do nooooow have a logo. (Ok, ok, anticlimactic – sorry!)  Finally after a decade I decided it was high time to get myself a logo. No no, in truth, you’ll see from my “coming soon” clinky page why I needed to get off my duff & finally make one…  and since I’ve signed all my sculpted works with this MK merged symbol it just seemed a natural transition to use that as a logo.  As for the studio incorporation into the name ->  Art By Morgen Studios didn't work so well (nor fit so well onto a decal).  But again, the logo & new name truly are more for consistency in the long term with the logo/shortened decal.  Nothing monumental.  Just formalizing it finally! :)

A little background here, I find this lack of logo for so long ironic due to my work in graphics design.  Of the 8 years I worked at that biotech company, for 4 of them my life seemed to be ALL about logos, (yes ok, well the first four in the labs BUT the last 4 years were as the web & print materials do-it-all gal for the marketing & investor relations and corporate communications department).  In that position, my job literally was all about implementing branding into everything and anything we could, from the wall street stuff down to company tee shirts and pens for picnics (they call this stuff “swag” in the industry – give aways with your logo all over them – something I can’t really do much though of course..).  However in honor of formalizing it for china maker’s marks, thusly, I have sashayed forth today & begun the branding process on my website and eventually will as well in my materials as I order new supplies. At least in the digital space it can happen in a flash! Woot! :) 

Some examples of it;

 I closed my notices with this thought.. Believe me this irony of having so many forms of websites/emails isn’t lost on me.  I will be keeping the website addresses of (yes another!) http://www.one-horse.net/  too, even though for years I’ve been phasing that out except for my email.  See that one is really only holding my email address there (and a couple of contacts) from my personal freelance graphics & web design business days.  It’s like moving &  doing address forwarding.  Somethings only come to you every few years & then the fwds are gone & you never hear from those again.  It’s that sort of dilemma for me.  Finding (remembering!) things from the 90’s that come to that email address every once in a while – on behalf of other businesses I did work for. You see there are a lot of other people’s sites tied in with that email as a contact (so in a nutshell that’s one big reason I can’t toss it easily).  I haven’t decided how to transition.  It’s really not all that monumental an issue -> ALL of my contacts come into the same inbox except the yahoo address.  So don’t worry about the best way to contact me.    And please don’t laugh too hard at me & my many many addresses…!  Cheers guys!