Morgen's Sculpting Journal

A nice surprise!

2012-01-13T07:56:00.000-08:00

This is where galleries really are something artists need - they help promote you and I really fail in the self-promotion dept... in fact in person I often start to get nervous talking about my work & will start to criticize it. Which in any sales gets ya pulled from the floor so to speak! I watch my friends skillfully use these adjectives in describing their work & I try but I just feel unconfortable using them - I'm pretty practical and pragmatic. "This is my art, hope you like it." " Yes, I use a lot of video/photo & real life reference animals to study to create them." (omg there is sooo much there I could elaborate on that someone might be interested in hearing... & yet? I clam up. I babble enough at other times mind you... [headdeskbangbang] and another recent answer "I had some college & private education in art & anatomy, yes.". (So self promotion "fail" - I have to ask/beg/plead & happily pay people to write things for me all the time).

Incidentally, this is in part why I love my unpainted artist resin collector customers - they require "only the facts mam!". (Course when I was trading services with a friend who wrote/posted ads more often & promoted me more verbosely than I would ever dream of? .. yeah... my business sales doubled.... & well there's a big lesson in that that's not lost on me!).

Anyhow, so I knew there was a listing in the town event in The Pilot about my upcoming workshop.. but I was tickled to get this in my in box today! I don't live in that region so I hope to pick up a copy for my scrapbook I'm starting. Jane, the Hollyhocks Gallery owner, is truly gifted at presentation in all ways! It's a rare talent amongst artists - this is why we REALLY turn to gallery owners... and with that, back to sculpting for me today! ;)

Forced to make dog sketches today...

2012-01-08T16:53:00.000-08:00

Today I sat very still & had a hot pad on my neck because I woke up a bit crooked & couldn’t do much else. My surge protector/battery backup pack went all wonky too so that helped to force me to force myself to turn off the box & not to try to type over at the desk.

So while sitting very still I was forced to observe the dogs… and set about getting myself a drawing arrangement I could manage in my contorted state. Artists just can’t be thwarted.

Thus I give you these 2 pages; sketches of scenes from this morning. The subjects are Butterbean (the collie cross) and Ray Ray (the black lab cross). Mostly Butterbean because she is taller & stayed within sight of me. Ray spent a lot of time in the hallway where I couldn’t see him.

It’s fun & hard to sketch action from life. Especially when the play only lasts a second. Normally I don’t spend hours trying though, good exercise! I really want to sculpt Butterbean one of these days as she’s really melodramatic & expressive… a true southern belle! When I have a bigger workspace. There's another work I'd like to make a bit bigger (I'm all about big works but it's been a while since I've had a chance to - can you tell I'm chomping at the bit here? lol!).

My range of motion has returned enough tonight to type. We hiked today but I made my fiance hold both dogs this time. ;) As you can see they can be rambunctious. ;)

Still no name here on this fellow..

2011-12-29T16:14:00.001-08:00

Liberty act spanish guy... that's what we'll call him for now. Can't you see him charging around after Lorenzo or hear the music & see the surreal lighting there in the Cavalia tent?!

Had some more time to play today, (truthfully sometimes I just have to abandon the raw casting cleanup brigade for a few hours & do something new & creative!). I put one of the few SM Breyers I have in the center photo for comparison.

Should enlarge pretty big if you click on it. :)

& Having nearly no other news, may I say WHEW where has this week gone so far???! :D

Started a new 1:32 scale work today

2011-12-26T16:29:00.000-08:00

It's hopefully going to be a Lusitano.

(the above is photoshopped as I test out my tail idea & see where I want to nip off a little more)

[adding in this sentence an hour later - doh!] I was inspired by the liberty acts of Cavalia, Apassionata and less showy ones like Hempfling.

I may back off of the extreme Lusi profile features and traits and go more Andalusian though... it's too soon to say! :) I started this afternoon & just couldn't put him down he's been so fun & different!

Anyhow, he's under 3" tall. A first for me in clay too at this scale but I'm not worried as the widget details I've done are a lot smaller sometimes.. the brushes I sculpt with can easily remove an eye. This is sans solvents or oils too - just that my clay is soft and warm so it's a matter of patience and redoing things sometimes.. overall though despite all the redundant work it seems to be a ton faster for me to get where I want to go. At this scale though I have to freeze him (yup - right into the freezer!) more I've found already... 2x today to work on basic shaping.

So it would be fun to have a small work for sale in the nearer future. We'll see how /where this goes!!

I also haven't posted here about the next (this is the 2nd) Baroque horse head bust up on eBay;
http://www.ebay.com/itm/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=290648897878
I'm sorta behind there on sharing that - it was a week long auction but it ends tomorrow- sorry! Anyhow, I am guessing that most people reading this blog though are members of my mailing list or yahoogroup.

Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday so far? We celebrated Christmas in NC with friends and with our puppies at home. It's been a cozy holiday so far... I've managed to not eat too many of my cookies (which is saying something because I baked more than ever before!). Anyhow, a belated wishing of holiday cheer to my blog readers here! Have a wonderful New Years too!! :)

Cheers and Joy to you & yours!! :)

Meh... ;)

2011-12-21T15:02:00.000-08:00

Well I did 2 pastels today - one is a gift for my feller so I won't be posting it here.

I'm very critical of my illustration work and am never happy with it. Today's works are no different! In fact this pony above has many hours to go imo... despite that I was trying to go with a less-is-more approach & just make shape suggestions. I have to laugh and think I wasn't meant to illustrate even though I tried that path for a while... I"m a lefty and I can't help but smudge.. ;)

At any rate though I haven't shared any new studio happenings in a while so there's one at least! It's from my photoshop of the wild Shackleford ponies from last November.

I hope to be also putting a new bust on eBay tonight (to end after Christmas). Now that I'm caught up on shipping I can wrap up other studio projects! The pony is a "gift to me" and just because I had an hour here at the end of the day before I wanted to hide away those tell tale pastels.. ;)

A customer made my holidays a bit merrier!!

2011-12-19T12:01:00.000-08:00

This photo is from Inge Steininger. The momma mare here is obviously sculpted by Brigitte Eberl but I am not sure which sculpture (I don't know it's name - just need to credit the sculptor!). And both were painted by Cindy Williams (at least the Mango is - I'm pretty sure both). I just love the scene though! How fun - I love getting stuff like this! :D

Shared with permission of the photographer.

Hope everyone is having a sane holiday season so far! It's gotten pretty hectic here & I don't do half as much as I used to... go figure! ;)

______________adding in a day later______________

I had to correct Brigitte Eberl's name first off! Eek!

Inge just wrote me with more pics (!) and to say the mare sculpture here is "Elsa" which has been modified/customized by Cindy (I'm going to take a wild guess and say it looks like the mane and tail are Cindy's, not Brigitte's style). So there ya have it!

By the way, I have photos from many customers on my yahoogroup in folders (one per sculpture). So if anyone is wanting to share too - please just send them my way or feel free to upload if you are a member! They are moderated for everyone's protection but I generally get to approve of new photos within a day or so! Love to see the new colors! :)

Pimping Elmo! (Many auctions to come)

2011-11-28T07:32:00.000-08:00

I'm going to post directly from Cheryl here;

In order of auction, starting from upper left corner:
Christine Lewis - auction starts 27 November 2011 and runs for 5 days
Dottie Hayes - auction starts 30 November 2011 and runs for 5 days
Martha Bechtel - auction starts 3 December 2011 and runs for 5 days
Cindy Evans - auction starts 6 December 2011 and runs for 5 days
Jamie Brooks - auction starts 9 December 2011 and runs for 5 days
Sara Gifford - auction starts 12 December 2011 and runs for 5 days
Shauna McDaniel - auction starts 15 December 2011 and runs for 5 days
Sara Bercier - auction starts 18 December 2011 and runs for 5 days

Tonight, the first medallion goes up for sale beginning at 8pm PST (11pm EST). The Elmhurst medallion was sculpted by Morgen Kilbourn. A group of model horse hobbiests agreed to finish the resin and donate them back to the Haven.

Christine Lewis of Wyoming has the first medallion going up for sale: http://www.ebay.com/itm/130608177164...84.m1557.l2649

And yes - lol - I should add that one of those DOES have a horn! The official "Elmhorn" version of the piece! ;)

It's the weekend for starting auctions. I finally got around to wrapping up a couple more busts and put one on eBay myself; http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=290638219325

Back to Elmo though (Elmhurst's nickname), I'm just so excited to see that there were so many! Those are to benefit Our Mim's Retirement Haven which is a wonderful (and official 501(c)3) cause near and dear to my heart. You can learn more here; http://www.ourmims.org/

Happy bidding!!!

Dad & the 3 gallery tour today!

2011-11-23T19:07:00.001-08:00

I'm sooooo beat it's been a crazy past few days. I'm posting this mostly for my sisters (we share a dad) who are online the most. And my brothers (also different moms from me) in case they get online soon too. ;)

Dad came down to visit on a countrywide tour of necessity. Today we went to see the 3 galleries that my work is at in Southern Pines & Pinehurst. I took many more photos that really would've been great if I hadn't managed to get them blurry. I just was all off in the settings today.

Anyhow, off to bed with me. Here are the pics. :)

Hollyhocks and the only fun pic I managed to successfully take...

Outside of Artist's Gallery, just around the corner from the Campbell House exhibit.

This is the place that has the widgets too! I wanted to get them a couple more cold cast medallions, they have bust there as well. There are 5 here in time for black friday shopping but I just plumb ran out of time/energy in the cleanup this morning sooooooo hopefully by the end of the month when they have the "First Friday" nights downtown there.

And inside the Campbell House I tried to take some artsy shots & the ones with dad all look like a ghost is running through the room. But a few there (it's got such pretty grounds outside!).

Dad has promised to tell me more about doing large scale works in foam more to help me iwth my first project. He seems to feel that the fiberglass casting method is the way to go. I'm torn but slowly being won over to that side. For those not familiar with his story, he was a 3D designer for many years as well as an art teacher. So he really had a lot of fun today studying all the works. Again, I am SO sorry but the pictures of him studying art.. they're just bad! lol! :D

Ok, g'nite gang. ((Hugs to the sibs!!))

Shopping before chopping...

2011-11-17T12:11:00.000-08:00

I’ve been told & recognize that it is taking a bit of a risk here in sharing more & in showing so much detail … considering how early on this sculpture is – in that it needs so much more still… & that so much is very likely to be changed!

I thought though it would be fun to share what I’ve recently pretty much decided -- like many of my works I’m going to want to lengthen the abdomen … in this case I’m going to do so after I’ve cast the prototype resin as I did with Kipling (click to see that). :)

I like to personally use photoshop to invert the colors too - any way you can make the whole work look different helps you spot areas that leap out as "odd"...

Many sculptors have shared the mirror trick with you too that's in my first photos of this post, but I thought it would be fun to show that age-old tradition in photoshop as well. Overall, this little 5min exercise in photoshop confirmed that somehow I've taken a properly proportioned armature & managed to do a very common error for me, exaggerate an area again. There are 2 reasons not to make the drastic change to the belly right away though. (1) The armature will fight me, it's going to try to yank the extremities back if I pull, this is hard for me to explain but trust me, it's not a great idea... and (2) when I'm done refining I may find that I don't need to lengthen it quite so much, I might shorten the legs or neck, or all of the above.. so I really do like to leave that towards the end.

I may not share too many more in progress photos of him, I try to restrain myself as I’m learning it tends to put off people if they spot a flaw (like a neck too long or a back that’s too short)… it’s only that over the course of months when I do get to work on my own sales pieces like this I get so excited to share! To the topic of the title though, perhaps my sharing will help other sculptors though see that the use of photoshop before tackling some of the more extensive operations can help determine all sorts of things. With Kipling for example I photoshopped the neck shortening to find the spot I most wanted to make the cuts at, and the extent of the shortening I’d wanted to do. In the end I decided it wouldn’t be so hard to do in clay and it really wasn’t at all, armature & all! Hope this helps someone in other words! :)

Crioulo in progress

2011-11-16T09:21:00.000-08:00

Just for fun too - since I've been focused so much for the last 3 months on the non-sculpting side of things I'm happy to return to "work in progress" sharing here!

This is my Crioulo (Criollo) sculpture in progress. I'm thinking of naming him... Merengue..

Yeah, I use a candle for to warmeth my tools. It's HOT in the studio right now though so it's unpleasant & I just blew it out. .. :-/ One of my favorite working ambiance aspects of sculpting though is to have a good smelling (soy/essential oil) candle going & an interesting book on tape. Already a hour passed today & I thought I'd barely sat down for 2minutes...!

Turning on the AC in here now & jumping back into it!! :)

____Later ______
Ok, 2 things quickly here I spied later when I went back to him. The leg popped out of place again. I made big changes initially & the armature is not attached anymore (bad!) and I think this shows I'm going to have to dive in & cut the leg off/remake the armature again before I carry on. Initially my thinking was - just work iwth it & fiddle when I've cast the prototype master in resin. But naw...it's really easier to do now.

And yes, the candle WAS too close there.. his ear melted over. hehe! ;)

You just never know...

2011-11-15T15:17:00.001-08:00

I’ll be remarkably brief since I’m pretty far behind on emails now.

Just sharing something I’m tickled about – and it’s filed under the “you just never know until you ask” category!

A customer wanting to buy a Johann really wanted a more rugged au natural version. I’m not done here but I’m so tickled at how he’s coming out! There are times when I’m sculpting that I come to this impasse where I can’t decide between doing things one way or another – hair usually, as that’s entirely (almost) aesthetics. In this case, when originally sculpting this horse, I was torn between the less groomed mane and the more polished look… so when a customer asked if I ever did such customizations in this case I was so eager to jump on it and give it a shot! (Ok, granted too I don’t always have the time or inspiration, sure. I certainly don’t offer it as a regular service, but you just never know until you ask!!).

So the biggest part was to add more “slight” feathering. The real horse, my boarder, who inspired this had year-round feathering at the pasterns even though he was very sleek otherwise. It wasn’t hard for me to picture at all.

Anyhow, so maybe I’ll get better pictures when I’ve actually succeeded in blending these out. (I totally should've waited until I was done, yes yes ok ok...!).. But I roughed them in today & went OOOHH neato! Thus why I’m sharing.

This is the sculpture in it’s originally intended state;

This cold casting is standing at Campbell House in Southern Pines right now until mid-Dec when the show ends. It’s so funny how a little cleanup makes such a different impression! Show horse verses woodland trail steed!

The vintage truck series story ;)

2011-11-09T07:02:00.000-08:00

5x7" pencil
More about the artist today… :) I have a fiancé who is incredibly hard to shop for. His own family tends to just try to get away with gift cards to home depot. Once in a while a clothing store although even for clothes they don’t bother much. He is (ahem) INCREDIBLY particular. Which is why he’s good at what he does too.

Anyhow, when we first started dating he had a very big workshop & in half of it there was this rust colored heap of metal of auto parts he found in the woods. Well maybe in someone’s backyard but I doubt he paid for it. In around a year’s time of tinkering he turned it into a mammoth restored ’54 chevy with a 454 that out-pulled most anything, and won trophy’s for good looks in at least one auto show too. It’s only amazing because it was a PILE OF RUST and mixed and matched parts.. I’m not exaggerating.. calculus was involved in figuring out how to make it work (he’s an engineer). There were gear ratio conversions done to sync up some parts from one year/make to another year make. Enough so that he had to have a multipart title that was bit of a nightmare…. Ever heard Cash’s song “One Piece at a Time”? That’s for reals man.. fer reals! ;)

Anyhow, so these aren’t that great but in years past I’ve given him two truck drawings. This first one here was done off of a picture I found online – which is why it’s not in my portfolio.. it’s nearly the same year as his first truck there at least but in 2005 that truck wasn’t done. It came out a lot better than this mind you & had interesting custom aspects as well.

5x7 " charcoal
This year I drew this 2nd one here(above) yesterday after his first and most favored project truck that he did when he lived in North Carolina the first time. It was very sad to see him sell this a year and a half ago before we moved down here. He had 4 trucks and I had 1, all full sized (including mine), and all were overpowered workhorses that didn’t get decent gas mileage at all and really we didn’t need to bring more than one truck down here.

It was heartbreaking for him, but at the same time these trucks would go from being vintage auto show winning entries to slowly starting to rust & need repairs.. and it’s not like he has the garage of Jay Leno or anything..

I’m really glad he was happy with yesterday’s gift. It’s so tricky, I think if I’d done one truck that went on to be further modified he would’ve looked at the picture and had mixed emotions. You probably think “oh he’d love any picture of any of his trucks I’m sure” but no, truly… there are some things he doesn’t want to be reminded of.

I’ll say this though, I’m pretty disappointed my choice to use charcoal here – it’s not ideal for works this small (both drawings are 5 x7”).

2008 raising of timberframe, work crew at end of day
I'd also thought of framing this picture for him, it's 2 of the trucks he'd built from 'scratch' (the one they are sitting on is the mean green machine). And his white everyday driver... plus a his first timberframe barn raising there. That barn was also a pile of rocks in the woods & he did everything from the stone & mortar to the cedar shake shingled roof at the end. Truly impressive work and it was a horse race for me to decide this year. Gotta save something for another year I guess (I'm open to ideas too other than just printing & framing that!).

While originally I had planned on doing a picture of the dogs, that went over well last year.. but I really wanted to give him something that was for HIM and not both of us so much. Maybe for Christmas a nice pastel of the dogs. I don’t have much in the way of gift ideas this year especially! Typically they involve really practical things like zip ties and duck tape.

No… really.

I have to leave you with this song. It used to be our theme song (and it’s pretty funny!)… course the real restored trucks he made hardly were for free but the rest well.. so true!

Johnny Cash » One Piece At A Time Lyrics

Well, I left Kentucky back in '49
An' went to Detroit workin' on a 'sembly line
The first year they had me puttin' wheels on cadillacs

Every day I'd watch them beauties roll by
And sometimes I'd hang my head and cry
'Cause I always wanted me one that was long and black.

One day I devised myself a plan
That should be the envy of most any man
I'd sneak it out of there in a lunchbox in my hand
Now gettin' caught meant gettin' fired
But I figured I'd have it all by the time I retired
I'd have me a car worth at least a hundred grand.

[CHORUS]
I'd get it one piece at a time
And it wouldn't cost me a dime
You'll know it's me when I come through your town
I'm gonna ride around in style
I'm gonna drive everybody wild
'Cause I'll have the only one there is a round.

So the very next day when I punched in
With my big lunchbox and with help from my friends
I left that day with a lunch box full of gears
Now, I never considered myself a thief
GM wouldn't miss just one little piece
Especially if I strung it out over several years.

The first day I got me a fuel pump
And the next day I got me an engine and a trunk
Then I got me a transmission and all of the chrome
The little things I could get in my big lunchbox
Like nuts, an' bolts, and all four shocks
But the big stuff we snuck out in my buddy's mobile home.

Now, up to now my plan went all right
'Til we tried to put it all together one night
And that's when we noticed that something was definitely wrong.

The transmission was a '53
And the motor turned out to be a '73
And when we tried to put in the bolts all the holes were gone.

So we drilled it out so that it would fit
And with a little bit of help with an A-daptor kit
We had that engine runnin' just like a song
Now the headlight' was another sight
We had two on the left and one on the right
But when we pulled out the switch all three of 'em come on.

The back end looked kinda funny too
But we put it together and when we got thru
Well, that's when we noticed that we only had one tail-fin
About that time my wife walked out
And I could see in her eyes that she had her doubts
But she opened the door and said "Honey, take me for a spin."

So we drove up town just to get the tags
And I headed her right on down main drag
I could hear everybody laughin' for blocks around
But up there at the court house they didn't laugh
'Cause to type it up it took the whole staff
And when they got through the title weighed sixty pounds.

[CHORUS]
I got it one piece at a time
And it didn't cost me a dime
You'll know it's me when I come through your town
I'm gonna ride around in style
I'm gonna drive everybody wild
'Cause I'll have the only one there is around.

[Spoken]
Ah yeah Red Rider this is the Cottonmouth
In the Psychobilly Cadillac come on
Ah this is the Cottonmouth and negatory
On the cost of this machine there Red Rider
You might say I went right up to the factory and picked it up
It's cheaper that way

Ah what model is it

Well it's a '49, '50, '51, '52, '53, '54, '55, '56 C
'57 '58' 59' Automobile

It's a '60, '61, '62, '63, '64, '65, '66, '67
'68, '69, '70 Automobile

& Celebration :)

2011-11-04T21:16:00.000-07:00

Well I’m pleased to report that it was an overwhelmingly popular place to be tonight at the opening night of this month’s show at Campbell House gallery in Southern Pines, North Carolina. I managed to take this very very poor shot with my camera phone before the crowds came in. & Then it was so crowded I lost a few people and couldn’t get back over to the coat area to grab my cell phone & try for another photo. Apparently it was nearly a record crowd for the house – 250 people meandering through the 5 or 6 rooms. It’s a normal sized “house” too for a gallery so 250 just boggles my mind. I would up in one of the far rooms & didn’t fully appreciate this other than that I wasn’t going anywhere for a while & fortunately had someone fun to chat with.

Really sorry about my photo here, terrible terrible.. That’s the half passing Deputed Duke sculpture there (the shiny brown thing by the window). Those folks were the early arrivals who were wise to the crowds to come! ;) It really was something! I’m rather in shock actually it was just quite an exciting group – the area is so horsie which was terrifically exciting for me. I got lots of tips on horse events in the area that are must see’s. & Of course in getting to talk to competitors who ride the tough stuff instead of being interviewed at times, so I got to ask some fun questions myself too!

Uhm, ok, back to the synopsis; I had 11 sculptures in all 5 rooms and the foyer and gift shop (the pin and magnet widgets made, bad pun warning!!!, a cameo appearance in their shop). ;) I met so many enthusiastic people it was a wonderful experience. Despite the unbelievable crowd we wrapped up close to on-schedule, and then there was Thai food afterwards (my friends in New England may have just cheered for the tradition of Thai after any good event!!!). :D

So much to talk about I couldn’t possibly share it all now. Pretty wiped out. I just needed to share that it went better than I ever possibly could have expected.

(click to read today's paper there)
The local area newspaper ran this and the reporter there taking photos will be passing them on to us. Which is good because none of us managed to get any decent shots. But a good time was had by all and this show will run for 6 weeks at the Campbell House!

Tomorrow I guess I’ll share more about the next gallery I just signed with today too. See, it’s a big ole roller coaster. I really had a good time tonight though. :)
(oh! And we didn't have to make any speeches - woohoo!) ;)

Reality

2011-11-03T07:18:00.000-07:00

This overshare of misfortune from this past year is at the urging of several customers who do know more about my life & feel that sometimes revealing how human you are isn’t so tacky. Hope it doesn’t come across that way. Please cease to read right here if you only want something light. This is going to be disturbingly honest.

Folks always say I’m “mysterious” or something and this honestly baffles me! :) I feel so ‘heart-on-the-sleeve’ exposed (albeit boring!) but a person who is totally out in the open generally. I even don’t think I get evasive if someone asks me direct questions.. well unless I just don’t know how I feel per say about something? I do know that, for whatever reason, people sometimes think I’m unapproachable. That makes me sad so I’ll try this overshare of who I am so that I seem a bit less standoffish - more human. Believe me, I'm very human and on some level every bit the "emotional" artist too - even if I can't seem to express that through words so easily.

Anyhow, I bring this up today for a few reasons. One is that I slowly developed a bit of fear of public speaking in my 20’s after having a job that required me to lecture about proper use of the corporate logo and how to use the company intranet. Highly captivating topics (not!). I actually lost my voice in one where I was so nervous about boring another perfectly nice group of people I knew with a bunch of pita rules explained in minutia.

But at least the Ben Stien approach would work for me if I had to hold court & tell you something about Deputed Duke’s sculpture... Artists are expected to be the polar opposite however – dynamic and interesting! I feel totally uninteresting right now. Ha! :D

Tomorrow night is a big night for me, I’ve never done a show as a professional artist. As a college and high school student, yes, but not as a person saying “I think I’m good enough to do this for a living”. Let alone then coming up with interesting witty tidbits to tell people about the works themselves. Being dynamic and interesting. I’m so pragmatic and boring this way you see. I enjoy it. I don’t think about the artistic aspects other than to be delighted when they seem to come out & work in a piece.

I actually asked my younger cousin who went to art school if this was ever covered in any type of curriculum topic – she talks about her art to customers all the time so she gave me some ideas of what people might want to know. I've asked a lot of artists how they find the fun words to describe their inspirations ... something at least better than "I wanted to make it so I did". Really I'm the verbal equivalent of oatmeal sometimes.

No sincerely!!! It vexes me to no end because I truly don’t know how to really expand on “I was pleased when the part of the pony’s mane worked out into hair sections that were more interesting & varied”, or “I was happy that this stretching leg gave me an area to add a little more definition around”. That’s not exactly what you see artists saying at openings if asked to speak. I’m told I won’t be asked to – but I’ve been told that before and found myself standing without a thought in my lil head to spit out. Once in front a convention of gynecologists at Vanderbilt University who thought I was the murderer in their murder mystery dinner (I was my sister’s side-kick non-speaking part assistant/extra). Faced with them & the mic, I had nothing but a “thank you” (hardly appropriate to the accusation). So you see, this fear was come by quite honestly! ;)

But here’s “me” and how things go for me. This past month.. scratch that, this past YEAR has been just something else. Very big lows and very big highs.

Most know that I lost my mom quite suddenly in January. I’d spoken to her hours before and she said she didn’t feel great – she said that in every conversation I’d ever had with her .. still, I am very grateful to say that I actually remembered to tell her to take care of herself and that I loved her & needed her. Her cat yowling in the background should’ve tipped me off. He sounded frantic (I thought he wanted food and she was in a hurry to go so that made sense that she’d have been in the process of feeding him) so this must’ve registered with me on some level. Still, so sudden.

I postponed periodontal surgery for a month after this – I was her only child so there was a lot of work to do keeping me up north staying with friends and family. It was financially scary at first of course (parents final expenses and surgery out of pocket), at first not even knowing if I had enough to spare to get home! Never mind thousands for her final costs. Yet, somehow it all somehow works out. Ironically I chuckle to think of Harry Potter “bone regrow” spell because (they no longer do cadaver bone implants), I really did regrow a few millimeters of bone I’m at least happy to say. The irony is that I say all that time how freaking tired of all this work to keep them (brush and floss after EVERY meal.. no exceptions.. on the road? Stop at a gas station and jump through hoops to keep hands clean while doing so.. people at events have found me in the bathroom with my hygene too. Honestly? Tiresome. I can see why there is a mental disorder where people rip out their own teeth. I can totally GET that! Ha!). I can’t say I’m mind having dentures at under 40 – so what. My teeth have always been yellow and sensitive to whitening so I’m hardly vain about them. Anyhow, I’ve been there every other month & then some. I’m not supposed to see them again until March now & that’s just a weird feeling! Bottom line though is that I came by this issue honestly between the TMJ inducing grinding at times & smoking. Smoking is out of my life now but the effects aren’t.

But these things I fear, losing people, public speaking (no I didn’t manage it well at my mom’s services either –sighs-), needles and pain.. all costing money I don’t have. What can you do? This is my mode of thinking. Nose to the grindstone & somehow it’ll all work out.

My temporary residence here (I still haven’t unpacked the books & things because we WILL be moving sooner or later here!) gets very weak cell phone reception. If I want to talk on the phone I have to set up somewhere and put the phone in the sill of the window. This has been fine because most of the news I’ve gotten from home has been unhappy. And honestly I just haven’t had the emotional strength to talk to people after that.

It’s not healthy to be so isolated but at the same time, I have to push away some of the negativity coming at me so I can process my own losses.

Like, yes, (corny and sappy sounding I know), but I still haven’t totally gotten over having to put my horse down. We just don’t get over certain things like this I’m learning – it’s different for different people and I’m not ashamed to say this. I have however pushed away the memories of how skinny he got suddenly & his erratic manic wall-attacking type violent or vacant catatonic behaviors. In overcoming the emotional angst of seeing that sudden decline I created a sculpture of him in utter bliss. He was always so mellow and blissful until those last 3 months.

On that vein I have 2 dogs now that are comfort bunnies too so this is helping me to refind that type of joy – the simple “life is good right now” bliss. And they are forcing me to get up and move about regularly. That was actually a challenge this summer. I tried to get out & walk (in shady areas but still), before the temps got to hot. Still, I wound up getting dehydrated. That’s really something for me – I’ve worked outdoors my whole life at times. I got heat sickness once when I was 15 and have been pretty aware of taking precautions ever since. That knocked me out with a fever and everything a week before breyerfest.

My fiance’s job has had some bureaucratic hiccups in paying – he’s contract so he submits invoices – it’s not salary so it involves a lot more work sometimes. That’s stressed me too more than you could imagine. His cost to get to and from work & our basic bills are more than I’ve had in backup (see above reasons – lol!). So just not knowing if things will work out.

My hair has been falling out. No kidding. No surprise eh? Lol! My widow’s peak went & got all crooked (although it’s nice having hairl that’s little bit lighter – it was always so thick that I couldn’t even use some type of barrets!). I know it’s just stress too but seeing that start to happen was this horrible vicious circle adding to the stress as this was how my dental issues started 2 years back. My teeth just suddenly got a LOT more crooked within a month or two. NOW I know that I was grinding to beat the band & making something bad happen down below the gums. Back then though I was having this dentist say “all was fine”. So now with hair falling out… well… lets just say I played it on the safe side & had my thyroid done at my annual last week.

I’m SO tired of doctors though. So I’m embracing hiking and good diet – these are easy things I CAN do that make me feel better immediately.

Things in Sept started to seem to be getting better. Fiance’s job started coming through, dental things were coming back positive for me. Sales had happened for me, even in this terrifying economy. I had just diversified (an economic strategy), to put some pieces in a gallery and had this coming show and other exciting things lined up.

Then I learned that my dad went into the hospital for the 4th time this year. His refusal of certain treatments makes it emotionally painful too for me.

So I guess I bottled up all my angst and started this marvelous tongue to teeth pressing thing I wasn’t even aware of. Until I had this haematoma type blister and pain & apparently a loose front tooth. So within 2 weeks suddenly instead of all good oral news finally I’ve had this major set back & am getting put on antibiotics and now I wear my grinding guard night and day except when I expect to speak to people. Sometimes I even wear it on the phone now & just deal with the lisp. See I don’t even know I’m doing it but I keep running my tongue over the sore area in a mental “does that still hurt” which is just tugging & hurting it more.

ANYHOW, so FINALLY after 3 weeks in Oct of starting to get rather scared about that (bone infection) I think things are ok.

BUT.. I tell everyone all this exceptionally personal information because à lol -> YES.. I’m not very witty these days. It’s not that I’m feeling full of myself and elitist. Or that I’m being deliberately obtuse. Quite literally I’m just, trying to focus on the positive things and generally I do that offline. (Or by reading copious LOL cat type websites). But witty? Psshaa…

I laugh easily though?! :) But man, words haven’t come easy to me this year. The life-goals I've managed this year, like scraping together enough to pay for my first bronze casting and this art show.. they feel like they've come at some expense. Even though I'm quite happy about them, the things I smile most and laugh about are increasingly simpler things - the folly of a bird or the expression on one of my dogs for example. It's bittersweet but overall I feel like life is a lot more real.

I once had an HR guy at (7 years ago) ask me how I was with a truly concerned look in his eye. I responded by bursting out in tears (I was very worried about something and hadn’t slept all night). There are times when I suppose my brusk or callous exterior is just toughly holding together a quite vulnerable person. It’s not as polished and refined. & There are times when it’s quite thin – especially lately. In June I was at a hobby show and a good friend also asked how I was, insightfully, and similarly I began to cry on her shoulder. I’m not sure I’ll ever get the grace to not have such a thin and transparent veneer. Honestly I’m not sure I’d ever want to be. It’s my way of keeping it real and honest. Not everything is pretty and I don’t like to be too superficial.

There’s lots more gut wrenching dilemmas I could go into but I feel like this sounds pathetic enough, no? Chuckles. Anyhow, we all have problems. I find that, despite my loathing of falling into this stereotype, that this year my inspirations in art have come in direct proportion to coping with things that I can’t do much about. So truly, art is a healing tool for me that brings me all kinds of happiness.

And I thank my customers from the bottom of my heart for their support in this which has let me pursue my art. Aside from the obvious cost of life support it’s given me lots of productive things to do – something I’ve needed quite often this year.

Lastly, I’m not going to talk about faith but I can assure you that more than anything – these past few years have taught me that we are given what we can handle. Sometimes this year I’ve really questioned that, but then I return to clinging to this belief and slowly find it’s true after all. My gratitude for those who’ve supported me and helped me here cannot be stated enough. I wish I was more eloquent about it but that doesn’t make it any less heartfelt. Thank you guys!

A mold making festivus! :D

2011-10-01T12:13:00.000-07:00

Two part molds.. the next step to doing “pro” molding. I dove in finally & documented the process here! (Actually a bit of 2 stages - waste mold & then a production mold)... I do not promise this will be any kind of useful “tutorial”. I don’t explain things well, especially if I can’t sketch out things (well I could here but it would take me a while). Hopefully this will be of interest to some customers and maybe helpful to some artists too though.

This is what remains of the original clay after the 1 part first waste mold (first head on the left below). Then (middle) you see the first mold’s first casting in white there.. and then (to the right) in cold cast bronze the 2nd two part mold’s cold casting & final marble stand.

Ok, so before you write off the notion of a two part mold as being pretty basic and not good for casting much, consider this; my half passing thoroughbred sculpture “Deputed Duke” was a 2 part mold. No, I’m not kidding and I’ve seen and studied the mold with great fascination. It was breaking down so I had to throw it away when I moved (it weighed like 20lbs too).. but I wish I hadn’t tossed that one actually. As molds go? It’s brilliant (Will Rhodes of MVS made it, pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to work something like that out in my head personally). I’ve shown it to other mold makers and they have marveled over it. How can something so complicated be done in only 2 parts? ANYHOW, so the point I am making here though is these “waves” you see in the clay can really get crazy if you want and mold some very complex shapes. The mind boggles (well my simple mind does!). In rubber of course – for resin castings at least. The mold for Duke in fine bone china was 55 parts and was the “most complex mold” I heard that Mark Farmer of Alchemy Ceramics ever made (and one of his last). Very much unlike rubber, little undercuts are a bear – AND – for production you really have to think through what is going to grab and pull on your mold – even with the first casting!

Further confusing you I could add in that for things like the lost wax bronze method many are done as 1 part molds! The shell molding method.. I’ve done this too in college and … my clay is actually so soft I try to avoid the brush on methods. I’ve had this discussion with many sculptors & they’re surprised I love the super soft clay but I dunno… I just do. And yes, I accidentally bump it all the time & have to redo a nostril or ear or something key. I just don’t mind doing it over now & then. This is also why I am happily entrenched in dressage. I could ride along for years in a 20meter circle trying to get a few steps “just so” (mind you I love to cut loose full out breakneck gallops over stuff with horses too on cross country – LOW level stuff at least)… but anyhow, this is something I need to mention. So many people are used to this rock hard oil clay for sculpting. For me nope… onnnnnnly if I stick it in the fridge for a bit! ;)

When I molded the master/clay I wanted a 1 part mold.

(above) showing the narrowness - the waste mold box before I glued the end on (below) the box for the waste mold - ready to pour in rubber!

Well, truth be told I really wanted to have this bust just be a simple 1 part mold like I've shown above… in fact it’s simple enough that 1 part should be all I need EXCEPT that I planned on doing cold castings. If you google up cold casting videos and tutorials you’ll notice 1 common theme -> they all show open faced molds. There is a really good reason for this. The metal is heavy. It does NOT stay in suspension.

(above) I mocked up what a poured version of this resin would look like if I just mixed the metal in and poured it... the top of the horse would have all the metal settle out in the few minutes it takes for resin to cure. The metal mixed in with the resin is heavier than sand mixed into water.. so it settles VERY fast.

The end result here was that it was still hard to keep the metal in suspension, even following the open mold/brushing constantly method shown in videos.... I succeeded on a few times & wasted a lot of time & resin. In the end I went back to the pros. But I'm getting ahead of myself! ;)

So you can see from the trio above the clay.

Next was the white casting there from the waste mold. Steps for thatwaste molding for me was as follows;

pour in rubber over clay (pray box doens't leak -- good news is that you can patch up leaks if you've got your hot glue handy... as me how I know this..) ;)
wait a while (for Mold Star rubber it's not that long - 6-12hrs)...
pull off sides and carefully cut out your clay casting - be sure to leave a totally uncut bottom.... really this is a 2 handed job without pause (so no pics) but there's great video stuff on Smooth On's site showing how to do this!
dust in some baby powder & cast away! (see white horsie there in the middle)

Ok, sooooooo then you will note that the waste mold white horse there is lacking the bottom/tear drop sort of shape tie-in to the base. That took me another couple of weeks to get around to. I also added veining to the face and neck... filled in deep gaps in the mane.... basically all around made it into something "production ready" (& more mold friendly - too many undercuts tear up a mold). I'll confess too that when I started this bust last year I didn't really have a clear idea in mind of how I'd tie it onto the base so I was stuck with an armature that was immobile in that regard. Soooo when I finally had the idea in my head, my lil "vision" there finally, it was half a year before I could realize it after I made the resin "master" (the white copy used in the next sections below).

THEN, onto the "production mold" portion.

(above) Showing the basic clayed up production master sculpture. The line coming down from the chin is the "sprue" (sp?) I made out of a bamboo shishkabob skewer. The bigger sprue coming from the bottom of the neck I just made out of clay. Basically the overall goal here is to make your clay meet up to where ever you would like your seam to be. This is the part where you try to keep your seams off of highly detailed areas & tucked away out of sight as much as possible.

(above) same as before but I've added the acorn nut "keys". By putting these in at somewhat different angles I'm ensuring more "lock" will happen between both parts of the mold. I could've done an even better job of that - it was tricky to decide how much I wanted to. Knowing that I'd have to brush in resin, and THEN lock the 2 parts of the mold together for the pour later (a 2 stage resin filling method - outer shell of metallic resin & backfilled withplain black resin).

(above) ok, so this is after I've poured in the rubber & waited12hrs. I then do NOT pull off that rubber - I seal it even more with grease/oil/clay/what have you. I'm really careful here not to shift the master out of the mold rubber there though. That's one half of the rubber...

(above) this is how I did the bottom half. I now flip it over - cut off the bottom, being careful NOT to mess with the sides so the rubber stays nice & stuck sealed to them...and start pulling off the clay I've clayed him up with...

(above) I show how a little leak in the clay let some of that rubber in. I thought it was super solid too! Eeek! Sooooooo there I make a careful cut.. trying to think where I want that seam when all is said and done. (below) All done there.

(above) the acorn nuts removed, the mold greased up & ready to be poured into again...

(above) Now the mold rubber is heavily greased with some sort of mold release... I brushed it on.. I didn't want the horse to have one side more shiney than the other and I really don't like to use it much - detail loss!.. then I pour in the 2nd part of the mold.

(above) Literally next it just pops open & there you are. 2 parts to your mold. (below) Compare the mold to what comes out;

If only the story here was this simple! :D In reality I kept having a problem getting a nice firm cure from my resin. And it's a 20min process with the resin recommended (a clear amber colored resin) for the shell of these cold castings.

Here are the steps (again, not a camera friendly thing for me either here - waaaaaaay too messy!)...;

Get the following out, plastic stirrer (spork!), rubber gloves, towels, and disposable brush (1/2" hardware store ones for under $1 hopefully). Remember that all of this will need to be chucked in the end so disposable everything...
Lay out both parts of the mold side by side
Get 3 small plastic cups out, and 1 large cup
Pour out part B, add dye & mix
Pour out a fraction of this in metal powder (I used less than recommended by Smooth On & it was more than I could manage/mix/blend)
Mix this into part B when the dye is blended
Pour out part A in equal volume to what part B WAS (remember to mark your cups if needed - the dye & metal added a lot to the volume so be careful!)
Mix with spork (yaaaaay for sporks!!! spoon is good too but I just hoard sporks). ;)
Now pour into the molds & start brushing up the sides/all over (see videos online on this - there are millions & it's worth watching). I was using Smooth on 326. I'm not loving it... takes 15min just about to start to gel
Once starts to gel leave alone... start cleaning off any you might have gotten around the high sides of the mold that are supposed to be in contact with each other... clean out of spue areas for example
Once it's not moving really at all - join the two sides. Press down plenty hard around the edges for 10min. Yes, it's easiest to just hold it in your hands & do this. Be sure to put mosquito repellent on before hand. I wound up getting resin on my body because I failed to remember that part of this step. ;)
Put cardboard on either side, rubber band...
DO NOT LOOK at your results. I made this mistake... you need to keep the two sides together & then backfill the inside here...
DO however look inside while holding up to light (if you have uncured resin leaking out? that's wrongwrongwrong... & don't do this!).. you are looking to see if light is coming through your seams... you'll need to somehow fix that before moving on to the backfilling...
Tilt whole thing up so the sprues are on top
Mix new batch of resin normally & pour in like any other mold. Keep an eagle eye out for leakage since you're relying on a VERY tight mold. If you have a leak here your only recourse is to hold the two parts together for the duration of the cure... (get out yer bubble gum!)
Demold and hope it all worked! :D
repeat all of this a few times & you tell me if you aren't willing to pay a pro to do it properly at this point? HA!!! :D

Soooooo after 2 full days of trying to get a casting I got 2 decent ones but that's it. Annnnnnnnnnd it became clear that the casters equipment is better for the job! But here's the downfall to that. They use a more expensive/trickier mold rubber. Mine has tiny bubbles in the rubber. These turn around & make pimples.

MY castings - slow, not under pressure do NOT have very many pimples... (bronze above - see pimple pointed out by the arrow?). However for them to get good metal coverage they use pressure casting. I'm just not up for more equipment at this time - lol! I did my castings on plastic totes in the middle of my yard (best ventilation for my health - uncured resin, bad stuff!). ANYHOW, check out what pressure casting does on their first silver casting (below) for those hints of pimples! Eeek eh!?! I just used a couple of arrows to point out a few ... there are MILLIONS..!

Sooooooo after sharing all that with you I can safely say that this was mostly an exercise for me. HA! No, I will have the mold to try some other techniques and perhaps color ideas out on (like ...hmmm.. clear?). BUT the professional company I have had do my other cold castings (MVS) . It's expensive to make these to be honest. They weigh a bit so they use almost as much resin as some 1:9 scale sculptures practically! & Then after wards they are tricky to clean up well, and mount too... I haven't quite decided what to do here. I'll probably sell them as I have them available. Each being different. Aaaand offering a discount for show trophies since I've been asked about this.

So far the one from my last post & this fellow were all I've made successfully... there was a fabulous black/stainless steel one too but he's got more mane spots that didn't cure right... need to be removed & replaced (I just am using apoxie sculpt to fix these but they aren't "sale" worthy imo). Still, as hard as I am about it - not bad for a first try. The pouring/backfilling part is so crazy I can't believe it work at ALL! How funny that that isn't the part that's failing on me.... Maybe I'll find something better than this Smooth On 326 for me. I know the Smooth On 305 doesn't work at all for me here either... but 300 works better for me than I can believe! (Which is good news for those waste molds of my clay works).

So this is the end result;

Now you know what all this molding business is about (sorta). : :)

Kipling for 2 additional days & new baroque bust!

2011-09-25T12:46:00.000-07:00

One of those new faces I promised! A whole photo essay of the 2 part mold making will follow soon enough… however right now I have a lot of backlog emails aaaaaaaand my internet connection has been very patchy this whole week. Add to this that my website server (a totally different company) also had problems this weekend (how long I don’t know) and my domain name is also being still affected there by what apparently was an attack earlier (email still not working)… so in the last 4 days these 2 factors are making my response time quite slow! (And fwiw, THIS is why I have an “@yahoo.com” email account – I can tell when emails should be coming in to the @one-horse.net domain and aren’t)… Laugh at my cheap freebie solution but it’s effective! :)

"Baroque Horse Bust"
4 and 3/4" tall
Completed Sept 2011 - this copy is cold cast brass

Sooo bottom line is the “making of” this bust (at least the mold of it) blog post will have to wait another day or so. I'm asking many questions of my yahoogroup to decide what sort of an edition this will be. I was immensely inspired by the work of John Sherrill Houser and older renaissance and greco-roman stylings here. This was just something I *had* to do.

REGARDING KIPLING! :)
(and the last week to reserve a copy here)
I need to ALSO share my decision that with my website/host server's downtime issues late this week/I’m going to extend Kipling’s edition 2 more days to end on Oct 2nd to make up for the 2 days that I know of which were lost this weekend. So sorry if this has caused anyone problems? -sighs-

My online queue is not up to date yet. Since they haven't started shipping it's not really a live "queue" to watch.. however they are casting now (well tomorrow) and it WILL be a live queue very soon so I'll get that up soon.

Any questions please be sure to at least copy my email addy artbymorgen@yahoo.com (and the paypal addy of morgen@one-horse.net of course still works via paypal... but I can't reply to your payment notices right now still - I'm so sorry!).

In lighter news;
Yesterday I was away for half the day at my first “Meet the Artist” over at the Hollyhocks Gallery. They have a nice write up arranged weekly in the local newspaper events section for the artists who will be sitting out meeting people;

How exciting eh?! Those "Meet the Artist" days rotate through the gallery artists so that won’t happen too often but it’s so nice to get out of the studio! It was fun to meet the local folks and learn about the area. My socialization skills are really falling to the wayside in all this rural isolation… lol! Plus, I have to confess I didn’t get enough sleep before hand (in part due to my excitement insomnia I’ve always gotten since I was little)… aaaaaaand yes, in part because I was fiddling with my last 2 items to go up there – the Iaret mounted to a quartz base (quarts sparks and glows red when being cut! And crazily enough, is almost IMMEDIATELY cool to the touch despite being red a second before…)… and the new bust. This is my final set up and some photos of the gallery;

s

I'm missing 2 main areas here because my pictures were just that blurry...! Without a tripod I'm nearly useless for indoor still photography... but you get the idea of the whole set up I think? :)
______________________________________________

Ok, so in the course of preparing this blog post my email has been trying to send a few messages and they aren’t going anywhere. It's been 3 or 4 hours this afternoon now...

:(

I’m going to do some things outside now & try writing back to folks more in a bit. I prefer to keep it to the one email but if I can’t much longer I’ll use the online @yahoo.com account. –sighs- Can anyone recommend a good host? This one had a lot of positives but this has come up a few times now. I need to consider hosts that can at least fix things faster than these guys seem to.

The online patchyness I can’t do anything about. The neighbor said he’s passing around a petition to try & get Time Warner Cable out to this road. I would SO love to sign that. I put in a request for them to consider cable to this area before I even moved down here 2 years ago… in the meantime I’m at the mercy of satellites and sunspots (and space debris!). ;)

~~~OH! ~~~The other “new face” that I’ve been talking about is one that people really haven’t seen online at all before yet…. A totally new medallion I’ve done to benefit the “Our Mim’s Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation”. (http://www.ourmims.org/ A worthy cause that’s very near and dear to me. It’s not the medallion I posted earlier this past year, this is a racehorse in tack. That’s all I’m saying for now until Cheryl and John have created something to sell and are ready to share! :) Soooo stay tuned for that too! :)

Happy Fall All! To my native CT pals, I’m really homesick for the Durham Fair today. If you’re there, have a yummy greasy fried dough with red sauce for me please!

New venues for these new faces...! ;)

2011-09-17T14:11:00.000-07:00

First off, before I share my latest, I need to be clear to all of my wonderful loyal customers -> I fully have intended & still plan to keep chugging along making & selling artist resins every few months (or so!) ;) as I have been doing for many years. I just want to be clear up front. I don’t want to change anything there! I hope to have some in bronze and fine bone china more often too… and the occasional one of a kind works for sale, but I very much enjoy selling to artist resin collectors and all of the fun and challenges that go along with it. The last thing I’d want is for you guys to feel as if I’ve turned away from you after all these years! I’m simply diversifying at this point which is of course the sensible thing to do at times but also imo is very good for the creative soul!!

SO (woohoo!) I’m very excited to share with you that some of my bronze finish painted artist resins are now on display at Hollyhocks Art Gallery in Pinehurst, NC. This is a few hours away from my home. On display is this Hazel

(isn’t she exciting on this rock! She’s permanently mounted to it too! The real trick was to fill in the very faint gap between her feet & the rock. It’s interesting because if you try to tip her over the rock pulls her back up… fascinating & was a lot of fun to work with organic natural materials – love using mother nature’s splendor if I can! I dare anyone to really determine where real rock ends…ok, probably shouldn’t offer to be critiqued that hard actually). ;)

And of course I had to bring this Johann who is not permanently mounted to the marble there (that’s a heavy hunk!)

I’ll be there for occasional “Meet the Artist” mornings on Saturdays too which I’m very much looking forward to, it’s so nice to get out of the studio now & then! I really hope that any blog readers here in the area will stop by if they get a chance. There are so many other neat possibilities as well. Some of the artists hold teaching workshops (for example I’ve been thinking how fun it would be to teach a very modest aimed animal sculpting class using a hardening clay like apoxie sculpt?).

(it's blurry - I took it with my camera phone)

Aaaaaaaaaand the other news is that I’m I’m also incredibly honored to also share that Jane has additionally invited me to be in the group show she’s having at the Campbell House in Southern Pines – a six week show, opening night is Nov 4th and of course everyone is invited there too!

Since the Campbell House has an approximately 2 year wait once approved after applying to have a show, this expedited allowance they’re making is beyond immensely flattering!!

Timely enough too -> I’ve gotten the shipping notice about my cold casting supplies en route for early next week and I’m REALLY excited to have such a huge “goal” to work towards here with them. Wish it wasn’t so expensive to experiment in these metals mind you! A variety of marble bases arrived Thursday & things are coming together! And we have some more rock cutting and drilling going on that I hope to share the results of in the near future as well.

This note is late but this week has been very challenging on a completely unrelated note. I have many emails to confirm/answer now so I truly appreciate folks’ patience with me. I have keep EVERYONE waiting and this blog post sat in my drafts for 3 days now… it’s becoming old news!

Two weeks left to order Kiplings and already I hear the mold is nearly done – I’m so excited and would be THRILLED if I could have some shipping out before the edition closes but I think it’ll be just after that. I also have more Little Man Mango castings arriving next week and perhaps the week or two after that as well. I’m going to be BUSY – eek! Truly everyone’s patience with me is sincerely appreciated. Hopefully tonight while Liz Shaw's crazy auction ($12,000 and change so far!) ends I'll get all the rest of my emails wrapped up. Tx again for all the patience with me guys!

I know I know…

2011-09-12T14:07:00.000-07:00

I’d said I had a NEW face to share after this weekend buuuuuuut it seems best (after discussing with the “owner” of said work ultimately) to wait until all the stars and planets are aligned to do so properly (so in another 2 or 3 days probably!).

So.. in the meantime for want of anything of mine, I shall share a photo of mine from this weekend;

Edit a little while later to add in this close up for knitonator - this is as large as that'll go :)

We stopped at the Carolina Horse Park during show on our way off to go camping, just in time to have a horse bolting from the stables fly past. I have a few boring pics of hunters being walked along calmly & then this wild pose! :) There’s some serious extremes in biomechanics in there that I almost suspect if I sculpted this verbatim people would be skeptical of it’s physical possibility! Anyhow, very dramatic & I have a few others like it but this was the most exciting one to share I think.

On a more serious note I’d really dwelled a lot on elaborating yesterday on how 9/11 impacted me (where I worked shared a lot people back and forth with the WTC for example).. the aftermath and the horrific reminders we saw daily afterwards (we had armed military stationed at our offices in New Haven CT because they were next to a refinery so we literally were eating lunch next to men carrying machine guns – a whole new America). Suffice it to say after viewing so many of stories shared these past few weeks on various shows I think my own experiences pale laughably and would be almost insulting to share in light of what so many went through. The people I knew of lived. For example I can quickly/easily explain one story of 2 investors who were on their way from the WTC to tour our company that morning. They probably lived because the appointment had been changed from their offices to ours (well ditto for my boss who was supposed to go there to WTC too), so that was 3 lucky people… but so many sad stories I still cannot bear to speak of. Hug your loved ones, time on this planet being so fleeting and unpredictable and all that.

Four new faces Friday! :D

2011-09-09T08:19:00.001-07:00

Ok, well I have a hard time obviously coming up with good names for titles here. Some of these are actually older but I finally got around to casting them… as you can see one was designed to go along with Kipling!

This is my hand for scale. I’ve actually got something I cast that day I’m twitching to share buuuuut I’m going to wait until I’ve got the products here to make and assemble them… hopefully next week? How annoyingly mysterious, I know! Sorry. I’ve shared this one before in progress… buuuut the end stages made him really come together & shine sooooo I want to be ready to go “ta da!!” properly. Crossing fingers for a productive weekend /early week. After much research and techy talk with people I’ve come to the inevitable conclusion that I must make a multipart mold… my first & so I’ll have a post where I can show the prototype/waste mold box & then share why/how the 2 part mold had to be done for this type of casting material... (provided all goes well). At least this is a smaller object & these many molds are less costly…

Soooooooo the nose-up widget there? I’m thinking it should be exclusive to Kipling purchases? Right!?! :)

OH! Kipling, I see I haven’t posted here the sales page, just the album! (Guess it’s been a few weeks..!) Well Kipling has been up for sale on my website since September 1st – again he’s only available for September. Postmarks / payment time stamps must be by Sept 30th. Here’s all his purchase info!
http://www.artbymorgen.com/kipling.htm

More soon I hope with smooth sailing! :D

Inspirations - big and small! :) (photo fest!)

2011-08-22T10:39:00.000-07:00

This past week I completed my 2nd full horse sculpture done in oil based modeling clay – Kipling! :)

(Full Album http://www.artbymorgen.com/galleries/kipling/album/ )

So Kipling was inspired by a little munchkin of a guy whom I met precisely a year ago this week (learned that from a FB module that cropped up saying “pictures from a year ago today” :) my memory isn’t that great..) ;) So in Aug 2010 I went with the neighbor & her son to a local “zoo” that actually impressed me with how many acres the various animals had to roam about on. Buffalo out on at least 20 or more acres – we could hardly see them. That and a camel were their most exotic critters really. But by the parking area they had a pasture that held among less pushy equids apparently – a mini (or a Shetland pony, I’ll never know because the owners don’t know) who shoved aside his horse and donkey pasturemates in hopes of getting treats. And thus that inspired me to start up Kipling the pony.

I spent some time this past week when I remembered to try to find the photos of that fellow but I just can’t seem to find them. Suffice to say however that he was a charmer.

Since that day they seem to be everywhere. These diminutive little equines. I’ve found more at a local gardening center – a stallion, mares and a foal who was cute as a button! At Breyerfest of course I found Patrick (!! talk about a charmer!! Check him out here; https://www.facebook.com/ipitombe/posts/700247730800?ref=notif&notif_t=feed_comment_reply#!/pages/Patrick-The-miniature-horse/158571254155212 )

and several of his stable mates who allowed me to take reference photo material as well.

This is great because honestly the horses I’d found in all of my books and magazines this time just did not quite fit the bill. They were a little too hairy or too distant to really get a feel for their build. And then in Kipling’s case, I wanted too to get the feel of a pony in someone’s backyard… hair a little long & overgrown… belly a bit big… not show ring perfect in other words!

Here we have the cutest baby horse in the world that I felt compelled to stalk...

He is uncertain of this...

He stands behind the (begging) adults and tries to decide if we're safe and what all the hubbub is about!

More scrutiny...

Lingering now... (we didn't hand feed these guys more than a few blades of grass so the adults wandered off in short order)..

Clearly though I am enchanted by this stuffed toy looking little guy eh! :)

ANHOW... so inspiration of course comes to artists from both the subject and the media and I've just felt immersed in refreshingly new varieties of both! To be clear, there are lots of new types of horses around me everywhere in North Carolina (we've only been here a little over a year). My native New England is home to the shades of brown english style horses.. Of course you'll see a little bit of everything but it's nothing to me like the variety that I see around here anytime I venture out - a plethora of colors and shapes that were not so common for me to see before as much at least! So new fodder for inspiration & working in soft, non-hardening clay is clearly lending me 'wings' so to speak. I suppose it's more a mindset of appreciating these things that move us and embracing it really.

What has been the most exciting for me about working in (very soft actually) clay so far is what I get for organic shapes when I’m finally spraying down the master prototype the final time. My goal mind you isn’t to get too lumpy… but there is a level somewhere of a more organic texture (“organic texture” like my thighs and love handles are body textured!), that imparts a horse who sure loves to get folks to give him all the apples!

His mane was just a blast to work on in clay with smoothing being soooooo much easier for me too. I’ve really found that the things I spent eons agonizing over in apoxie sculpt (not all sculptors get stuck in the same areas), just come easily to me in clay. So these latest works have reminded me of perhaps how it feels to jog with weights on your legs and in your hands & then do something without the handicapping. Well, that’s essentially what it is.

ANYHOW, enjoy the albums and some of these photos I’ve taken of some fun characters I’ve had the delight to meet!

Happiness is smooth revisions!.:)

2011-08-12T11:54:00.000-07:00

This fella is drying in my kitchen – the first layer of primer is to check that my chop in half (previous post) worked out, And to check that I didn’t have so many pin holes (I do actually… sadly but they are easy enough to address). My red apoxie sculpt for patching those up is a lot more easy to work with than the white (white is like toothpaste – my red is like silly putty). So while I tried to get “nearly done” I didn’t sweat it.

It’s drying in the kitchen because storms are sprouting up! It just go dark & the wind is howling! Eek! Good time to get offline…

This week has been a whirlwind. A lot of busy work on the computer and in the studio: wrapping up this pony sculpture and a medallion.. AND actually starting another medallion even! I don’t want to discuss the medallions yet – it’s too soon. I definitely won’t be offering another until 2012’s “open edition” though soooooo it’s almost safe to say that these are likely to be nothing that is coming soon – even if I do release them myself.

So with that… back to work!. Hopefully I’ll be sharing a sales page for “Kipling” very soon. I may do 1 month rather than 4 weeks this time. My group will definitely get first dibs on all that info. :) Ack… I need to double check what the casting queue is like at MVS… see? Never enough time! :)

We’re going to have a COOL weekend! It might get below 90 even to 89 degrees. I will be SO excited. Fall feel man! :D (you have to joke when it’s this crazy hot all the time… it’s kinda scary to be honest.) Hope everyone is having a good end to the summer out there though!

Opps! There’s the thunder – gotta shut down! :D

IceRyder.net! :)

2011-08-09T08:37:00.000-07:00

The last post's comments/questions suddenly reminded me of a site (yes iceryder.net lol!).

Now I know how much folks like to learn from blog posts! Aaaaaaaaaand I'm just terrible about that because I'm simply not the best teacher, I cannot seem to easily explain what I'm doing - even if it's making scrambled eggs? (I'll say to just swish it around some? Oh right! Break the egg first - oops!!!) There was one painting technique that was easy enough for me to explain (fleabites - see RESS TBIII article). But painting a color, how to move the brush to achieve a certain effect? No way.. Sculpting an eye even? Not so easy for me to say beyond the most basic aspects (which is why I'd teach Sculpting 101 in a 2hr format... well maybe even a more advanced workshop, but not an auditorium sized class probably without a MASSIVE amount of planning.. years of planning I think to figure out ways to explain things... lol!). ;) I'm not trying to hide any great secrets either (contrary to popular belief I'm happy to share - I just don't have good skills at explaining). I'm a lefty & I'm sure that has a lot to do with it. Things are not a, b, c steps in my head. They are "make it smile, make it frown".... When I step back and focus on critiquing myself THEN I can get very left-brained (right handed) and think about where in relation to this or that something should go. Maybe that's right brained? Can't remember but THEN at least I can verbalize somewhat things I "see". Buuuuut being able to critique does not often translate into being a good teacher - giving positives is easy too - yes! But saying "start here & do this ...or that" is ... wow ...hard for me! I couldnt' tell you how to go about getting up from your chair and taking a step easily either in words. It's a skill and I envy it! :D

Anyhow, here's a site I haven't visited since I sculpted my kiger mustang "Bosco" back in 2005. It's going strong - I see many new revisions of articles up there on my favorite subject, biomechanics (this was something I actually pursued for a while in college as a subject to major in postgrad.. I was a bio major & didn't happen mind you. ) ANYHOW, I've been an avid follower in advances in biomechanics -> there's been HUGE leaps and bounds in this field wtih all the new imaging and graphic rendering abilities we now have .. Soooo there's this page I invite you to start at; http://iceryder.net/biomechanics/index.html But the whole site is full of fun & informative material I'll bet (internet slow can't get through it easily)...

I lost a lot of good bookmarked sites years back with the loss of one computer. Fortunately I've got tons of printed out stuff here. Again though, when folks want direction I don't even always know where a chart was printed out from! Like I said... not a good teacher. The irony is there are some GREAT teachers in my family. Oh well & sorry again to those I've lost who were looking for better answers. Sorry guys! :(

Measure twice cut once…

2011-08-08T16:01:00.000-07:00

I know like I know like I know that this **SHOULD** be my motto but often (unfortunately) it’s not when a wild hare gets me..! SO, when I redid this pony to sculpt him in clay I measured very quickly and the first version (in brown Apoxie Sculpt) was already suffering from too short of a back length... and I just had to cross my eyes while I worked on the rest of him knowing that when he was cast I'd have access to that area to fix it finally …

Today I cast him & was FINALLY able to do something about that!

There are two castings there because the first was really icky, even had some uncured resin spots because I mixed very very badly. I'm pleased to say though that the 2nd casting had almost no bubbles AND almost no seams despite that I cut out 2 sections, making a 3 part mold (and those are tricky enough to lock up tight when doing production molds... nevermind a hand cut one! (And my hand cutting is rough - I've had a lot of anatomy classes where this whole scalpel technique for clearing off fascia is an artform.. you would think, since I master that over the years, that I would be more careful... ! Really it's actually upsetting to my engineer fiance for him to watch me work & eyeball & wing this stuff. You can train precision all you like but.. it's art in the end! Sooooo yeah, I'm REALLY tickled that it worked like magic!). :D

I wanted to do a diagram showing how tricky it is to lengthen from the point of origin of an armature but well.. I just can’t sit still here at the computer long enough.. ;) Suffice it to say? It just wasn't worth the time/ruination of the extremeties to tackle it before casting the prototype.

The body lengthening issue is one I repeatedly have, I know & use many proportion charts and tables in addition to real measurement conversions but somehow so many of my horses have literally grown larger than their starting size. You can look back on this blog & see that just from past works being chopped in half. It's a common issue in horse sculpture in general, interestingly (well ok, maybe only to me but I really do find it interesting that we all tend to exaggerate similar features/points of reference). :)

Off I go! Real pics soon - some spots to smooth & areas to detail out more precisely & WOOT!!! (I am bouncing off hte walls SOOO excited about this guy!).

Just waiting for my molding supplies order...

2011-08-01T06:42:00.000-07:00

This guy is getting his last spit and polish details before I mold him up. After that it's just a matter of a week or so before I release him. The Mango sculpture actually only took a week to clean up and there I had much more to do - sculpting whole other halves to the legs! If you look back the legs were sort of submerged into the surface I was sculpting on & it seemed easier to cast it and recreate the rest of them rather than try to life him off the surface - piano wire like a pot might be lifted ... and then do it in clay. Here with Kipling I've only got some spots to touch up where the armature wire is too close to the surface - hey! - it's HARD the smaller they get! :D

Meanwhile, I really hate to show you clay in progress because it looks lumpier than it is due to darkened spots -> color variations. But I'm getting impatient waiting for my order over here so I'm going to share anyhow.

And here's where I left off on the Friesian foal (see last post - and my novel in the comments! - for full details).

I really need to catch up on bookeeping. I've hit some confusion and that makes me want to run away and hide in something I *can* do easily. Ugh though. Time to face the music & figure this out tho. This is why the molding rubber is delayed -> I'm meant to be doing something else here, clearly! ;)

When I grow up...

2011-07-29T10:11:00.000-07:00

I'm only an hour old here but when I grow up I'm going to become a life sized Friesian foal! .. stay tuned to watch some welding action! (Ok, so seriously though, that's all I'm sharing for now.. this project is going to obviously take a little longer) :)

Adding on b/c I just checked my mail and see that the NSS member gallery from yesterday's post is now up - these are the images I ran with; http://nationalsculpture.org/nssN/index.cfm/fa/cMemb.associates

Joined the National Sculpture Society yesterday

2011-07-28T06:53:00.000-07:00

Images above are exceptionally large if you click on them!

There are an infinite # of guilds and associations an artist can join and the annual due fees can significantly add up. Granted the dues don’t quite compare to annual dues for belonging to a horse association per say, however an artist who is even remotely diverse in their media or subject matter will find they could easily spend thousands on annual fees.

That said, I’m very excited to have found the National Sculpture Society. Currently I belong to; ARTS North Carolina, International Equine Artists Group and formerly I belonged to the Realistic Equine Sculpture Society (RESS) briefly before they closed shop. I feel like I’m forgetting something big here! Anyhow, there are of course many professional bulletin boards and groups I’ve joined too. Maybe that’s it – maybe all my lurking on these sculpting & art forums(I don’t have time to gab believe it or not!) – after years of being really active on some horse boards I’ve learned it was just time I didn’t have anymore when I was boarding horses.

Anyhow, these have basically “job” and “contest” listings very often. And after a while you start to see the same “Call to Artist” postings on most of these forums. One of the things that prompted me to join the National Sculpture Society was that their bulletin was one of the most comprehensive in its call to artist listings – and also the most advanced. Sure I won’t get some animal entry listings there – this is why as a horse sculptor I’m so glad there are horse artist societies! I’m sad to report that often when I get my ARTS North Carolina newsletter the competitions and bid deadlines are literally the same day as or expired. I haven’t found anywhere on their website/members info that shows me these listings earlier… it takes a while to pour over and research competitions and you could enter willy nilly all over as well but those costs add up quite fast too. Nevermind that often you have to physically mail out material too so you need to prepare it - not just filling out a form. So a day is usually just not enough time!

Speaking of costs, with my NSS membership fee aside from their hefty bulletin I also will get a magazine that I like quite a bit and am excited about getting regularly! I like these things but I stopped subscribing to magazines regularly years ago and I’m still swamped in back issues (mostly horse ones and mostly used for reference material of course!).

There are others that I’m considering joining. I have to confess I am a skeptic. I remember with horse registries how for a while (maybe still) there were so many springing up overnight that would call your horse all kinds of elite new terms, and provide grading and more. And yet they really didn’t offer the same reputability as the big associations in any way and many are gone now – not even lasting a decade. Some require teaching or taking workshops or competing in some way that isn’t quite a fit too. Basically I’m not ready for those I think. We’ll see. Just some random thoughts on the matter here! :)

Anyhow, so for some competitions I was compiling better photos of my works for some competitions and this gallery now, and here are my final choices. I think I know which ones I’ll be putting on my NSS associate member gallery (I get 3). It was hard to leave out some of my other works. But exhausting just picking out the images and photographing retakes of a couple. Some, like the Johann on that green marble base are gone to private collections now and I've had to make my own display copies again. All of these are available to order in bronze at this time although I'm going to do riders for the top two ("Deputed Duke" and "Hazel"). It will significantly increase the bronze cost (double it) and add quite a bit more time to the process. I hope to get a chance to sculpt those this winter and I don't have a date set for casting them. If a buyer came along interested in them in bronze that would speed me up a bit I suppose - lol! :) Meanwhile, I'm happy to plug along with my display copies. Mango is likely to be the first to be cast in bronze due to his smaller size and thus ease in shipping to the juried shows.

Wow, I could really go on but I must get going here!!! Anyhow, hope all are staying cool out there!! :)

YAY! I cast something else! :D

2011-07-24T09:58:00.001-07:00

It's a major triumph for me over the elements to cast something - the humidity being what it is here.

Many folks who were in Lexington last week may remember this... gal??? ;) (fellow? I will not say!!!) :D

Anyhow, it's a clay medallion I got a chance this week to touch up. I need to (fix a few tiny bubbles I spotted in these pics) add some facial veins and check to see if any areas need smoothing up tonight when I can work with a lamp and see details best.

My favorite story from last week's viewing of him was this little kid who was mischievously trailing mom and really wasn't having the best time. Yes, I put the clay medallion within reach of kids (it's a good "letting go" to realize you can do it all over again should something get ruined - imo it frees your artistic soul up tremendously to realize you should just do it and not invest too much emotion into the consequences!). Sooooo this little boy was watching mom and then when she looked the other way he suddenly poked it and exclaims "OH! It's made of clay!"... hahaha - I was so chuckling to myself picturing a big finger dent in this one's eyeball or something. I waited for mom to blanch and drag him out of there. I didn't want to embarrass her - it's a temptation and truly, it was a quicky fix (t'was a nostril smush,not an eye). Truly the act of transporting is where the damage risk is most anyhow.OR (and this has happened - because I'm a klutz)... me simply dropping the finished clay and having it land face down. SMUSH!

(as you can see the nostril is just fine now - but you can enlarge to see bits of clay and hair trapped in the resin - this is another of the many reasons why I don't do final production molding typically...!)

Anyhow, but here is my molding and it's just curing up outside before I bring it in and wrap it up tonight.

Can you feel the heat??? 94°F (34°C) Humidity: 52% Heat Index: 104°F and it's only going up out there... mind you yesterday the humidity was 70+++ percent at it's very lowest so today is parched by comparison!... ;) I really should've photographed the clear resin kicking this time - it really looks so neat. If I do another (maybe very soon if I don't like this casting!), I'll try to remember that..

Sooooo I'm not certain of my plans for this medallion for now but I had to share the happy result (just in case any particular mom out there was worried too - hahaha!). Gotta be brave to do this. Someone said to me a while back (in regard to sales things) "I don't know how you artists do it, you must have nerves of steel". I never thought much about it about producing the art, or being crushed if anyone didn't like it (we all have our likes and dislikes). .. sales wise though, gads, I could use steel there (or someone else to do it - lol!). But gambling with invested time like this? Meh - no biggie! (poke on little guy - it's all just an idea subject to change anyhow!!!) ;)
________________________________
Addendum!!! Adding on an hour later:
So I decided to use my less preferred resin - the slower cure one - and take advantage of the desert-like conditions here (ha!) and do one more since the rain is holding off and humidity keeps dropping. You can see the bubbles in this series - pin hole (very frustrating) bubbles... this is why I've learned the fast cure is better. You try to give it as little time as possible to collect water molecules after it leaves the container. ANYhow... sooooo for those who wonder how it works, here is resin kicking over. I really think it looks SO cool! (I wore a painter's respirator mask - not a dusk mask but one of those ones with the big screw on filter cartridges.. wore it the whole time I poured & photographed this - I really would like to avoid getting asthma soooo just fyi!).

k

and then I went inside because my face was sweating off.. with Smooth On 305 that whole curing sequence here took like 10min to take place and it still was taking a while. If you click on some of those you can see the bubbles taking over too. This didn't happen with the first one (which was Smooth On 300 - fast cure and that takes only 2-3minutes but was just too tricky for me to photograph).

I'll pick the best of these two though probably - both seem to be good enough to make into a master & wrap up. :) YAY I'm so tickled that mother nature went easy on me today! :D

Something I haven't shared in a while...

2011-07-23T09:59:00.001-07:00

This small (~4" x 4" tall so far) bust will hopefully become a trophy or standalone bust (I'm working on the options to have it be either), quite soon. I'm just balancing up the other side of his face. In order to do so I take photos of one side and reverse them... so why not share today quickly.

I didn't bring him to Lexington to share because, well, there was only so much I was going to risk bringing & having get smushed in this clay state! ;) (I had brought a medallion and a Criollo sculpture that each only had a day or two invested into them... and they sustained a little damage of course. I use soft clay so it's unavoidable nearly if you travel with them).

Little larger than life here! Click to really enlarge! :)

Next (after the off side gets these facial details,) I've got some neat (equally greco-roman style) ideas for the base - perhaps I can get to them this weekend. It's exceptionally humid here and I have some other works molded and ready for resin casting but the weather is .. not cooperating to say the least. (85% humidity when I woke up - it's almost down to 60% now but moisture is not your friend in resin casting). :/ Anyhow, hope everyone is staying cool!!! :)
_____________________________
& Later.. still waiting on something soooooo I'll share my mock up sketch here as well;

I'm thinking little horse shoe wreaths & chariot images around the first or second base. I'm getting help from my most skilled fellow here on both parts of the base (the upper disk[s] that I'll sculpt more on and then drilling the marble or granite bottom sections.). The dotted box around him is showing where I'll be doing my first rubber mold (and then I'd like to do some veins since this is like 1:8 scale and I really think the lots of little capillary neck veins will look appropriate ... but I'm not willing to mess up what I've done in the clay just to find out!) ;)

Also, I remembered when I last shared him here; http://mksculpt.blogspot.com/2010/10/boogity-boo-d.html Halloween of last year! Easy enough to remember! ;)

Some real pictures quickly...

2011-07-21T17:58:00.001-07:00

Something a customer said to me today reminded me to go get (& share!) these photos.... speaking of big foals! Soooo here is "Little Man" Mango [Jam] as he was not such a little man anymore... at 5 months nearly the same height as mom,

And then a few weeks later he was weaned (yes a little early, for his mom's health actually),

And while I'm sharing - Mango with his first girlfriend, "Baby Sondae" (yup! the same one I sculpted bucking almost a decade ago there). He's telling her how much he loves her. We didn't keep them together long but he was already a gelding by then (for quite some time actually - just to be clear!). He still worshiped the ground she walked on. His very own Ginger (from Black Beauty - not South Park). ;)

Editing to add this in.. If I recall correctly she was like a whole year older - or at least 6 months or something... anyhow, he ultimately grew to only 16.2hh (or 17.3+hh when pumped up).. No but seriously, he was a bigun at first!

Just for fun I had to share those. You can see though how that lanky TB build really comes into play pretty quick with those babies though, huh. :)

Pausing to go "awwww"! :)

2011-07-20T13:12:00.000-07:00

(click to see bigger)
I'm juggling a lot of email replying right now (in case you're waiting on one - sorry!) ... aand then next gearing up for some long overdue projects I'd put off until after the madness in Lexington.. and now I must face the music & hop to it! :)

Still though .. I just had to share this MUG!

Anja Schmidt of Germany sent me a photo of her Little Man Mango all painted up (painted by her). I'm a huge fan of baby bay too so just it made me go awwww (and I just had to post while I have a coffee break here - yawn!- Man! BF takes so much out of you!!!).. :D

The next batch of Little Man Mango's have been mailed (up to #19) but I've got some more figuring before my list is up to date (amongst those emails to-do are confirmations of paying off - coming soon guys - promise!!).

Anyhow, tx Anja!

Edit add on:
I would be SO remiss if I didn't mention somewhere again how super clean/easy to prep these castings have been! Barry Moore of Bearcast LLC is just doing an amazing job. I still am not certain (see previous post here on the blog) of where all the seams are to be honest. Aaaaaaaand yes, I painted that one so that's saying something. They just disappear in many spots. Impressive! :)

One big little inspiration today...! :)

2011-07-18T08:33:00.001-07:00

Today's inspiration: Patrick!! :)

I've just returned from nearly a week of horsie immersion at Breyerfest which is held at the Kentucky Horse Park every July. This actually isn't what inspires me so much as seeing vast amounts of artwork at the park. And so many accomplishments of all types .. well just period! :D There's something just so wonderfully rejuvenating about seeing great things done, be it a trick rider or a canvas that's amazingly detailed!

More reports over time I guess. It was so great to see so many folks but I regret there being so little time to visit long enough! :( At least next year will be a few more days with NAN. This year I also tried to get some sleep... since last year it became unfun being so overtired. It's cruel when that energy of youth fades & we require things like square meals and sleep. Hrmph...

Back to this topic though! So on my facebook page I try to share whenever I find something that grabs me & inspires me with a little "today's inspiration" link usually... Today I'm going to share a real big (little) ;) inspiration to me that's lighting a fire under my fanny...!

Patrick the miniature horse (and his wonderful owners) were SO extremely helpful to me at the Kentucky Horse Park, they get a whole blog post of inspiration due to their humoring me (us really, Maggie Bennett was with me snapping away too!). Sarah had Patrick hold the pose of my mini pony sculpture "Kipling" so that I could get a bunch of shots of his muzzle and eyes (so nice and tidy too!) from all angles. Thus far to date the mini photos I have cover the eyes up with hair so this is a real gem for me. AND I just need to leave the bags and boxes here packed for a half a day while I go off and sculpt this for a little bit.... ;) My favorite kind of inspiration...

Thank you Patrick and Sarah (and Jessica too!!) Please visit/friend them on FB by clicking here

Clearly I'm not meant to be a photographer and that's JUST fine. The details show up here, at least on my screen (no no worries - proportionally I know this photo isn't so helpful!) ;)... somehow I'd set my camera settings wrong but the monochromatic views as a result are very intensely contrasty - perfect for sculpting! Just gotta go do it... On that note, enough typing too! :D

Just About Horses write up :)

2011-07-07T10:23:00.000-07:00

I was extremely flattered when Michele asked me to do this interview! I've been meaning to post it as I know at least one of the owners of some of these horses probably doesn't get this magazine. Off to share this with them now! :)
(and now we know why I spent all that time a few months back trying to take a photograph of myself... how funny that the pony and foal are vastly different looking now of course but I wanted something newer there to share!)

I believe that should enlarge enough for you to read it if you click on it.

And I giggle to see my name next to Van Gogh!

So not much else I'm willing to share at the moment but pretty exciting I thought!
PS - I'm really looking forward to seeing a lot of you next week!

A new face and a new base!

2011-06-21T13:15:00.000-07:00

(Above bas relief) A work that is only a few hours old, and I'm not settled on the pose/angle as this distorts too weirdly for me I think. I'm also not sure if this fellow wants to be a Friesian or an Andalusian... I'm going for this demure / bemused expression, not so much a breed here. :) I thus far think of it at "3hr old 'fingernail sculpt'"

(Above) Little Man Mango artist's proof copy on a custom ordered base of pine green granite and (I hope I'm remembering this right?) walnut? Anyhow, I discuss this below. The finish isn't finished either although it's a lot more pale than the saturated yellow let it be. Below I was just playing in photoshop - inspired by some photography I've seen lately I added countershading. Really my photos are horrid though and simply need redoing!

OK! Soooo it’s been a few weeks here and I’ve done so much lately that sometimes I forget to share things that might be of interest… like black Apoxie Sculpt – great for prepping black resins, but the bronze is not bronze colored but rather brown… (I got a small sample but there is no metallic tone to this at all). So I guess that’s my consumer report there.

Since my last post I’ve been back to New England for a week, visiting and getting a lot of quality time in with some folks who mean a lot to me. I only wish I’d decide to spend a few days longer to spend more time with some truly wonderful people .. reason to do it again. I also got to see tornado damage up there and be around for yet another crazy storm system they had (I was there this past winter and got to witness record snow accumulation too). So my driving around 4 states while I was up was impeded a bit by detours in some spots, lines & power down in spots for days. That’s not so common for the area, crazy crazy weather.

I did get to see some hobby friends and I think my previous contest post was decided on a technicality (a safety reason). Sooooo I’m only waiting to get a particular object and then I’ll inform the “winner” if I like the result there. That’s the delay on that…!

We’re fully into summer here on this first day of it. Speaking of weather, it’s to hit 100 here today. I just got a new (16 year old but new to me) ;) car… it needs the AC repaired but blissfully it chose to work today on the way home from walking the dog this morning (it wasn’t really into the 90s by then but it was stuffy enough out there). I had to hang up my sweat soggy clothes (because they were too damp to put in a hamper – mildew & just plain eww!)… I haven’t had to do that since I cared for horses a little over a year ago now & it’s a really awesome feeling to be honest.

Btw, also since the last post I’ve created an online queue and have emailed everyone who has reserved a copy so that they are aware of the queue and can more easily gauge timeframes. I can also happily say that while I am unsure how he did it, the molds for this foal left hardly any seams whatsoever! It was a breeze to prep mine so however that crazy mold worked, it sure worked! :D

Ok, so the base pictures with the baby here were taken to show me something I’ve been going around and around about – does he need to (a) get lighter in color… (the photos actually are terrible and the colors not quite right all over)… and (b) should I sculpt nice soft footing around him..

I’m not sold on this base for Little Man Mango as an “official” look for him. Nor this patina color.

I will say that shopping for bases is fun (albeit expensive when you’re not buying cultured marble in standard sizes from trophy supply places). So anyhow, if I do do a small bronze edition (because I might be able to afford to do this one sooner or later)… well this may not be the base I chose after all… like I might do better with a lighter color… I may just hit up the discount supply place for ¼ the cost though if I experiment with another. Ideally I’m looking to enter these in competitions (and they have to be for sale in many juried shows). It’s a whole new world to me. :)

AND the new horse head image is something I did last night – this time I didn’t even really get out my tools so please don’t laugh. That’s what I call “fingernail sculpting” right there.

And this is all the news that really isn’t. Hope folks are staying cool!

Throwing it out there Thursday... :)

2011-06-02T08:39:00.000-07:00

Just throwing this out for folks to see, because it's cute as anything! One of several pics I got of the mold in progress. The first of 2 molds so far is done & casting should start soon, I'm so excited!!! :)

No final decisions yet on the other post here either... just meditating on how I could pull off some! :D

Dilapidated Ductile Duke Dilemma! A challenge! :)

2011-05-28T10:08:00.000-07:00

This post is more suitable for Halloween.. welcome to my house of horrors! Mwoohoowowowowaaa! Back when I had a day job (corporate f/t), 2006, I had invested in trying out this OTHER shrinky process of shrinking rubber (http://www.pinkhouse.com/ ). I was pretty jazzed about the possibilities! It was an expensive (pardon the pun coming up!) flop… ;)

I had the mold sent to Pink House’s master mold maker/life caster Mark there. He did a trial with it and just couldn’t get the rubber to work in a mold designed for rotocasting. It really needed to be slathered in. I decided to try it anyhow because the main concern was even shrinkage. And as you might be able to see – the variance in shrinkage % between the abdomen verses the extremities is quite noticeable. Enough that trying to make a new mold more friendly with this media was pointless. AND of course most know the end of the story anyhow in that the cost of laser scanning decreased a few hundred dollars so I jumped on that instead for dinky duke.

The challenge here is that I’ve had Ductile Duke flopping around my studio for years now. I’ve been trying to think of a fun thing to do with him for my vending area at Breyerfest. Sort of giving him a bit of mascot role.

To make matters worse he is STICKY! And sorta heavy (so, for example making him into a hat accessory… not so appealing). Things stick badly to him, for example the white residue there is plaster (and he was greased up!) for when I tried to make a cheap/simple mold of him… he’s been subjected to a few experiments and really needs to be spruced up! He’s too fun to toss! :D

Help? Anyone??? :D

It dawned on me today to listen to ideas & make a contest out of it – I’ll give a medallion (any of mine, past or present I can spare one!), to the person who gives me a feasible thing to do with this .. rather gross looking fellow! :D

Now THIS is a flexible dressage horse eh?! ;)

Well,I'm all ears. :D artbymorgen@yahoo.com; morgen@one-horse.net You can submit to comments below too. Note that I moderate them however (so they won't appear right away - sorry!).

An example of UV damage to 1mo old resin

2011-05-27T15:09:00.000-07:00

First – please…!

So a recent discussion on yellow resin made me think of this & I checked back on it and was shocked to see how extremely this spilt resin had yellowed in only 1 months’ time being out in the UV exposure full time.. and in my opinion it has gotten quite brittle already too.

This spill happened on Friday, April 29, 2011. The resin overflowed off to the side of the newspaper put down to prevent this exact aesthetic disaster (we say “this is why we don’t have nice things” around here a lot – mostly after I do brilliant sloppy things like this!). ANYHOW -> Unreal how yellow it is already. I’m hoping it will become brittle enough soon to chip off after a rain storm like today. Resin over porous wood is the strongest bond known to man… lol! (No but short of cutting into the wood it’s not coming out just yet). Right now it gets full sunlight for over half the day.

Compare it too to the other widget castings made that same day with the same resin pour. Those little buggers are white as snow kept inside.

And off to the right is the base of a resin that’s 7 years old and has been out in the open inside a room. Indirect sunlight of varied degrees but primarily off to the darker sides of rooms/shelves. That’s the most yellowed artist resin casting I own (now). AND I’ve had older ones and they weren’t as brittle too so again, follow the wisdom of Douglas Adams here and DON’T PANIC!

I encourage you to zoom in and see my scratching, there’s also a crack there that recently formed, I presume because the wood has bounce when we step on the step & the resin doesn’t. It’s a superficial crack but I was able to flake off around it with my fingernail. So you tell me, that says more brittle in my mind – I certainly can’t scratch off any resin like that on the little widgets that were inside. Bear in mind of course this is STRONG withering sunlight BUT it’s also been just less than a month. Well, ok, we've also had a couple of days that reached over 95degrees here & that porch gets HOT.. Still, my bet is on the big ball of blazing gases in the sky being powerful enough to be the #1 suspect in degrading that unprotected material.

Most sources say that the resin is every bit as strong despite the yellowing – I’m not willing to risk my resins yellow by storing the unpainted ones in sunny areas. HOWEVER, I would NOT personally reject buying/painting a resin myself just because it’s yellowed – I need to be SO CLEAR on that. Please do NOT mistake me there. I’d just clean it well first, quite abrasively (heavy on the ajax scrubbing) and would primer it asap. But my post here is to help spread the word to please care for your resins, primer them and keep them in places where they hopefully won't get yellowed or, more commonly an issue, heat up badly & warp over time. They're stronger than many plastics by far, and less biodegradable too. But few art materials are perfect. Resin's kryptonite is the sun. :)

Art out of sunlight is a great rule of thumb actually. Many kinds are UV and temperature/humidity resistant too. But well to make a broad sweeping generalization; That’s just ..well the nature of thoughtful art ownership mostly! :) There’s also the added step that hobby artist resin owners can take of getting their resins prepped and primered. The primer coating then helps to prevent UV damage. Painting of course is the icing on the cake! ;)

Well I guess my PSA on how to properly care for and love your resins is over and out here. :) If I ever manage to save these back steps from this disgrace by flaking that off (it's REALLY on there still mind you!), I'll be sure to share that! ;)

From chaos a little order...

2011-05-25T20:31:00.000-07:00

I've blocked out the names for privacy. But the basic gist of it is
_\______________________________/__
_O_____________________________O
Buyer Name - Total $Price (varies for US vs international & some folks use discounts won or earned)

Payment history date #1 / $payment
Payment history date #2 / $payment
Payment history date #3/ $payment

Balance owed..
__________________________________

So that's my new (really pretty unremarkable - lol!) quick new thing I’ve come up with to simplify MY life anyhow It might help other folks I know with items “on layaway” (under time payments – someone just said the layaway thing to me recently and I had to giggle but it’s true!). It TOTALLY is NOT the only place I keep track of things of course but I"m so visual that I like to catalog at a glance.

So for my painted horses under payments I like to have a postit or sheet somewhere near the horse so I know at a glance when things were paid for, what remains on the balance OR -> (very often) if the horse is waiting to ship out for some other reason (people are moving, waiting to ship with a friend .. you name it!). So since there’s always a story behind horses, when you start getting a good # of them going you look around & go “I know these guys are all spoken for but what's the deal with him or her?”.

I like to group by certain statuses too. Payments coming in small frequent bunches make me want to move a horse to be easily at hand.

I note it all down on spreadsheets too but printing out is wasteful of paper (especially if you have frequent updates) and thus I came to this notion! REUSABLE little hangers. This way stickits don’t fall off (because in the unpainted horse area things are packed together tighter clearly!). Something that I can write on with pencil and erase, even reuse on future horses. And my color coded flags still apply too.

I really like the system and just had to share in case it helps someone else down the road. It’s a challenge when there are horses on payments and back ordered. But a tag doesn’t have to hang on a horse either I guess. At any rate – probably the biggest benefit is to reassure me that the shelf lined with horses IS indeed not all waiting to sell, whew! AND it also lets me know when my reality doesn’t match my spreadsheet (most often this happens when a horse is sent out as a donation or mailed the day it’s paid for in a big ole hurry/rush to the PO and no time was even taken to log it down on the spreadsheet).

Striving to ward off the entropy any way I can! :)

Functional art for sale! :)

2011-05-24T15:18:00.000-07:00

I do so love to make functional art. One of my favorite things to do was make the famous "horse butt" (looped tail for a handle) coffee mug in pottery classes & situations when I had to come up with an idea for making earthenware. Not original but fun as heck to use too! :D

Anyhow, so today I released my latest work Gleep. You've seen him here last year, around this time actually (!) mid-May, I started him (somewhere inside the original is a jelly jar lid!) . He's actually been completed for a while but it took some coaxing by Lauren and Jenn to cast him. Relief works can look so odd without color, I'm exceptionally full of the warm fuzzies that these ladies brought them to life so to speak & are doing a couple more!

In the meantime, the page is here; http://www.artbymorgen.com/gleep.htm

Here's the real Gleep putting his beggar face on;

So yeah, the real guy is still cuter but he's sure fun to paint! :D

Articulations from the inarticulate

2011-05-20T14:22:00.000-07:00

Something else I’ve been making whilst on the phone. I can’t type, read and because of my phone reception (lack thereof!) I can’t go far (very few places in my home get reception well enough to tak for long periods of time on the phone)..sometimes soooooooo a lot of projects here are borne out of grabbing what’s at hand. This is for a book I've been picking at for 3-4 years I guess now.. (lots of illustrations examples needed so don't look for it anytime soon either!!). :)

So in this case this is a photo I took from Stoneybrook Steeplechase that I’m converting to show skeletal articulation points. Kinda a fun effect to share. I have little else new to share here except a lot of painting projects I’d rather wait and photograph properly. But I grabbed this again for a bit today & thought to share it here… for lack of having anything else to speak of! ;)

Next week I hope to be ready to show something actually for sale again though! ;)

PS - don't look too closely at that overlay of the skeleton! I've got to redraw (I do the drawing the old fashioned way with a pencil), and there's even two tail bones in there where I was fiddling around! (nevermind missing bits of bone). Still, the gist of "find the point of shoulder & stifle" come through... enough for a teaching tool if needed (this summer - until I have the time to draw the rest properly) so yay!

I heavily watermarked since it's an inprogress thing... don't take this one! lol! It's not 100% correct! ;)

Preparing for a fun all ages workshop this summer!

2011-05-16T13:24:00.000-07:00

It turns out that everything fell into place for me to go to Lexington KY this summer again to attend “Breyerfest”, a 3 day extravaganza of horses and all things horsie, for all ages. I’m going to be teaching a workshop there and will have a booth Thurs, Fri, and Sat nights at the Artisan Gallery held in the hotel formerly know as HIN.

So for the workshop I’m tasked with teaching malleable young minds to sculpt horses in a mere 2 hours. The kit is actually pretty comprehensive and I’ve seen some impressive results from it. There are of course really tricky aspects to sculpting, things that artists often take for granted until they try horses… and of course I’ll never be able to cover everything.

Thus the aim will be to find a way to inspire and teach kids what tools work for learning.

As to being inspiring, I figured it was only fair if I tried out the kit myself first. Believe it or not I’ve never sculpted with Sculpey (nor Gapaxio nor some others – Apoxie Sculpt gal that I was!). Anyhow, so this was my one off interpretation of the horse in the book with a head tuck and very very minor leg deviation... and of course a whole different build. Because the point being "all horses have the same build no matter how big or small"... and proportions not so different after all (although a little - even armatures rarely need to be modified). Weighty topics eh? lol! (I'll have to try to be a bit more fun that than I'm sure). ;)

Anyhow, sooo… if you look closely at the 2^nd picture here you can see the cooked flesh coloring of his hocks. I have lots of friends who use Sculpey and I’ve seen these macabre overcooked bits hanging around in their studios too… so at least the playing field is leveled somewhat in that I can tell the kids what not to do (good god whatever you do – believe people when they say NO to the toaster oven concept… I have a friend who can pull it off but only because she’s doing tiny heads in there… fire danger yikes!). My favorite is how it bubbles when overcooked. I’ve also undercooked it so far. Good times!

Meanwhile, I did try to create a horse that matched the pose of the book.. which a fairly simple modification to make it more Fairytale Friendly! :D

To me it strongly resembles two well known artist resins, my fiancé disagrees but well, I dunno. Cantering in static, stand alone positioning only leaves a few options for poses. The armature is a bit thick so I went with the heavier horse. I can’t decide if he’s more Shire or Friesian. ANYHOW, bottom line is I may leave the off side undone so that can be see “in progress” too for the attendees. Obviously if it took me a day and a half to make that I can’t possibly expect anything much in the course of a few hot and sweaty hours! ;)

I’d love to hear any suggestions from past, present and future Breyerfest workshop or other sculpting workshop attendees. I’d really like to make the most of 2hrs and supporting materials, while not being overwhelming.. and not being toooooo dry or too flakey. ;) I have so many ideas for them, yay! Love having fresh young minds to convert – opps! – I mean mold! ;)

********10 minutes later adding this in... *********

OPPS! Ps to all this... as I was looking at the uploaded photos I realized the 2nd armature wasn't bent yet fully.. (back hocks not "added" yet, had to bend those in to match the pic in the booklet)... truthfully I literally just popped him out of the box and put him down next to his more mature brother. ;) Bent his head under, moved his legs just a tad and mostly to make him stand and snapped the pic.

"Little Man Mango" wrapping up...

2011-05-06T11:53:00.000-07:00

Added Mon May 16th! Opps! I thought I updated this post a whole week ago. Maybe it didn't submit properly. Anyhow, well Little Man Mango reservations now up being taken, details on my website. He's only available until June 7th (3 more weeks): http://www.artbymorgen.com/lmmango.htm

A favorite angle.. I feel sleepy like this myself! In the enlargement you can probably see his sleepy eye lids - actually very easy to find references of all kinds too. Lots of tired babies out there!!

One week later and I’m ready to start down the homestretch with this Thoroughbred colt! Ok, sorry, Derby fever over here!

I’ve spent the majority of the past week adding the rest of the feet and legs to this colt. If you compare with my last post you’ll see that the bottoms were shorn off. Since I initially started this sculpture last month in fun I didn’t want to get the piano wire out and try to pull him up, put in more underneath & create the bottoms of the legs. It wasn’t that hard to be honest to do it post-casting… just a lot of detailing/smoothing out.

I think this is is one of my favorite shots for all the fun details I got to pack in because he's all scrunched up.. any second though he's going to tip over and stretch out again however! ;) Ah but no seriously, you can see a lot of the detail in the enlarged pic. I'm still not happy with these shots. Lighting either washes out detail or hides so much in a work like this where there are nooks and crannies like this. Back into the photo studio!

Now he’s gotten every little divot and detail addressed. I confess I give these production master sculptures a wee bit more of a once over when the primer is fully dry. This prevents things like ‘dusty’ or gritty details in areas like the nostrils. So what the casters generally get in a master isn’t as photogenic, the primer is buffed here and there and not uniform in color (but smoother than sprayed on primer is).

At any rate, so I have that to do this weekend – but first I need to get the final ‘product shots’. I haven’t picked a day to release him but it will probably be next week. I’ll be informing my yahoogroup first. They will certainly be the first to see the final albums! ;) But here are a few shots for my loyal blog readers in the meantime!!! :) More next week..

Added in Friday evening...One last pic for today;

Ok, I just gotta share the follies! ;)

2011-04-29T13:43:00.000-07:00

Ok! So there are now two little guys falling asleep here in the sun on my back porch!! :D

Watch em tip over and sprawl out flat in a second.. ;) (actually I probably will want to move them to the shade now but I really REALLY really want the resin to be fully cured. I was out there nearly in a Hazmat suit mixing the chemicals.

The bottom one is supposed to have a hole just under his chest/forelegs there but that was a flimsy bit of rubber making the hole & it came off with the first casting. I kinda suspected it would . It would've needed to be a bit more complicated of a mold - and that's a pretty easy area to hollow back out.

And if you click on the (distorted view!!!) enlargement below you can see two funny things... a chunk of the rubber fell into his nose and got cast in there (purple lines just under the surface)... and the seam lines running down the bridge of his nose and off his cheek - rockingly clean casting eh? WOOOT!

And I've still got a good deal of work to do with either.... The first one cast out with a goodly # of flaws - crinkles here and there that didn't come out in the second. I believe it was from the mold release as I put it in only in a few spots but that's where the crinkles liked to center. The first casting didn't come out with both ears so I tried again. The 2nd time the ear came out - woot! Buuuuut with a bubble so it broke. Easy fix there as you can see (right ear on the bottom fellow). He came out even cleaner than the first guy. So I'll be smoothing out and adding a few more details onto him.... then he'll be ready to offer to folks! :) Probably won't take more than a week to do right. Yay!!! (does happy dance!). :D

I wasn't going to share but seriously. How freaking cute are the sleepy foals tipping over in unison in the sun? Meanwhile, those who know molds and casting can look at my monstrosity that I'm totally filing away under "wow I can't believe I got away with making THAT work" ... ;)

Photoless Friday? lol! :)

2011-04-29T07:22:00.000-07:00

I probably won't show "in progress" pics of this until I'm 100% satisfied. I didn't have a spare clean hand to take pics of the molding anyhow. THAT was interesting...

Adventures in making a waste mold of the clay foal.... The mold rubber I have been using here normally was on backorder. I order smaller quantities because I don't use much for the little medallion type things. BUT I have 3/4 of a new container here... so if the preferred product hadn't been backordered for a month or more then all would've gone just fine.. But if all had gone well I wouldn't have had to improvise like I did.. & isn't that half the fun?

Sooooooooo I'm using the alternative rubber. It has a 'Pot life' of 45min. That's pretty fast. Meaning it started to change consistency at that point and you'd better be happy (it still is something you want to pour and walk away from for half a day though). It's nice and thin (low viscosity at least) so this honestly helped. Helped me to see when it started to set and helped me to do what I had to... Dribble much? It was like being back in college except that I was a lot more careful with this stuff than we were then! lol! I poured all the rubber I had in after mixing (that's a pita in and of itself actually becuase you want it all to be started and curing at similar times... at the same time, I simple didn't have clean disposable containers big enough. Anyhow, got the rubber half way up his neck and then - ooops! No more.. Scrape the container all you like missy - that's IT! lol!

Sooooooooooo now I've got a bit of a dilemma. Leave the clay head exposed like a little buried dad at the beach? Or find a way to cover more. So I set about to tilting the whole heavy ensemble.. Not quite enough. Even the ears are still out (and tilted they are now the lowest point to give you a frame of reference...).

SO THEN, a big ole light bulb goes off - ding! I study the body and try to really recall precisely how much space he is taking up... ready for this crazy idea? I bury more clay around him to displace the rubber further.

It ALMOST WORKED COMPLETELY!!! Ugh!!! So close!!! So I've sliced up clay and have slowly sunk it down the sides of the mold into the rubber.. keeping in mind too that they have to not want to fall in due to the box being tilted so extremely... I've got almost nothing left. I start spooning some of the mold rubber over his little face (which is kind of fun with his eyes half closed & all - like bathing a horse, well one who likes it anyhow!). It's thin but it's thickening so it starts to not pool off but stay a little. So I approach this more carefully as I'm now using the brush on method with a hard applicator so I can't actually touch or press but viola!

Course the real trick was doing this for a while until it went from thin pancake batter to ... uhmmm... what's a good universal food ... shoot... yogurt? A nice creamy yogurt consistency (I eat Greek yogurt so that's more firm & it wasn't like that). ;)

So of course today I have the final hurdle to overcome.... now I've got a slanted "bottom" to my mold. Fortunately it all cured wonderfully last night. At least on the outside. Now in a few minutes I get to flip it and demold and see what I've got inside. Crossing my fingers like mad!

Meanwhile, the bottom is leveled off with plaster - woohoo! So it's all out on the porch drying in the sun It's actually like a little mother mold and I thought long and hard about peeling off the sides and making the plaster into a half box essentially. I'm not going to most likely but who knows, the demolding... this could be ugly. It's been literally 15 or more years since I had to deal with a more complicated shape like this...

Wish me luck today!

Storms being a distant memory the humidity is falling below 50% now and dropping... I have probably only enough resin for one maaaaaybe 2 tries at this foal so I am crossing my fingers. I have a backup media here to work in although it takes 24hrs to set though but all the same, this is why I decided to have a go at it myself. The costs here are high enough (iow this stuff aint cheap to play with!).

I really am cracking up about my rubber displacement however. :) Course I have to leave the clay in there most likely until I'm done (at least where it's closest to the body) so there's no chance of deformation...

Wacky artist over here signing off for more adventures now! ;)

Necessity being the mother of invention...

2011-04-25T13:38:00.000-07:00

This is often how I come up with new things. I want to try something out. In this case I *need* to try out a small test batch of rubber before making a mold on my foal. So I made this new widget while watching the last Harry Potter movie. Ok, can I just interject this? The PPV tech I called & spoke to called it Harry Potty - seriously - who stole my friend Jess's nickname for him? lol! Love it! Anyhow, the movie being pretty dark & me watching it during the day... well, I couldn't see much so I was pretty productive (although my eyes got less rest as there was less glancing up for eye-strain breaks).

And there you have the story behind this. I was watching (finally!) the 2nd to last Potty movie.. :D

Shown 2 to 3x larger here it's a 1 and 1/4" wide by 1 and 3/8" tall very shallow (and oily!) relief...thumbprint sized basically. Another widget for the envelopes mostly. I'm undecided on if I like them for other purposes. Maybe someday I'll go in cahoots with my jewelry making cousin Katie. :) (snaps for Katie!!! <3 http://www.etsy.com/shop/katierosenblatt?ref=pr_shop_more )

Meanwhile... in the more global scheme of things.. there are artists who are 'idealists'... some are 'surrealists'... etc etc.. So I'm wondering if I should label myself 'the pragmatist?".... (weak!) Anyhow, gotta work on the story telling behind these works! ;)

A little helpful trick for the sculptors out there

2011-04-15T13:43:00.000-07:00

It's really not a big trick, some sculptors like to have mirrors for this, I find I like sheet of paper with the contrast ramped up to really emphasize the contours... I take a photo of one side, flip it, and bump up the contrast. In truth I take photos from several angles but you get the idea. :)

Above first is reality & next is the grayscale higher contrasted version.

More refinement to come but I've ordered the molding rubber and hope to offer him extremely soon... hope you're on my yahoogroup if you want one! ;) Ah but seriously, I just can't help it being soooo excited about this guy and I'm using the excuse that the pony is going to be a lot more technically challenging to mold (I'll have to have a pro do the waste mold for me - this foal at least I can do the waste casting myself! yay!).

I shouldn't show these (even though I had to take em to balance out a few facial tendons & muscles) because the clay has blemishes. Blemishes being these darkened spots where heated tools discolored the clay... Anyhow, he'll look vastly better in close up in a primered state next week... but I can't help it, he's just the cats jammies to me! :)

And now back to painting actually... believe it or not that's mostly what I've been doing here..

Sat. in pictures (Stoneybrook Steeplechase)

2011-04-10T11:21:00.000-07:00

I'll keep it brief and get right to the photo show. I had a booth and managed to sneak out a few times to get reference material for myself. Here's a small sampling...

The booth & you already know what I look like from previous posts so I won't torture you with the ones my fellow took of me attempting to smile nice (and looking pained which is typical for me when I know cameras are around).

Duke and Johann received the most pets - yes, they had do not touch signs but there is just something irresistible about sculpture... there really is. Your typical collector is well trained not to dare to touch the breakables but I was fully prepared for it (I mounted them to marble bases). Collectors would faint to see someone rub their nails over a finish and ask what it's made of... ;) But it's all good. I built my demo gang to roll with the punches. ;)

I got some pained ones of my fellow too but then managed to make him laugh over something & got a real smile. He was indispensable! Setting up the track lighting alone would've been impossible for me and you can't tell from the photos but it really made a difference.

And on to the real stars of the show. I took most photos from the backstretch. The majority of the other side wasn't approachable as it was "box seating" roped off and with private tents. So I tried a few spots and found the best pics for my purposes were on the backstretch (3 hurdles worth). The downfall was that I couldn't see the finish of any of the races.

I did burst photography of this race's start. They walk in circles around the starter counter clockwise and then reverse off and try to walk as calmly as possible to the "line".. whereupon the man flags the "go" and runs like heck... this small field of five made it look pretty scary but to imagine this with a field of 10 or more is rather hair raising!

And then to finish off with an "awww" moment! :) I didn't see this get much use but I dared a few folks to try it out (I kinda wanted to myself but well, I had a dress on.. that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it).

Fun day and while a really raw cold front apparently cut the crowds in half, it was well worth it. Can't wait for next year! :)

I dabble in drawing but generally..

2011-04-07T11:59:00.000-07:00

I dabble in drawing but generally.. I don't share.. for a # of reasons. Primarily because most of the things I draw are straight from a magazine or book. It's an exercise, and while I might not be selling it here even by sharing, putting anything on the web these days is a big thorny conundrum.

Anyhow, it occurred to me that I've got all these great photos of horses now that I took myself these past few years, and that I should draw those instead & share those pictures. Again, these are just exercises. I really just don't have the photorealism "it" factor imo in my flatwork (drawing or painting). But it's good for me to explore shapes and light and dark spaces in 2d - because it helps to grasp shape faster in 3d sometimes if you can "explain" it visually in several ways.

Well so anyhow, here's a cute scratching pony from this past fall's trip with Maggie to Shackleford Island; the original and what I made of it.

Again to see more pony pics check out some I made into an album here

Yes, I did do professional illustration but each and every drawing I did there imo could be greaty improve upon. I'm a harsh critic of my own work but the one thing I had going for me there the most was how fast I could turn around an assignment - lol! In other words, I decided that other avenues (for the longest time graphic animation work and computer illustration) were better to pursue.. until of course I rediscovered sculpting and casting medium improvements and then tossed aside the mouse. ;)

These "sketches" and widget type exercises I've been sharing here are things I take on in the evening when I'm supposedly done for the day. I'm really lucky my fiance doesn't find me boring. I'm pretty obsessive. Guess it comes with the territory. :) & With that, back to it then!

Scenes from a soggy event today

2011-03-26T15:04:00.000-07:00

The soggy event was the Southern Pines Horse Trials II. These were taken from our vehicle! It was pouring and I got out and walked the dog around and talked to some folks but my fiance was having none of it. I wasn't about to bring my studio camera out into the rain however so towards the end he drove across the park and found this water combination where I could actually capture the last few riders going through. In better weather I really would've gotten some fabulous reference pictures from up close. I have some good ones at least. I share these just to show the place a little. My most reference worthy pics have cars in the background and such! :)

I've gotten so much feedback about the foal too. I'm very happy to know it wasn't "just me" thinking he's the cat's jammies! :) I'm plugging along on him & "Kipling" (the pony on the stick from a few more posts back). They'll both be released in resin soon enough, I promise. In the meantime I'm trying not to post photos each and every time I make some changes, keeping a bit more diverse for the reader here. Mind you my life usually (bad pun coming up warning!!!).. is normally pretty unEVENTful... sorry. Had to do it. :D Anyhow, perhaps after the fact I'll share the clay-mation to hard prototype stories. I'm rather anxious about that though and would prefer not to jinx myself. One way or another I'll share more soon but I simply don't know yet what I want to do. I'd said to my yahoo group tentative plans for selling the pony as a very limited time frame. I'll have to see how that works out. I'm overall shooting for being more prolific as a sculptor in general, and thus (out of necessity!), limiting edition sizes a bit more. So this is my generalized goal and we'll see how it works out. You can probably bank on being able to totally laugh at me later this year and say "gee Morgen, how's that working out for ya?". ;)

Foal's first 24 hours...

2011-03-24T13:51:00.000-07:00

Man sometimes the germination of artistic idea is just like a little lifeform, you can not stop it from growing. For better or worse. In the euphoric state that is the true creative high of course I hope it's for the best, I know at least his neck is a shade more proportionate & his limbs are the matching lengths now at least... so here's Little Man Mango at just 24hrs old (in real clay life, in representation I'd call this foal a few weeks at least)..

I was up until 2pm last night and right back down to it this morning, couldn't slurp down the coffee fast enough & get back in there… didn’t even want to stop for lunch. He’s now in the freezer again chillin out. The studio thermometer says 85 in here but the breezes/fans are cooler. Still, clay gets pretty soft at that temp (sun heats this place up, yesterday's highs were mid-80's I think but todays was also almost 10degrees less too)... all the same, time for the ACs in here already... I have armature toothpicks in his ears even!

In the photos the tools are for showing “in progress” for another purpose… but I know you guys know that he’s just starting out here. Still – I’m sooo aching to be putting in all those awesome fun baby details!

Foal born while on the phone today :)

2011-03-23T15:15:00.000-07:00

Babies popping out of nowhere!!! Spring must be in the air! He just sprang out of my imagination while on the phone today at lunchtime. Normally I like to keep my hands busy now by working on a relief sculpture... I've been doing these on hard flat easy to hold surfaces like this CD case. This particular clay doodle sprang into life in full dimension pretty fast however! :)

He's vewy vewy sweeeeeeepy and is trying to stay awake but is falling backwards sloooooowly.... zzzzzzzzz....

PS to this I should mention too that I do need to work on proportions some.... like his neck needs to be shortened a tad I'm sure (haven't measured yet). He's currently being popsiclized in the freezer (it's 90 in here so btwn the fast work up & heat he's goooooey & got hard to work on so I snapped some pics & went to go get references).

Old things & new things! :)

2011-03-15T13:34:00.000-07:00

First off, the option of resin in black I will mention once more today here (I posted to my group as well), however I won’t put a button for it on the web page here http://www.artbymorgen.com/johann.htm because I’ll only be ordering 1 more batch of this edition so after I do that the option to special order black ones won’t be available.

I know I’m posting it everywhere too, (forgive the redundancy!) but the dark (dyed) resin is really nice for both prepping and handling down the road. Painted white resin can show white rubs (I’m always being asked at shows to touch up someone’s horse or if I had this or that color paint…), whereas at least black rubs and scratches are a little less glaring and noticable. It’s not for everyone, many folks like to do their finish work over white primer or gesso and this may still show white around a scratch or rub. Me well, I paint over rust colored primer usually myself because it’s the thinnest primer leaving the most detail – but maybe that’s why those eartips rub easier? Grins!

Ok, quick weekend wrap up… I love meeting new customers in new areas…! I went to Carolina Gold Classic, it was an exceptionally big show – 50 entrants! I’m used to shows with around 30 so this was fun, but I was probably zombified… I get excited the night before shows and events and tend not to fall asleep so easily. I’ve tried everything but sleeping pills and I just refuse.. it’s been a lifelong issue (as in I can remember field trips in elementary school where I would be so jazzed up I’d get no sleep the night before too). The real solution is to get out and do these more often! ;)

I brought along a small truckload of miniature tack (this is thus far the only thing I really collect and obsess over)... all because I simply didn’t take the time to sort through it for the 4 classes I’d hoped to dress up one particular horse in a set of classes I hadn’t put her in yet (English). Anyhow, well, I messed up and wound up not showing her after all! HA! But I’m glad I did because I got to lend out tack and meet some new folks that way too. It was good day all in all!

Now to prepare for the Stoneybrook Steeplechase where I’ll have a tent. In the meantime I’ll be out there at the Carolina Horse park taking reference photos in 2 weeks at their first big 3 day event. Looking forward to sharing some photos of this soon.

This one is for Lauren.. ;)

2011-03-10T20:46:00.001-08:00

.. while I'm on a roll here today I give you "Gleep" in progress!

He's a massive rock of a table weight really. Actually, he can serve as a bookend nearly (has 2 flat sides). More soon on him as well. A gal named Lauren and I are scheming on this one! :)

New faces and new stories to share :)

2011-03-10T09:19:00.000-08:00

I've been typing too much today and need to get back to work now..! :) I posted these to my site however and will try to have some as magnets this weekend... aaaaaaannnd...

I shared the low down on my relief sculpture online finally. I hope to get him cast soon;

I put more info here; http://www.artbymorgen.com/joe_reed_page.htm and hope you'll read it - I think it's a cool story but I can't vouch for the storyteller in this case (blushes).

PS. I guess I should add that my dad (who is currently living out there with Dorothy in AZ) reported yesterday that Dorothy seemed very pleased with the likeness in her gift here. I honestly was pretty worried about that - she doesn't exactly hold back her opinions at 94 (not sure if she ever did but she sure doesn't now). Whew! :)

Pins and Magnet making finally!

2011-03-08T13:06:00.000-08:00

My customer there (my last post) ;) finally prompted me to make up a few of these after talking about it since last year. Literally I have no idea how I'll "display" them at the coming events I'm attending. They are fun though, widget madness! I have more designs I hope to have the time to mold/cast before my next few events.. and back to that now.. blabbing too much over here! :D

Customer sent me this pic :)

2011-03-08T06:41:00.000-08:00

Thought it was neat to see a widget in use (aside from the ones on our fridge - lol!).

I'm just posting things daily now to make my photos go away to the next page... ;)

An alert little herd of soldiers!

2011-03-07T17:29:00.000-08:00

A row of Johann's awaiting their time payments with baited breath!! lol! Sorta looking a bit like the Queen's Guard all in white.

Really didn't have much beyond that silly pic to share, just that had the camera out here again today & snapped that. I never remember to show the "conga" scenes of the studio and they can be kind of fun sometimes. This little conga just seems to exaggerate the "Attention!" look. More time payment castings are coming in though and it's going to get a lot more crowded on that shelf.. plus I have stickers that go on their headdresses so it'll look much more cluttered in short order.

I'm really looking forward to seeing folks this Saturday at Julia's show! Gettin' the spring cabin fever thing here! All the same, getting a lot of work done too, so no worries. ;)

Pony is very worried...

2011-03-04T14:54:00.000-08:00

Worried about the tick I seem to have developed in my face? He's saying "omg! are you ok Morgen??!!!"

I was just laughing too hard at this not to share. Now you all know what I look like... sorta... when I'm making faces which, sadly, is what I do best on camera. :/

Editing to add this on later that day (Friday)... this is what I'm going with though as my "This is what I look like in this century" bio pic now;

So there ya go too Jenn on the pony.. you know there was a photo Jenn had of me holding a weeeeeeee tiny hat from a show in Colorado that I almost wanted to ask her for. But I sucked it up and had these done instead. Painful! Ok, moving on...

There's a long story here...

2011-03-03T08:23:00.001-08:00

More in a few days! For now I'll just let folks wonder... :)

Great weather, very therapeutic/rejuvenating here

2011-02-27T20:27:00.000-08:00

I share this pic really only because it has the slight (!eek!) illusion of "crash!". How appropo of things in my life I think? :) You may have to hold your breath at times but all will pass smoothly. Anyhow, more practically this is maybe the most notable photo I'd gotten really today (everything else being horses working and from a distance mostly, or unflattering poses/close ups). This & a handful more were all I got of reference photos at the Carolina Horse Park - folks gearing up for the events in a few weeks. I'm going to fill up my server with all the "reference" sharing so no more, promise!

No this is just a quick post to say all is well here. The weather has been good. I went back to New England in January and aside from the fact that nothing about the trip was for fun really, the weather was unbelievably worse than I ever remember it (at least snow volume wise) and it was dismal & ironic at best, downright scary to be traveling around in at times. I am exceptionally grateful not to still be there trying to deal with the last barn I worked at too. The gate system there simply was nearly impossible in snow/ice conditions. I've heard some horror stories from folks up there this season, and well, have seen some shocking pictures; my heart goes out to you all! I wish all my pals could come join me down here? :) In a few more months when it will be cruelly hot I guess & you can be laughing at me. Mostly just sharing here that I am happy to be home, time seems to be flying along (feels like I just got back a week ago) but I needed to just add that it really felt like a "rebirth" to come back down here to the (apparently exceptionally unseasonably mind you) warm weather and things to look forward to doing. Tomorrow when severe storms come through I might not be able to post how grateful I am in the dark w/out power. ;)

Portrait of a studio dog...

2011-02-14T13:07:00.000-08:00

This is my fiance's Valentine's Day present. That's why I was surfing through those photos & videos of her last week. I clearly like to leave things till the last possible second... literally giving myself just a day to do this - eep! Adrenaline junkie issues aside, I was thinking how ironic it is
that techniques used to finish my resins have improved my flatwork more than classes in college had.

Mind you I still don't like my flatwork. This is why I stopped doing portraits and illustration a LONG time ago. But the hair ticking effect here. I've always liked to utilize short-lines or stippling techniques but I dunno.. I just didn't like how I did it. Today I like how this came out more - especially around the whisker bed and planes of her cheekbones.

That said I will NOT like this work tomorrow. Sincerely this is how I roll. Almost all of my flat art is tucked up and away in these portfolios. The only stuff that's "out" is stuff that's too big to tuck away - ha! :D

Being an artist is blessing and curse at times. I've been reflecting on that a great deal lately. It's a love-hate relationship like nothing else. A form of narcissism wrapped up in self-loathing! No truly, look up the mental illness of "perfectionism" and you'll see that last sentence essentially is what it means & why so many artists are insane... ! ;)

I personally think we're compelled to whip things off the easel and toss them to the floor in disgust for a reason, a form of personal growth obsession that's warped terrifically out of control - especially since there truly is no right and wrong in the end.

Must have a great sense of humor to handle it. And a great significant other around to tolerate ya!! <3 Happy Valentines Day Guys!!

Studio dogs are good for mental health.

2011-02-11T07:53:00.000-08:00

They really are. Well any indoor pet of course but in my opinion dogs with their uninhibited glee most especially!

Sure yes there is the potential for hair to find it’s way into things... But that said, all that they say about pets lowering blood pressure and stimulating alpha waves or whatever.. so true. Plus they “live in the moment”. They just remind you to seize the moment and experience joy where ever, when ever you can.

Seizing the moment today to appreciate some things that really really make me happy too. This was from Christmas time I believe and I just found it last night (hadn’t even watched it after shooting). Had to settle for free music off of my machine (well not really, I could’ve bought a track from Amazon for $1 but it’s not about the music for me so much – just the freedom to express your emotion with passion!). I put it on my facebook profile but it’ll be hard for me to ever find there again so I’m sharing it here where I can wax philosophical too (all corny & windbag style!), about the joy of not holding back expression. YAY!

Handful of new widgets/scribbles

2011-02-07T19:47:00.000-08:00

Well I've been playing with these little "widgets" since last year but I only started putting them on envelopes in early January. Pretty sure that only ~30 people have gotten any so far (sent out with the invoices of new sales of any horse or medallion). They're just fun "scribbles" in clay that I cast in press molds using Apoxie Sculpt. I have tried a good # of gypsum products (plaster of paris, art plaster, permastone, hydrocal, etc) in the molds too and generally find almost all types leave pin hole bubbles or are far too brittle in these wafer thin thumbnail sizes. They are essentially something I'm practicing casting in alternate media with but the ones I give away as extra fun bling on sales materials are all apoxie sculpt so far.

I have refrigerator magnets but they're too big & strong for these little flat works. I may get the flat magnets and sell them someday. They'd make fun pins I think too. I suppose I could consider metals. I have family that does metal work so it wouldn't be a stretch to go there and try that out.

So far however they just are outlets for creative ideas and I haven't really thought about marketing them. I should document them at least here or on my website. Not necessarily in a 'collect them all' way - but just to document them. Thus far I haven't sent out anything with the galloping Andy there on it.

These photos are disappointing to me, it's been hard to photograph them too. The metallic finish is from Sculpt Nouveau and will age/patina a bit more naturally than straight up paints (although I'm not sure how much). I don't have a photograph of it but I've also experimented with adding a bit of "faux" (less toxic to me!) green patina using acrylic and watered down white gesso and I quite like that effect because you can control the "oxidation" look better (focus where the pale green goes).

So there are several new faces to start off the year with. Nothing for sale at this time, just something different. :)

Welcome 2011!

2011-01-05T13:06:00.000-08:00

I really have nothing exciting to report here. I've gotten more Mold Star 15 today, some wax/clay sculpting tools (Amazon - $14! woot!)... There's a few very tiny things I'd like to try to cast (in non-resin/non-hobby type mediums like Hydrocal & Permastone). The Halloween head bust from a previous post (on Oct 31 I believe) will eventually be the largest I try out these things with, it all gets a bit expensive - most things are quarter sized...

I've gotten my first proof of Johann - a "proof"is where I "approve" of the casting (and I tend to keep a few copies, 'artist proofs' for myself for archiving unpainted, or painting/selling later, from each edition - generally I've heard these called "artist proofs" but typically only the first ones off the line in other industries like graphic arts are called "proofs" as far as I know..?).. ANYHOW, the casters only managed to get 2 castings done before the last two weeks of the year where they shut down the facility, but I was inspired to play with paint rather than, I dunno, be drinking isn't it on New Years eve? :)

This buckskin guy is my own copy for display purposes. Which is kind of funny because I don't know where/when/what I'll be attending at all this year to display anything. So far my hobby year is utterly blank. MH$P sales pictures I suppose.. if I ever get him done - red legs kiiiiiinda not so convincing as buckskin! Still, even if I never get around to really wrapping him up, I just couldn't resist trying out this color on him. It's honestly a bit refreshing not having to worry about it being for sale, I can't explain it.

Anyhow, I have emails I've let slip for a full day. Sorry gang! And this is why I don't dare write babble online on any forum too often... I'm always behind on the things I"m supposed to be doing.... so off to it!

Year in review!!!

2010-12-29T08:22:00.000-08:00

Well this first chapter of our adventurous new life is coming to a close with the close of the year. It started out with us selling as much as we could of our possessions and moving 800 miles south, to a very foreign land to me! Quite exciting for a gal who never stayed more than a month away from central CT my whole life.

So I still love it here. I’ve gotten homesick for a few things but not much... which is surprising all things considered! I wondered about the holidays and I guess the ability to chat folks up on the phone and the relief at not having to zip around for a few hours here, then an hour drive and a few hours there… in between stopping at a barn to feed some horses (my own or the therapeutic riding program’s horses). I honestly can’t remember a holiday last when I stayed “home”. So that was nice! I hope we can start up some traditions of our own off of this. :)

Overall the year saw many transitions for me. I’ve become painfully aware that my forte is not painting horses for money – I’m very slow at the painting and always have been. Just as I’m exceptionally slow at prepping too. I know that sculpting has seemed slow for me but to be honest, it’s mostly been because I’ve been tinkering at it.

This year I decided to get more serious too about the sculpting and move back to ordinary modeling clay. In 2011 I’ll probably play with firm and soft or wax versions but overall, soft clays (pottery clay typically) has been my normal (before 2001 that is!) sculpting media. This year I decided to tackle the issue of casting the work with these clays that never harden.

In general in sculpting this year I’ve gotten several sculptures done while down here already. Here’s a new one for the people who’ve made this possible for us by letting us live in their in-law space while we get established here. This is their dog Pepper. I had my fiancé take a few pictures the week before, got a wild hare to try and sculpt him and wound up literally putting the final details on him on Christmas day.

When sculpting I’m completely in my zen state of mind and I literally fail to notice things going on around me. In college on time I looked up to find the entire class standing in a group nearby staring at me. I guess the professor had called a halt to things to do a demo or something… but there I go merrily plugged along completely oblivious to everyone stopping and his calls out to wrap it up… I was a little relieved that he told the class it wasn’t entirely a bad thing to get so “lost” (except when perhaps alarms are going off or things around you that maybe you SHOULD notice are happening and well, then there’s me – merrily oblivious still!). One time my fiancé came home, walked up to me and stood for a minute or so in the studio before I noticed him next to me, hovering over me actually, and yelped/screamed in surprise. Anyhow, time flies when you’re in this mindset though – that is for certain.

I hope this coming year and decade will bring a lot more new sculpture faces out for me. I’ve been transitioning my site over to be more sculpture-focused. I have several works going on but producing sculptures isn’t just a matter of conceiving and creating them. It involves daunting ways of getting them made into a permanent media somehow. In the past my love of Apoxie Sculpt was in great part due to this. However getting proportions in hardened clay isn’t a minor trick. I like to think of these last 7 years of sculpting horses for artist grade resin releases as proportion training so that I might really express myself now!

We also hope to be moving sometime in 2011 – hopefully this time to our first home. Homes and mortgages down here are very much a fraction of what I paid in cheap rents back in CT. Again too, my fella here is a engineer turned timberframer/welder and now is going back to the workforce in the office.. soooo I’m pretty sure he’ll be hard to hold back building things. We have a joke about this “shed city” that his father has in CT (some 10 sheds I think but he sold antiques and really puts them all to good use still, as well as the neat old barn). Anyhow, the joke now is that I may be facing my very own shed city. As long as some house horses however I’ll be fine… ;)

Reflecting more globally on how my life has already changed so much, while I’ve never been a fan of putting all my eggs in one basket, this past year has been a departure from my former tactic of eggs all around! I’d already started it out with my hours of my part time job cut more than in half… from 18-20 to 8 (2 days a week @4hrs ea). We turned around and did a major clean out – and we still have a lot of “stuff” by most people’s standards. The tough thing is that both of us have actually made income off of our “stuff”.

When I sold my boarding business in Feb of 2009 I had kept most of the tack and tools in storage in another building on the same property where I leased the 6 stall barn.. there were several truck loads full of equipment. I had a photo of it but we think it was deleted – it was a crazy tag sale with people pouring in for hours. We had it piled up pretty densely, with one car/truck worth of space and a car trailer filled to the max with horse & tack stuff… and then another truck parking space and a garage space inside filled with his tools & equipment. And with my horsie stuff, some of it was sold before the actual tack sale spread out– friends came by to buy stuff for their horses, a couple of local biz owners made appts to come over the day before (biz or private I was surprised at how much was left even after that!!). And still we had tons to spare. Consequences of a few decades of hoarding averted eh? So much of that tack & equipment had been acquired, not purchased. So a lot of it was priced at just a few bucks. It was really something to spread out my possessions for a tack/tag sale – mentally a major clean up of a former era. I wasn’t even sure of a lot of it’s value; like sweetmouth western bits (I don’t even know what they look like new, I’m sure I’ll learn down ehre though, western tack stores were rare up north and it seems like English ones are rare down here?). It was REALLY hard to let even the stuff just given to me go; it just always is great to have this or that around to grab when needed... For example boarders and friends borrowed stuff all the time there and I was so happy to have it to lend. It always had a way of multiplying/spreading like good karma too when you lent/gave it away....!! I might give away some keepers and then the boarder gave me a saddle rack later… Too funny - you can't make a pile like that go away, it just NEEDS to grow! ;) Good times of course but literally, I sold as much as possible (pricing crazy low) because I’m sure someday when I start over again here I won’t have half the storage inside you get in new England type barns. In the meantime a lot of stuff gets ruined in storage no matter what you do. And what’s that saying? You can’t take it all with you!!! :D I still have a lot that didn’t sell – so it’s not as if I totally gave away all my possessions. I could get a horse tomorrow and not have to buy anything tool or tack wise .. I’m pretty sure. ;)

When we got down here I’d already set up and booked to attend Breyerfest in the Artisan’s Gallery, so I leapt into painting up a bunch of horses I’d had here that were prepped. I thought 6 was impossible but then a 7^th was added with Breyer asking me to paint sometime for their benefit too. In the end though I had a couple that weren’t quite done in time. When I got home I’d planned to leap into wrapping up my one sculpture. What I wound up doing was a lot of soul searching in general about focus.

And that’s where I’ll wrap this lengthy novel/essay/ramble up with I think… In general I’ve been pulling back and saying to myself “well what is working and what isn’t here”.

In the meantime though? I’ve at least been able to get a studio dog!!! :D Dogs are great for one’s overall mindset (well for me anyhow!) and I am just certain I’d have gone a little stir crazy without this awesome goofy gal to randomly leap up and play with here!

The rest of the time obviously I have to keep her penned up... ;) (I'm kidding of course!)

Transitions take time but the journey so far hasn’t been really nearly as tricky or horrible as it could be. We’ve found all kinds of really neat free and fun things to do around here too. Just yesterday we picked up 5 pounds of pecans (weight in shell) in the park. Last night a few cups were peeled and I suspect that today I’ll take a break and try my hand at a pecan pie. We still have some ingredients left over from Christmas (sugar isn’t normally something I have on hand). It’s been fun doing things as a couple. Going forward too, there are whole new avenues to explore around here, I got him a trail trekking GPS for Christmas so hopefully we don’t have any more explorations that veer too far off course. Literally and figuratively!

All the best guys and here’s to a really exciting 2011 eh!!!!

-Morgen

Wrapping up another horse, and an era for me! :)

2010-12-19T10:53:00.000-08:00

Gallery; http://www.artbymorgen.com/galleries/hazel/HazelAP4/album/

So this gal was created by starting with an airbrushed base coat in acrylic. Then I painted several layers of oils over that to deepen and get the right contrast to the dapples. Still, that was pretty new for me – I never painted so few layers of oils before but the “shimmer” and blended look was just right to me so hooray that I could leave it there. I only just got an airbrush I could use for base coat well the year before, and I’ll never master it enough to paint by airbrush. Plus I really consider myself an oil painter despite the mixed media – I can’t get my look without oil paint really…

Let me pause here and just be clear, I’m reflecting on my own work and my own creative process specifically. I’m a harsh critic of my own work, but I also really get manic about what I do so being exceptionally objective about my work seems necessary. Anyhow, so back to this gal….! ;)

Then the last step – the one I get hung up on and could do infinitely; using black, grey and white pencils with crazy sharp points & smudgies (tortillons)… to get those super fine points & then to get them blending out here and there.

(Click above to enlarge a lot!) If you enlarge this you can see the black, grey and white hairs a bit more easily than on some areas of her body where they're blended in more. I spent these last few months trying to make some areas more obvious.

So here on this dappled gray mare I’ve worked since July and just wrapped it up here in Dec on this last step alone. Not straight through mind you obviously, but picking at it, here and there, adding to the haircoat pattern. And that’s what isn’t worth it to me in the end. No one can see it – even *I* can’t see it so well in normal room lighting. Let alone judges or owners half the time. Although I know owners do like it of course! It’s just come to this point where I say to myself “this is really silly of me to be doing – it’s has no (really unique over the top type of) ‘zow’ factor”. (And let me be clear - I personally would love painting ordinary normal roans for example... without lots of genetic haircoat pattern add ons.. but I've got REALLY BORING TASTES personally!) ;)

And it’s absolutely exhausting. I love doing it but the “better” ones are harder to see. As it should be and yet too subtle all the same.

Of all the commissions I have left, only one (well 2 sort of) are non-hair pattern colors. I have 2 more fleabites (one very dappled, one mostly fleabites), one appy and a roany gal who’s almost done. The roany gal is more dramatic – and the appy will probably be popular too. Still? The color I’m most looking forward to doing is this liver chestnut. And possibly a bay sometime down the road.

The hair patterns show up on a computer screen at enlargements 20x real life, but in real life people just glance and miss them. Walking by your shelves, your table at a show, what have you. Hair patterns need to be accompanied by overall color patterns that are more dramatic. The macroscopic/microscopic factor – eye catching both when you stand back, the whole pictured is “dramatic” and when you lean in too inspect closely. In fleabitten colors that’s pretty hard to do well – something you can see from 40ft away across the room that makes you want to walk over… and then keeps you studying closer and closer once you get there. From across the room they just look grey. Closer up they just look speckled.. But while I’ve seen (and should strive for more often) lots of varied examples the painting style that mimics inked illustration techniques, that is to say the character of the shading is to outline essentially – creating a vastly more dramatic look that pops. It’s surprisingly easy but underused. In terms of realistic, it’s hard to fault too because it simply mimics a horse in studio lighting, verses outdoor lighting. I need to do this more often but still, where I tend to fail is using too much light in the studio and then getting into real world lighting and not being able to really see what I’ve done so much.

Great for photos, fun to look at up close in good light.

(Click above to enlarge a lot!) This is the now finished (in Dec) flank of an example where I made her roany coat nearly agouti and thus a lot more noticable from a distance. It's fun to not blend them in so much but I prefer the blended ones too... even though they are pretty hard to see, even for me. The funny thing about these is that I keep going back to them over and over again - the anxiety for me is in saying "done" every bit as much as it is in waiting to hear if a customer is happy.

In the end, the real sticking point for me is the agonizing. This roany mare for instance. I did this whole neck and then erased it all and redid it. And THEN after the hairs were down I decided they were a little too stark in spots and painted them over. In this case the owner who’s getting her doesn’t show so I don’t have to worry about judges from across the table spotting her. ;) But no seriously, it’s one of my favorite patterns ever but it’s also been one I’ve been working on finding a “flow” for since this past summer. And at Breyefest, a lot of people peeked at her but I know not so many spied the little hairs. And I did myself no favors by not having her whites and hooves done completely by then. For me the showmanship of finishwork is hard too. Similarly, I consider myself a functional illustrator but it’s just very challenging for me and I’m never really satisfied with my work there either.

Soooo I’ll share these last few that will actually leave my studio for a while here. And breath a HUGE sigh of relief when owners happily get them in hand. I was telling someone recently that there’s just this crazy anxiety I get over finish work that I don’t have when selling unpainted resins. Sure it’s the extra costs of course too – but even when sending a $300 paint job to someone, I get pretty panicky! I don’t rest until I know the person has the horse safely and loves it. I worry STILL that oil paints will do some weird thing down the road, or that areas painted in acrylics will crack/peel god only knows… it’s just NOT for me. I’ve played more than once with the idea of looking into lacquered paints that Breyer and Stone uses for ARs somehow. That honestly would alleviate some of my worries… just adding a MAJOR one of health in there instead while the paint bonds/dries.

So that’s the long and the short of it. Sharing a few last horses here. This will hopefully be going to her new owner soon, I left the poor owner hanging as I agonized these last two months over the last of the details... She’s definitely one of my favorites in that I’ve only completely a couple of dapple greys – the rest were redone/or sit undone because I’m not happy with them. Somehow the planets aligned for her and I’m just tickled as I really like the look of this dapple grey style on this sculpture. :)

Ok, but you KNOW that I hope to paint up a Johann in a simple color very soon though… ;) Just because when you sculpt some horses (this happened for me with the bay Hazel too), you just see them in this “look”. To me he has a “look” and I do hope I can do that reasonably quick as well with airbrushing/oils. :) Well, well see… it probably won’t be major time investment of a wildly haired pattern however. Just something to keep on my shelf as a demo horse.

Well back to it now.. I've got a desk of medallions to address here. And I've neglected to point out to folks that 1 of my medallion editions was 2010 only & that's wrapping up in 2 weeks... I meant to do that last week - oops! (Well I've been having a week of "getting to know you" moments working out registry error issues with my computer - gifts compliments of Microsoft!). Aaaaaand I'd rather be doing AAAAAANYthing than that!!! ;)

New faces? New website!

2010-12-03T13:04:00.000-08:00

It was loooong overdue! I was really tired of the black look. It was too contrasty to me, and I never managed to get the simple look I was trying for anyhow. It's more work to clear away around sculptures to get a "clean" look, but it's not like I'm sharing new faces every week. Hopefully I'll be sharing new ones much much more often (smaller editions, many many more faces - goals for 2011!)... still I'll just clean up the images.

The hardest one was this Fenwick from last year.
He's under a section I've hopefully more clearly labeled now "Past Editions". Almost all of the others were done. And sadly, I still haven't recreated galleries for those lost of my earlier works. At least they're almost all there... except for "Colt Mango" which is one little resin candidate I've really wondered if I should restart in clay to make my life simpler (wee brittle legs won't hold detail - they chip/flake off!).

I've got Johann a placeholder page there. My Serendipity medallion is only going to be around for a month... And my finished resins section is all over the place sort of still... PLUS some weird glitch seems to have come into effect on the interior pages in Internet Explorer... dangit. I'm not going to sweat over it today I think...

Just check links... ack that's the toughie (because juuuust once in a while I do really really bad web designer practices like keep my online folder arrangement different from my beta area's!)... Anyhow, it makes me sort of want to see if there's a quick way to convert my blog. Fresh start all around? :)

I honestly can not WAIT to share more new faces... and back to that... these last few painted horses here - they make my heart soar - it's been hard to call them "done" (one of the BIG reasons I am laying off painting for a while..!).... but yay they're nearly ready to share too! :D

Oh duh - my website is here; http://www.artbymorgen.com

The saga of Johann!

2010-11-26T09:06:00.000-08:00

The skinny on this beefcake! :D

Scale comparison of my newest (the standing fellow) sculpture "Johann" next to classic 1:12 scale "Iaret" (on his left), traditional 1:9 scale "El Embosco" behind him, and galloping away in black on his left behind "Iaret" is 1:9 scale Hazel. I'm calling him small traditional but you'll see below that he scaled up to 1:9 of the life sized horse I modeled him after (who was pony sized).

You can see above how he compares in 1:9 scale to "normal" sized horses as he did in real life to my 16.2hh horse here;

Johann's inspiration, the real personality :D "Rocky" being introduced (hence the halters) to my own horse.

Yesterday I shared the sales plan & full album with my yahoogroup – that’s not here, this is just info on his name history and the horse(s) I modeled him after. There was too much to say about him, links & pictures and all, to put on a sales page. I figure it’ll be more fun for a blog post – where photos can be clicked on & seen at supersize!

Johann is pronounced YO-hahn.. and he's named after Johann Pachelbel (pah-KELL-b'l -- hey I wasn’t sure either and kept worrying I was making a feminine, Joanne, name here!). Johann Pachelbel’s “Cannon in D Major” was the one classical piece as wee tyke, that I really adored... Everything else was background noise to me really but I loved this and would curl up next to the stereo whenever my mom put it on (which was probably around bedtime or when company came over I guess??! I’m sure that was the case; I was a pretty hyper / talkative child…). ;) So we’ll just say “it’s special to me” and leave it at that.

I started him somewhere around mid June 3 years ago; Friday June 15th (bone/armature stage) and settling on his pose Sunday, June 17, 2007 (links off to the first blog posts there - SCARY PICTURES WARNING!!!) :) and a year and a half later... just about a year ago you can see how much he built up off of that "skeleton" there...

When he wasn't being sawed in half..this poor boy has spent more of his time in a box, waiting for me to be overtaken by "inspiration" - which I definitely got this year, despite moving and a large # of paint jobs wrapped up and numerous other distractions... anyhow, but he's really evolved from that little dog-like skeleton (that was a fairly small horse skeleton before the weight/angles of the hind end sagged entertainingly like that!). This very well may also be my last Apoxie Sculpt sculpture. I wouldn't mind, it takes a LOT longer to work in this media. :)

Back to the beginning though; I promised Rocky’s owner that I’d name this sculpture after something musical. He’s not a direct representation of Rocky, and Susie (his owner) and I discussed this. He was my boarder and immediately I knew I wanted to somehow capture this vibe he oozed! Kinetic energy – he was NEVER still but even when he paused, he was just letting the motion move through his body to strike off in a new direction promptly. And he always adopted such classical poses, despite that he wasn’t nearly as beefy as the breed’s ideal. In fact his breeders had left him a stallion until 6 I believe in the hopes that he’d bulk up in areas like his neck. As you can see from my photos below.

Rocky is unable to stand still, a firey ball of energy that you can sort of pick up on, even here. And when he moved, he was all kinds of action too (knee, hock - really marchy marchy little steps!).. I used to call him "Wiggle Worm" when I wasn't thinking of him as "lil Bub". :)

That said, his bones were all pretty much in the right spot for what I was striving for. So when I asked Susie about using him for measurements we discussed the beefing & his blood lines. And that was where the musical name theme came from – Rocky was short for Rakhmaninov (a German composer) and his sire was Beethoven. The theme of his offspring were to have musical names. So while my sculpture wasn’t intended to represent this bloodline specifically, I felt it important to honor that horse who’s dynamic presence was the inspiration for this work.

As you can see above and if you were to look up Beethoven’s line on google that his is *not* the body type I’m representing here in my Johann sculpture at all. I wanted to represent my vision of an idealized all around build, not a show ring one.. but that of the cool gelding that maaaaybe he gaits a little, maaaaybe he’s done some show ring work or some really impressive trails… maaaaybe he’s even got a career in show biz (civil war reenactments, movie doubles, you name it). Just an attractively built horse who’s likely to be a gelding.

Initially I was intending to represent a Lippitt or Bunk bloodlines…but I kept shying away from doing such a heavy front end/neck… Striving for the more generic/less extreme, yet still Morgan horse look. You know, the General Gates looking horse (http://www.sportmorgan.com/families/ ). It’s easy enough to go back and make him more extreme – but I wanted to show that “everyday” sort of guy with loads of charisma rather than a show horse.

So? How to define “Charismatic Everyday Guy!” as a breed to call my new sculpture??? Well I was stumped… ;) Over the years friends and I have given me all sorts of great suggestions… I shall now share some with you… SPOTS and all! :D

Connemara Pony anyone? (look at that gorgeous color too!) :) http://www.gotpetsonline.com/pictures/gallery/horses/all-by-photo/connemara-ponies/connemara-pony-0007/

Florida Cracker Horse? (I almost feel insulted for it?! The name origin is in there too btw) http://www.floridacrackerhorses.com/breed.htm

Foxtrotter? http://mofoxtrot.com/woodward/stallion.htm

KNGHA??? http://www.kngha.com/shop/stallion-showcase/bowmans-tobby/prod_45.html (the spots that I’d promised!) and this guy (!!!) http://www.kngha.com/shop/stallion-showcase/post-rock-thunder-mountain/prod_14.html “Post Rock Thunder Mountain” here is pretty much the vision of what I picture when I picture “a nice all around mount” (swoon!!!) .
All the the actual Morgan horses (and other breeds) I used photographs of as reference for this sculpture tended towards this last fellow’s look. Less cresty, very "robust".

More examples of wonderfully robust little KNGHA registered horses; http://www.ultimatehorsesite.com/breedsofhorses/kentuckynaturalgaitedhorsephotos.html
You can call it an amalgam rather than a typical definition of a breed, to me they are just a collection of wonderfully "can do" looking horses!

In truth someone pointed out to me a little while ago that I’ve been aiming for a Cavalry style look. I looked into this too and lo! There are just some wonderful photos out there in the public domain. Horses of unknown/mixed lineage. I also learned that the practice of gelding horses for the cavalry (here in the US) started around the time of the Civil War (it goes back to Greek/Roman times and probably earlier of course but I’m speaking of in the US). And a great deal more on how the bloodlines intermingled throughout the states as armies marched and horses were commandeered. Fascinating, and pretty ugly all around. That said, here are some amazing photographs from the Library of Congress;

source: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/cwpb.02002/?co=cwp

source: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/cph.3b21788/

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:DanielButterfieldonMount.jpg

http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/cph.3b38486/?co=cwp (title [O.H. Hart, full-length portrait, standing, left profile, in uniform, alongside horse] )

http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/cph.3b21787/?co=cwp (title Captain Beckwith's horse)

http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/cwpb.04101/?co=cwp (title Officer with horse)

http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/cwpb.01696/?co=cwp (title Cold Harbor, Virginia. U.S. Grant's horses: on left, EGYPT, center, CINCINNATI, right, JEFF DAVIS)

http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/cwpb.01997/?co=cwp (title
City Point, Virginia. Gen. U.S. Grant's horse, CINCINNATI)

http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/cwpb.01998/?co=cwp (title City Point, Virginia. Gen. U.S. Grant's horse. JEFF DAVIS )

Well if anyone needed any breed ideas for fun colors aside from standard "Morgan Bay, Chestnut & Black"!... there ya go!

Anyhow, I wonder sometimes if my creative process will ever be a nice simple story again. All the same, it's worth letting collectors know where these things come from. These days I've lost touch with Susie, she moved Rocky closer to her home where she could ride him more often. I then heard she moved out of state. Hope all is well with them and Susie, if you read this - I'd love to know how he's doing these days and if he ever did beef up! :)

Thanks for looking guys and thanks so much for all the enthusiasm about him. I'm just so eager to see him in coats of many colors soon. ;)

Waiting for paint to dry...

2010-11-19T16:07:00.000-08:00

Is just torture... I realized in almost all of my blogging of him over the past 2 years I NEVER shared his off side so here ya go! I'm going to get smacked for not showing really decently taken pictures again (glare and out of focus and all).. My friends are so great to try & steer me in the right direction... but I'm just off in left field. :)

This fellow is waiting for his primer here to dry so he can get his veins painted on now.

This really is blurry.. hrmph. Oh well... know better than to do this... I just couldn't resist sharing that face & those chunky rump bumps! :D

Editing to add on one more... made while waiting for dinner here.. I'm STARVING (we're making pizza here it takes SO LONG tho!) :D

Wild Pony Photoshoot Adventure! :)

2010-11-15T17:38:00.000-08:00

ALBUM -> http://www.artbymorgen.com/galleries/Shackleford_Ponies_2010/album/

Since moving down here to North Carolina I've been wanting to go out to Shackleford Island (isolated island of the Grand Banks) and see these "wild horses". They're ponies by everyone's standards but they are the descendants of shipwrecked Spanish (primarily they believe) horses from hundreds of years ago. "Banker Ponies" is another moniker they have if you're curious to look em up. :)

Now as my friend here (Maggie Bennett - she's the one in the leather jacket in the first pic) who went out there with me can tell you - no full size horse would survive on this island! It's got this low scrub brush interior that's ideal for tucking into during hurricanes.... and we very nearly had to get on our knees to navigate around ourselves on the horse paths in our exploration!

It was just the most fun ever! From our ferry trip out where wild dolphins leapt around our little 15ft ferry... to being dropped off on our own to explore like naturalists. Mosquitoes and swamp lands and all. Finding ponies (as you can see hopefully in many of those pics), in all kinds of surprising nooks and crannies all along the way during our adventure. :)

There are a little over a 100 ponies on this nine mile island. In four and a half hours we only made it half way down the island - no small feat with the hilly dunes and grasses that were really strong & tripped you all the time! At first it seemed like we kept seeing only the same 5 or 6 horses but in reviewing these pictures - and even then, you realize the hip numbers are different. It's almost surreal.

I don't get too excited about horses in real life anymore to be honest. I've spent half my life working with horses on a daily basis and I adore them but I don't get all"eeee" excited like a little kid usually anymore... I love to work with them and enjoy seeing them do well at what they do, or in interacting with them... but on the whole, I'm not one to go to uncomfortable lengths like this to see them usually. Not to horse shows per say, unless there is something exceptionally different going on. But there is something really magical about sneaking around to see horses in bands behaving like horses really do. It really rejuvenated the childlike wonder somehow for me - I joke that it was a "magical island" but it sincerely was pretty mystical.

So thank you so much to Maggie for going with me! She and I drove 4hrs from different directions to converge on this place. I'm really glad to have had company - and she also convinced me to use my nicer Nikon camera I bought this spring (I'm so afraid to take this thing out of the studio! It's a D3000 and I'm still really barely able to use it).. And she also convinced me to skip the tripod biz and use the auto settings (she has nearly the same model - I'm so used to "auto" being awful!). My Samsung point and shoot 1st choice camera's batteries didn't hold a charge in the cold I guess...

I would absolutely recommend to anyone wanting to go see wild ponies to consider this particular island. I just can't wait to go back this coming spring. I did want to go first in the fall here when the ponies were at their heaviest & had sprouted woolen coats... I'm so glad we did. From spring through Oct there are other ferry services that converge on it with groups - typically guided type ones as near as I can tell... but this was just a ferry service. When we landed there we looked at each other and had no clue what direction to start off in! Anyhow, so hopefully my little photo essay gives you a real feel for it. The weather was wonderful! Light warm breeze on and off. Around 70 degrees F and believe me, any warmer with that dune and sand walking and I dunno... we both hike with our dogs regularly but neither of us was in shape so it was a good workout! Next time though, I hope we can get dropped off at the other end of the island to see what's down there... ;)

Edited to add in the dolphin picture!
Maggie just sent me these. I looked for dolphins when we went to Madeira Beach last winter the WHOLE time we were down there. Everywhere we drove, I was staring off at the water afraid to blink... since I was told they were out there "ALL the time"... well I did finally see a few... far far away and I was pretty goofy excited. I've seen lots of dolphins in aquariums too and they don't get me too hyped up either... but wild? Hanging around checking out the people??? Nothing is more cool than that! So when these guys sprouted up as we were crossing the water, I was blown away. Our ferry fellow stopped for us. Maggie at least was ready to snap pics within 30 seconds.. me? I'm swearing and cursing and happy at least I brought two camera... ;) But no really, I was mostly just fumbling because I was afraid to look away from the water. Dolphins just rock. Magical wild pony island protected by wild dolphins. What a blast! :D

Actual product pictures - ornaments :)

2010-11-03T22:07:00.000-07:00

Web pages are now updated with actual pictures and massive enlargements of them so you can really see the details well. I’m so tickled how these came out!

They’re here; http://www.artbymorgen.com/serendipity.htm And http://www.artbymorgen.com/bravo.htm
I’m just going to stick with the two colors there. There may be slight variations of course in the bronze color especially, it’s all hand finished.

Please note also that Serendipity is going to be an “Open for 2010” only edition. And that Bravo is going to be limited to a one mold run – which is actually getting nearer than not to being sold out now.

Next post will hopefully be really exciting/new! ;)

Boogity boo! :D

2010-10-31T09:04:00.001-07:00

I dunno, this morning while my fellow was doing something online I felt inspired to goof around & strive for a bit more scary after all. :) BOO!

In part this post is about me being a twerp for a good & dear friend who (rightfully so) insisted that it's not a great idea to post a picture every time I flick an ear. Hahaha... sooooooo this morning I decided to flick an ear & open a mouth. Next I'm going to turn this overworked lump into a turkey for thanksgiving... at least that'll give this page a break from these absolutely non-new-item postings!! ;) (Ah but no seriously, a little levity is all I've got at the moment so hopefully my silly won't be misunderstood- it's all in good fun man!). :D

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!! :D

For Halloween a (sorta) new face?

2010-10-30T21:30:00.000-07:00

I dunno.. it's a little scary still yes? Well ok, no.. but he looks a little scared to me.. ha!.. Anyhow, I have no plans for this fellow.. just like my guys from the 14th aren't going anywhere, this guy isn't either (don't panic, I haven't lost my mind).

This guy was fun though to transform from my originally pony to warmblood type, back and forth, back and forth - smoosh and flatten..he's a perfect size for exercising my mind to think about what planes belong where, on who (WB vs pony) and why (who's jowl/eye/nostril/whatever is higher/lower/smaller etc etc). It's obviously still veeeeery exciting for me to have the ability to moosh around my initial form & gesture work like this, for days rather than a few hours. Much more liberating to not have to commit to a pose nor a build. :D Don't worry, I've got real things to focus on so he's not getting a lot of attention - since I made & shared him here before (the 21st I guess), I've only played with him while I caught up on the phone yesterday - and tonight while watching Sleepy Hollow. His other side is a all hacked up/hardly looks like anything but geometric shapes. He's too big to serve as a tack holder. Busts, ones like this too, are a dime a dozen too and he's big enough to be too costly to produce right now for a lark. SO, he's just an exercise mat for my sculpting brain for the time being .....AND of course all I've got for Halloweenee here. Have a spooky one though guys!:)

What IS this odd tangent w/these pretend bronzes all about?

2010-10-28T22:05:00.000-07:00

Well the last weren't precisely "pretend" - this one is "faux" though. :) I'm just sharing them because, well, otherwise most of these pics may never see the light of public day for any other reason.

I've been preparing photos for a # of non-hobby uses (well ok, and a couple of hobby ones). Horse magazine ads & competitions, and page on my website, so this is why I finally decided to photograph my little herd of cold cast and faux bronzes. (Faux bronze literally translates to mean "fake bronze" - in other words painted. Cold cast isn't "fake" per say because it's real bronze metal). For those who wondered about that on my medallion ordering link there of the swatches (I did!) the casting company had? That's the terminology. I have to admit that their faux bronze is a LOT more realistic looking than mine is.. I'll have to ask Sheri how she painted that. In the meantime, here's this gal. :)

adding this in;
http://mksculpt.blogspot.com/2010/09/tossing-aside-paint-brush-and-more.html
The picture there is the one on my brochure I had made this spring. MAN do I wish I had the photos I do now of dinky instead of that one there. Black is not the way to photograph brown horses (this is a duh to everyone but me, I know). I don't think I really had a point otherwise. I would like a re-do on that please. :)

You can also read too more on my obsession with doing life sized horses at some point... if I can't afford it, I may return to trying to do so with other media. I did this in college - a 1 room studio apt, 2 dogs and a cat. And a reasonably large horse sculpture made from some wood putty powder stuff. It started to fall to bits before I was done so that was given up. But my fiance has wood carving tools galore... the lure is strong... must make big. Must! ;)

Cold cast metals & me! :) (Holiday ornaments)

2010-10-26T19:38:00.001-07:00

Click to enlarge immensely!
New holiday ornament bas relief horsies up on website (http://www.artbymorgen.com) . For something entirely else here I've been photographing my cold cast pieces yesterday so I realized I could share them here - well at least a few pics - and give folks an idea of what this mysterious matter "cold cast" is (although folks at Breyerfest got to see these and there's a blog post below with them all together on a shelf). Compare these to the gal on my front page of my site there for example... in real life the difference between painted and the dark finished/polished metal is immediately obviously. My hand painted little arabian there probably should get sealed though too.. that might make the difference less obvious, I'm just not entirely sure which to try. I've done others and haven't liked the results. I'm not ready to tackle wax polishes as you would a real bronze or cold casting.

Soooooo for several years now I've made my own copy of each of my resins a "cold cast" bronze. I haven't collected them all yet (it does cost me a little more than double the cost of a normal resin). They have seams, so seamless things like medallion ornaments are one thing.. multi-part molded whole bodies of horses are another. The seams, even when cleaned up, do not clean up seamlessly like real bronze. You can see this on the pictures here if you enlarge them. I probably won't get one for either of my 2 largest horses - cold casting of metal into resin also increases the weight significantly - so you take a resin that's normally hollow, double that and then add another half for good measure! I fact for anyone considering it for their own horses I'd urge you to consider doubling up on the wires. 2 of mine have warped somewhat under their own weight.

The above is my Godiva resin and she's the lightest colored bronze I've gotten to date. I also REALLY stripped her darker polish color off by getting gunky on her and using (yes, prepare to want to smack me), using window cleaner pretty vigorously before I thought about what I was doing....I know, I know. So this isn't truly a fair example of how the darker points look because a little bit was cleaned off. Like bronze a like sealing wax /polish is the thing (not ammonia) ;) That gal has been through the ringer - she's been repaired too. Cold cast resins DO break. It's the poor artist's bronze, make no mistake!

This 3.5" tall "dinky duke" (who's creation is shown earlier in this blog from several years ago), is REALLY dark. Although in natural light he has pretty crisp highlights.

This close up is about the best I got of "realistic" color. Mind you they look terrific under display lighting, and pretty dark in dimmer lighting.. as with any bronze.

Mind you bronzes come in all sorts of shades too. AND the castings have variation, so some are darker/golder than others. I'm just dying to see what the silver and copper castings look like myself! :) Until next week...

And the new faces are quite old to here too now.. but here are those guys all wrapped up. By next week I hope to have actual cold cast metal ones to photograph so buyers can have a little more confidence in what they look like. I'm pretty tickled at how these came out. I do wish I could afford to donate cold cast metallic ones to shows like I do with unpainted resins, but it's just a bit too much for my budget this year. I've been trying to think of ways to help out shows still but I'm just at a loss! My last couple of show donations were OF horses. No seriously! (Well the more valuable ones were - at least I think they sell normally for more than these $35 retail value medallions I normally donate). Truth be told though I have had no luck ever selling OFs and figure if it's pristine I should get rid of it before I do any damage to it. Kinda not kidding sadly. Anyhow, so there's my little public service babble to remind people to donate to show holders whenever they think of it. In the meantime, back to the medallions & that saga's the end result (again I did NOT succeed with the Smooth On 305 and wound up having the casters make me these prototypes! :)

Obviously the above guy is named Bravo - in a little nod to his Spanish body type, and also for the fun of keeping the auditory & ICAO thing going too. I couldn't find a suitable auditory name for this gal, although I'd played with the idea of things like "Hear No Evil" and "Bell"... I wound up calling her "Serendipity" as a good luck charm. :)

Marketing fail over here. Editing to add in the link to the medallions http://www.artbymorgen.com/serendipity.htm and http://www.artbymorgen.com/bravo.htm
If you've read this far, you rock. :)

All kinds of things here :)

2010-10-21T22:06:00.000-07:00

Clearly from the picture there I’m still just incredibly inspired by the malabiltiy of modeling clay over [verses] apoxy sculpt still . No idea where the new bust is going (I started that tonight instead of a new medallion as I'm running out of relief ideas and am tossing a lot out so I wanted to switch it up by going fully 3d again). The black resin casting medallion is the prototype back from the casters, with all the little whisker bumps and such on her now... the other one just needs a touch up around the grass and he's ready to go out tomorrow/Sat too (well after a light mist of primer to make sure there's nothing missed there & take away the shiny some too).

I’m quite excited that the casters say they’ll be happy to make these medallions in their cold cast metallic finishes. These cold castings are just terrific. They look, feel and smell just like the real foundry created thing because they are metal (bronze, nickel-silver) powder added to the resin. Not to be confused with my metallic paint jobs- where I just use pearl and a few colors to mimic metals altogether… I would also like to try gold or copper leaf work someday. Perhaps someday soon! I’d like to make the mane/tails a different metal altogether. I have the most wonderful Fly Fishing resin by Kelly Savage of two horses grooming each other – she managed to pour two different metallic resins into the same mold to make a pewter colored and a bronzy colored horse. I adore this! They get “polished” so the relief areas are darker, it doesn’t look like NAN plaques for example. It’s very easy to confuse with the real thing until you pick up a bigger piece. I have my own personal copies of my resins in, which works for me b/c they can get shuffled around a lot, like right now everyone is jumbled into a box waiting for display shelves to go up. And I don’t have to worry about finishes getting damaged while they’re in storage.

One thing I’ve been neglecting badly is finishwork commissions. I’ve written to everyone who has a horse here now so if you haven’t heard from me well.. my emails haven’t gotten through? Anyhow, as they know, I have a small ton of things making it physically hard to paint over here, but after I wrap up these medallions tonight (tomorrow am?).. well it’ll be time to push away from the sculpting table for a bit until these last paint jobs are wrapped up.

I have that maroon Morganesque (baroque!) ;) pony there (Johann) so that I’ll be pushing myself harder to address the long overdue painted horses to get back to that to wrapping him up before the end of this year. I may do like I did with bitty & release to my group only, just before Christmas until the end of the year rather than just a shorter time period. Just haven't decided yet, so hard to gauge the market to be totally honest. I hope I can trust myself to work on him only in short stints if I’m making good headway on the finished horses that have priority now…. Bottom line is the pace needs to pick up here for me in a bunch of ways basically. The humidity and temp fluxuations in here have gone way down so that’ll help a LOT in the painting area too (being more comfortable). I’ll still be working side by side with another human in here in a pretty small area but that’s just a “deal with it” deal I guess (we can spend camping trips in similarly small spaces together… I suppose this bodes well for when he retires and will be around all the time again). I do kind of miss listening to my blaring TV (tuning it out all day long). So ironically it’s MORE quiet with him around all the time (like a library). ;)

So.. once more I’m up late here. Hope it all made sense. My early morning and late even compositions rarely do. Just thought I should jot something down here about the medallions being done basically & especially about the metallic options. I’d designed them from the beginning to be geared towards this look for my family gifts but they do cost me almost 3x more so I dunno if I’ll try a mixture of painting and leaf or what I’ll do..

Ok, time for bed here - eep! Hopefully next week I'll be sharing the medallion page here. Before then news is limited to my group for a bit (yadda yadda always the same wording - sorry!). :)\

The wee mini in the left-most corner is not sculpted by me btw! That was a gift from Sonya Johnson - it's her mini Teke I thought was just terrific! The horse skeleton you see too was just recently (last week) assembled by my man as well (he assembled that whole horse skeleton so he could clean up more and get rid of the box... not kidding!). I have gotta laugh about this irony - I used to joke to my friends that I need to be rich enough to hire house boys to cook and clean for me... little did I know you don't need to be rich for this - ha! (:-P No but sincerely, how flipping sweet is he, eh? (I've assembled one long ago that broke to bits long ago so he knew I wasn't going to mess with one of those kits again! And he still did it. What a great guy.) :)

Booger friends and obelisks :)

2010-10-14T17:02:00.000-07:00

I'm thinking of them as obelisks for no really practical reason - it calls to mind 2001 & the scary challenging monolith to me. The low relief style of bas relief really IS challenging to me. But it's also a chance to elaborate on a story more than a typical model horse sculpture allows.

If it paid the bills more I might sculpt horses galloping with riders through the sage brush or hunters jostling each other over a small farm gate in a fox hunt (just off the top of my head - these aren't ideas that have moved me, I just like scenery as evidenced by Flitwick's wall!). Anyhow, so here I can impart some hint of a story...but since I'm trying to work out my 2D/3D perspective grasp, I decided to go very narrow and force myself to try and cope.

One of these was done using a few very accurate angled reference photos and one was not. I hope it's pretty obvious which one was done without looking at anything at all. Yeahhhhh....

So a booger friend (this is all related!) ;) is what waitresses I've worked with in the past called you if you were honest enough to point out a boogie. Because NO ONE really likes to look up while they're ordering a meal and see that up the nostril of a waitress. So you were pretty darn grateful to be told the truth rather than spend the night wondering why customers were so distant and tips down (yes, subconsciously it happens when your waitress grosses you out!).

Anyhow, so I've always really appreciated people who've been brutally honest with me. My fiance is a great booger friend to me. And he was very tactful but clear about saying "these aren't very good". I love that. Anyhow, no need to spare my feelings guys - I'm not liking em all that much just yet myself.

I may never work out the issues I have with them. The issue, I know this from illustration work, is that I don't mentally render 3d objects into 2d planes easily. I work just fine from photos I suppose but I stink at pushing my own depth perception down flat. When I was doing illustrations freelance and wanted to get into medical illustration more I submitted a portfolio to a top illustrator working for a national museum who for some reason did critiques (it was a while ago, I'm sorry I don't remember why but it's worth looking up people who will do this who can offer tips and suggestions). One thing that surprised me was that she mistook all of my real life study sketches for works from photos, and photo-studies for works done from real life specimens. I was really confused by this and it took me YEARS to figure out that it was due to my issues in depth and perspective. At least I've got a boogie friend around to help warn me about it though! ;)

Right now it tickles my fancy (or I would've smushed it up already!) as some silly kind of medieval art. I can almost see some friar or servant of some sort being appropriate (I've seen too many medieval horse related fresco paintings at this angle in other words).

And last but not least, a silly chorus line... they're filled with pin holes - possibly uncured resin. Not safe at all. But boy are they fun to line up like this (and yes to arrange in other ways). Some of the out-take gang. The casters are making me real prototype castings. This particular resin in this climate was bad news bears for me!

I just got a kick out of them. The color gradient is a single drop more of black dye for each (1 to 4 drops).

I just like colored resin in general for seeing shape and prepping prototypes for production. I've offered them in the past but they aren't so popular (and let me reiterate that the undyed resin I got is bad, it wasn't the dye.. we very well may have let the humid air at it too long and just not be dry enough here to cast with in general). Anyhow, but reflecting light away makes for seeing every little surface detail so much easier than the white which is absorbing some of it. I work in stark light but over the years I'm coming to loath trying to prep nearly invisible seams on white horses. Yet I hate to add even one more layer of primer than is necessary (so I try to do just one final last layer), when it comes to holding in detail on a sculpture that's going to be cast. I went with white primer for only one sculpture and I really regretted that to the bitter end. :D Photographing him was a trial for me too. Anyhow, wow - minor essay here entitled "why I love resins in any color but white". ;)

Great fall feeling evening here finally! :D Hope everyone has been enjoying it - off to help install heaters now here though... it won't be hitting 90 too many more times here I suppose. ;)

Had to stop playing around for a day here...

2010-10-11T21:05:00.001-07:00

BUT in the meantime I spoke with the casters and they seem to feel it's the Smooth On 305 that's the likely culprit.

I have a couple of castings that are prototype-worthy to add final details to. But I'm going to see if they can get a cleaner one for me. For the cost of the USPS flat rate box... and a few bucks to them for resin, it's worth it for me not to waste a day playing around with bubbles if they can get a better one. The mold is pretty nice and while I've been beating on em with casting after casting - and a bit or two torn off from mane undercuts... yet I think they've got lots of life left.. ;)

I have a MOST awesome bunch of tips coming up about pin-holes and bubbles next though. Gotta recharge camera batteries. These are just too perfect as examples not to use to share the info. Trots off to bed now & to pop the batteries in the recharger. ;)

Bubblefest 2010! (molds work..now to learn how to cast proper)

2010-10-10T10:54:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I've mastered the art of measuring. I kid you not I've eyeballed out the 2 pt mix resin volume for both castings with zero to spare. This is what remains of my drinking-games days. I used to want to bartend and would pour perfect shots every time into any type of cup. I guess this helped in the lab too.. except for when I spilled acid all over my benchtops. Yes, not the field for me to work in. Here you see how I spill all over the counter. Got the right amount inside of the cup... but a little over here and there too. (This is also why bartending never worked out for me either). ;)

My fiance did the other pouring... here's what happens when I try to pour gooey liquids.. this isn't the half of it actually. Somehow it got ALL over all the bottles. Wasteful wasteful tsk tsk -sighs-

First we did white resin;

The mold is full of clear liquid - this is really hard to show of course. Then when the reaction starts to happen this cloud of opacity spreads out. It's quite cool to see. I am wearing a mask & there's a big fan going on over here btw.

So I could see in the white resin that there were bazillions of little surface bubbles. So I decided to just give the black stuff a test again too. Yesterday's test of the 2 colors (normal white or with black dye added) showed interesting results for how the bubbles broke up differently in the black dyed one. Could've been temperature, stirring, our own mixing ratio differences. Lord only knows, seriously! THIS is why I don't have the slightest interest in casting my own en mass. I see these small armies of castings my fellow sculptors turn out and my hat goes off to them. We'll see.

Air bubble fest - this is NOT a surprise, I knew this was the main issue to begin with (the 2nd issue being consistently mixing things properly. Some swear by this or that, my own casters use baby powder and swear it's the reason they don't get surface bubbles. But they don't use much release agent as a result. Anyhow, so I wasn't sure they could mix - twas digging around online just as Becky Turner's comment off of my last post came in & she described to me how the baby powder can go WITH the resin release (and to tap it around like cake pan coating) so we'll see. I'll wait until the casting is done in another 20min before I post this!

My first castings in pure white (also helped to clean off clay from the mold - interesting!) were ok for a first try! I'm trying to fill in the grass on the standing boy & the mane more on the head so that these will be thicker for production castings. Thin on any kind of casting lead to bubbles and uncast spots. Anyhow, though, I got little eartip missing holes and nostril bubbles, the bigger kind... and millions of wee ones that hadn't quite broken the surface so they look like a small disease coating the surface? Soooooooo we went with a different pouring/mixing style and black dye to confirm that we stink at this! :D No seriously, you have GOT to enlarge these to understand just HOW MANY bubbles there are. These are nearly impossible to salvage;

I'll admit too that I'm a little sad the detail isn't as crisp as I thought it would be in some spots, although the above photo is out of focus on the horse and focused more on my finger prints -wow! This though is precisely why I wouldn't have sent clay to be cast finally & left off the facial vein there too.

Btw, the mane flashing excess is intentional - I sculpted the mane tips pretty thin so we leveled these where this area is (if not100% level) going to be the planar low point.. thus it'll be the thickest point of the casting. And all I have to do is trim around it and carefully cut out the loops & whirls.

I still wuvs the nosie nose though! :D (If you enlarge this you'll see the air bubbles at their most shocking!!!) (:-o Ok, I think I've figured out what this is... it's Falcor from the Never Ending Story isn't it... I'm SO unoriginal I really am! UGH!

Anyhow, this one isn't as bad as the next one WITH baby powder - believe it or not!

I'm gonna run for now and go look up some things about this. The lowest/deepest spots where it catalyzes first are the spots where the most bubbles form up. And we're pouring slow, thinly, and doing it all as they tell us to. With and without dye too. Time to watch some online vids & find a trouble shooting section.

Well truth is, if I have to I can work with the one in my hand here. The black (which is blue to purple in reality unless a LOT is used)... is nice at least for showing every little flaw very well. I would have all my resins cast in black except I know it's more work for the casters and surprisingly few people want it because many people start painting with white primer (verses reds or greys).

Ok, off to research during this next half hour. I'm very pessimistic about the one we just poured given how the bubbles coalesced in the same way as the worst one before it. Hrmm... ;)

Edit 20min later to add this in;

Hmmm castings get worse as day rolls on...
http://www.smooth-on.com/faq_display.php?faq_id=3&cID=2 (so many possible things to rule out!)
like... hmm..
Humidity has gone DOWN today here but maybe not in the work building I'm using?

Release agent here sounds like the # 1 likely suspect from what they're saying.. it's time for me to demold the next batch so we'll see..

Edit ~1hr later to add this in;
Seems like the bubbles continue to come from the most creased parts of the mold. Trapped moisture? Release agent still?

White castings came out ok.. possibly the least pin-holed (no release agent used, just powder - thinking there may be some release agent still trapped inside however). Now black (with less dye) is curing up as I type.

My fiance officially finds this to be NO fun. I asked him if he's enjoying being surrounded by horsies and he said "no"... :-/ My hand-steady skills will have to improve here for this.

This stuff is expensive to be experimenting with like this. This is why I'm watching, taking notes all over the place (the flashing on these castings is covered in notes). :-P

It's almost like science again. Except unlike microbiology I can really see this stuff sprout to life before my eyes! (The child in me is gratified). ;)

And now for a very long wait...! ;)

2010-10-09T10:57:00.000-07:00

While I wait I'll share more in depth thoughts I haven't made very clear. I probably sound exceptionally manic (which is fine for an artist I guess) in comparison to my typical blog rambles and meanderings. I realized I may not have made it totally clear why the "sudden" switchover from apoxies to clays here. Before I show my little days adventure pics below, I'll share why's & when's of that decision... I've actually been planning to get into modeling clay again when I moved down here and finally had the ability to cast outdoors (apartment living is not great for casting). I rented a barn before, but I didn't have my backup plan of living near people who can help me cast waste molds if need be before.. now we still don't own, but we have a lot more outside than before! (And warmer too - whew!) ;)

First though, I had to take "final" pictures of the clay in case it was the last time I see these guys like this! ;) They're being molded right now and it all could be for naught if the silicone rubber doesn't cure right! (:-o I've had my own bad luck plenty and have heard so many other's scary stories as well.. (So far so good though -crossing fingers!-)...

Had fun with relief illusion of head-on look when the horse isn't actually looking head on at you...

Neoclassicism? Roccoco? Straight up Romanticism? Don't ask me, thhbt! lol! No but seriously, I've always been very into Greek and Roman relief work and that very romantic style of Stubbs (with his exaggerated eyes and wildly curly wavy hair)... & let me tell you that is NOT easy either in Apoxy Sculpt.. ;) So "weeeee" again! :D

I float between wondering whether she was inspired by Stubbs or (eek snort) Fuseli (go look him up) ;)…! I’d would like to plead that I was inspired by Stubbs though..! ;) Or Raphael since I have most cool prints by both and very few other framed horse pictures around here (clearly I dig em).

Relatively speaking molding & casting is nothing big of course for most people - I know - I know... ... but for me this is the toughest part. I get attached to works when I make them, once I'm done it doesn't bother me if they're destroyed even but before then, it's hard. & I'm not totally done yet! Pictures below of this morning's folly!

See for years I’ve been wanting to go back to sculpting in softer clay – not necessarily “soft” clay but modeling clay verses 2 part hardening epoxy which acts like clay for 1-3hrs and then “cures” into something very similar to soap stone. I’ve been wanting to sculpt again in something that stays more malleable permanently than this rock-solid Apoxie Sculpt I currently work in. Something where the proportion or pose can be changed SO much more easily be adjusted at ANY point in the sculpting process… which is a major issue/challenge for me with Apoxy. If you’ve followed my works over the years you see me changing some pretty significant things right up toward the end of the pieces’ completion – a whole shoulder shifting, neck length changes…this sort of thing. When I talk with my fellow sculptors who work exclusively in clay we have these discussions “so how do you go about changing something like this in your medium”.

An example of details that take me weeks to get in Apoxie Sculpt - took only an evening or two basically in clay.

There are challenges in clay too, after a certain point you risk ruining a lot of hard won detail – this isn’t such an issue in apoxie sculpt for example – but making subtle changes overall is a LOT of work… so a minor shift to a more natural pose ALSO requires a million hours of tweaking every muscle that ties in (which can be the whole horse just about – hahaha!). Sometimes it’s a LOT easier too mind you. Especially something like lengthening the barrel. Every one of my sculptures have had the barrel lengthened – some by pretty significant amounts and others you could argue are still pretty short-backed (although in riding horses short backs are nice strong backs too so I tend to favor that look). Anyhow, I’ve heard some horror stories from fellow clay sculptors about lengthening a back for example.

So sure, clay isn’t a magic medium but it’s something I’ve been playing with since I was young and I’ve always really really liked.. I just never made anything too serious, due to the pain/risks/complexity & costs of casting. At least (I reasoned) with apoxie sculpt the sculptures I gave up on (there are MANY – like there were 2 iterations of Deputed Duke.. several of other horses that never went anywhere.. ). Anyhow, giving up on one only cost around $20 of wasted material and time.

In the past few years however I kept returning to the idea that I’d like to pick up again with clay. And a BIG draw of moving south is that I’m 5-6hrs from the casters and now I can drive my work over to them and let them make the waste mold if a sculpture is worth completing, and I'm at a loss for how best to cast a single casting - molding is only half the battle…! I’m not exaggerating about that, it was a big factor for me. Maybe I can watch them and someday feel confident enough to do a horse’s waste mold.. but frankly I’ve encountered some painful set backs. The cost of even one resin’s waste mold is too expensive for me to screw around with (silicone rubber in the several hundred dollar range). Some artists just go from clay to production mold and I suspect I’d be tempted too – with that sort of waste mold prototype-making cost…. However there are several reasons why that’s not ideal… so I kept hemming and hawing and just playing it safe (ala SLOW) with the Apoxie sculpt…

At any rate, so while I’ve got my current Apoxie Sculpt horse nearing completion now, and I’m just wildly excited about him – woot!! – well I’m also obviously greatly looking forward to my next 2 horses that I plan to do in clay! I’d started that wee pony in Apoxie Sculpt *but* there were some width issues with the hind legs I’ve been annoyed with and well (!) ;) what better excuse to start over in clay as well (and while I’m at it I’ll just go a wee tad smaller so that the pushy pony can be paired up with the inquisitive horse – I’m adoring the look of the scene and have no models currently that pair up well with each other.

It’s not a fair comparison time wise to compare my completion time on sculptures in various media since I haven’t been able to devote myself to a sculpture 100% since way back in 2005 with Bosco. Long days spent round the clock wrapping him up. That was the only time I was exclusively able to work F/T on sculpting (or painting) day after day, before & since then I’ve had 2 -3 jobs here aside from sculpting & painting. That said, overall I’m already finding the ole’ college and earlier lessons learning flooding back to me. Plus now there is the benefit of the internet to watch other artists working in videos on youtube for ideas/tips & inspiration! :)

Mind you I grew up with these things being given to me to entertain me (only child w/no other kids around very often). ;) I gave up on traditional water based and oil based clays in my youth after many exceptionally disheartening experiences. I took some classes at http://www.wesleyanpotters.com/ for example… throwing and just straight up sculpting… something always got broken. Ditto for high school pottery where I did sculpt a horse, it was laying down. Something else in the kiln took it’s head off however…. I was so broken hearted. It was a huge fear that I’d have trapped air so I spent an enormous amount of time hollowing the head, then the neck and then the body out as I sculpted it. I’ll never forget how dismaying that was, seriously. Of course there are no photos.

I had a successful bust made in college – cast from clay… my dog ate it and it was the only casting we’d gotten from the mold (think the mold had to be broken to remove it)... I kid you not… it was plaster coated with stinky shoe polishes. I’m really pretty surprised the dog didn’t get violently ill from it all. He had pretty good separation anxiety and also ate half a coffee table another time he’d gotten out of his crate when no one was home. Anyhow, this was before digital cameras too so I have a few pics of these but nothing great.

All that said? I just still adore clay. So please forgive my manic excitement to be playing with it again. I’ve very very deliberately avoided it to be honest. I had some pottery clay recently but I passive aggressively let it dry out. ;) & Well now I’ve gotten an excuse to give it a whirl again – all this family back in New England that I need to send Christmas gifts too! :) & Ahhhh boy have I missed the smell/feel of it – it makes me feel like a “real” sculptor! ;) This is in NO way intended to diss those of us who are using (still me!) hardening epoxies…. There are a good # of very well known sculptors out there who do stick to Apoxie sculpt.

Some fun areas where I've been having a blast adding texture to the body - so much easier than with Apoxie Sculpt also...!

The next step for me I guess is to find good strong magnets (I'll have time while these are at the casters.. we have a LOT of family - I tend to make 30 gifts or so per year it seems so anything hand done is still a week or more of work... the casters are much better set up for this type of thing!). ;) Anyhow, I think the best way to gift these is probably as fridge magnets… ok, so it’s not exactly “fine art” but then ornaments aren’t entirely either I guess? Anyhow, until we can pop those castings out tomorrow, a little photo essay of the prototype mold making here. The test casting from yesterday came out fine. Some air bubbles but barely noticeable. I’ll be dealing with any of those in the prototype & then letting the casters do the real castings for me. The cost is nearly the same as materials are for me, and frankly we just aren’t that good at it. I’m over here burning myself with hot glue… I have opinions on the way he pours, or accidentally bumps into the clay sometimes too… (but no seriously ! I’m just lucky he’s pouring at all!!!). Anywho, we sure aren’t going to be converting his shop here into this full time. ;)

1st tho; if you were sincerely looking for information on casting let me send you over to read this;
http://www.hhhorses.com/moldmaking.html or recommend Karen Gerhardt's article "Making a Simple Box Mold for Small-Quantity Resin casting" for the issues relating SPECIFICALLY to casting horses (and there are many more than making these flat reliefs... this is just a fun tutorial). If you're looking for info on the materials, may I recommend the many many videos on Smooth-On's site.

Little green test mold there on the blue square (CD case). The indentation is the 'ingot' we cast. I made a little tool, something with little veins on it that was rounded that I can make raised veins on horses with. Might as well make a useful piece. We got white casting resin but a little black dye. Wanted to see how the resin cured with the dye too...

It's so shallow he overpoured a little resin (it's tricky!). I was able to cut it away. We did get the resin with the 7min cure time however because we wanted to have enough time to mix the dyes. We only need one casting per model... so we can wait an hour or more for it to fully cure (it does come out softer even after 1/2 an hour I made a thumbprint on it... interesting.. after 2-3 hours it was normal for resin.

Had to pause to go out and save this Praying Mantis from the dog. They are SO docile! It just flew down & stood there while I photographed it from all angles. Oakes had the sense to get the stick before the dog finally noticed. They fly like whirly-copters... hysterical! :)

The horses in their boxes... after the first box (horse head) he decided there might not be enough rubber left from the trail size for the second horse so we trimmed up the box (see below)

I love the gooey look of silicone!

Mmmmm tastey! Bye bye horsie, hope to see you again! ;)

Scary stuff for me to attempt but exciting times in general!

Weeeeeeee! :)

2010-10-04T22:01:00.000-07:00

Whoa babe hold me down I'm having TOO much fun now...! :D
(forgive my thumbnail please - it's not yellow, it's the lighting I swear!) ;)

Oil based solvents... that's the trick!

2010-10-04T11:53:00.000-07:00

Thank you most sincerely for the tips guys - I really do appreciate the input more than you possibly could know & would love to hear more ideas too. Working alone is hard - even with the web out there, its not the same & "studio days" with friends are a luxury months and months apart.

While I know people find commercial art fields inhibiting, working in the group settings in art departments is something I envy. I've gotten to work with some people/art depts at my old corporate job (although there I also was alone and it was a lonely job a lot, not just because I preferred working into the evening - but being the only person in the dept who did what I did was simply lonely work). Also I have friends who have gone into fields with group interaction environments. And as a kid hanging out with my dad at Coleco (a long defunct toy company- smurf figurines and cabbage patch kids are probably what you'd know best?)... anyhow I hung out there a great deal as a kid and got to really see how artists interact while being very focused.... Then of course classroom settings too where ideas fly around fast and furious and hands on demonstrations are constantly possible. Anyhow, reading 'how to's' on the internet just doesn't replace live human interactions sometimes but hearing first hand from friends you know comes really close. So thank you SO much guys!

Oct 3rd revisiting Thur's horse - mojo goes thbbbbt....

2010-10-03T19:35:00.000-07:00

Lol - no no, I'm not crashing... I'm just coming to a point where I either need to learn how to smooth these better in oil based clay (I've tried a # of things I know of but maybe I'm not doing them right).. orrrr I need to give up and when (I'll probably do one or more of these from the past few days as gifts at least for the family), then I can get things smooth... I'm sleepy early (for me!) so I'll let the pictures explain.. I can get rid of the burrs & torn areas, it's areas like over the bridge of the nose, jowl muscles, throat area - these I can't seem to get smooth with tools at hand (like I did the neck with my fingers...)...

Yes some of that darkness over the nose for example is burn-stained clay from my heated tools being too hot... oops!

After looking at the first pic there in reverse I'm tempted to look into the craft store types of casting materials... there must be some interesting stuff out there I bet! Clay is so creamy - just love that! Want to make mermaids and kelp now - YES I'm SO KITSCHY hahaha!!! So sorry! :D (tired too - g'nite!)

Added this on in the morning - DOH! Would help to know this; This is Van Aken clay & is similar to most plastalines but it's less oily than what I'm used to.. waxier too. I think that's part of it. (Oh and rubbing alcohol does very funky things). In water-based clays it's easy to smooth nice enough with brushes, this is an oil based clay I've tried the brush/mineral oil means to & it makes it gummy.

Oct 2nd's...promising a career in chocolates maybe? :D

2010-10-02T22:22:00.000-07:00

These make me hungry - it doesn't look quite so much like a chocolate bar in person... gray-green and all. Flash being funny.

Tonights medallion made during "Gladiator"... I'm inspired to try and do a bunch of different breeds in different doorways. I love the narrow look. My working area will love storing smaller & more narrow clay sculptures too at this rate. ;)

(mmm nom nom man!) :D
The archway illusion was just far too fun to do, it's even deeper than it looks here. I mostly wanted to show how flat the horse was. The tail and some mane/forelock details are still just etched out. I'll be using some further positive and negative relief on them to 'build' depth later when I come back to it to fix it up... for now I'm just setting this "exercise" aside too.

Unless I decide to put this "artform" into chocolate making use... Skye??? Skye??? Maybe you want to make some River chocolates? Cranky Crystal mare chocolates?? mmmm!

Oct 1st evening's medallion - after dinner playing again

2010-10-02T09:56:00.001-07:00

Edit later on to post this updated pic that I finally got the camera "macro" setting on to take! :D

I'm not sure these are really going anywhere. I see SO many flaws (relief and flat artwork relying on giving proper perspective doesn't come naturally at all to me). I'm focusing working on improving my eye for proportion in shorter periods of time (ok, well at ALL)! ;) I'm not allowing myself to even take quickie measurements like I normally would (ratio measurements I mean - comparing length of this to that). These are just "freehand" exercises.

It's also a great excuse to bust out with the nice scented candles! (I like to warm the tools).

The goal I've set for myself is to get as far as possible after dinner before going to sleep.... so my fella watched 'The Green Mile' and I just listened while whittling away. Course I had to leave the room during the part at the end that's profoundly sad. I've learned that tear jerkers (I'm a pushover with any), are not conducive to sculpting/painting/anything. Can't work while crying - and even just listening to sad movies can get me all misty and unable to work.

ANYHOW, so we'll see. I may try to make some ornaments for the family for Christmas. It's getting a bit late for that now however. Hrmm.... So at any rate though, this is todays "challenge" to myself. It's like being back in school again...! :D

I may have to focus on fixing up/refining something however... or tossing out.. because I don't have the shelf space for even these... It could get ugly trying to keep any around..! :-P

Later same day - a tip occured to me! :)

2010-09-30T14:28:00.000-07:00

I just realized that while we did this in college (and if it was taught there, it wasn't any big secret in other words!) :D buuuuut I've never seen anyone doing it with horse sculpting..??? I've seen similar but not quite the same with the cloth tapes. So I figured I'd share these pics & the why-for's.

Basically the green stuff there over the leg wires is athletic tape, very coarse as the pictures show if you click to enlarge them. I super glue it to the leg wires & use some baking soda that reacts with the super glue to give it more to tack on to. There's just nothing I hate more than epoxy popping off of wires - so maybe this will help with non-hardening modeling clay at this scale... I dunno. We did it only on a larger scale in college - like I said it's just worked for me with epoxies. So no one shoot me please if it turns out to be a terrible idea.

I show this close up because it shows how nicely the open weave of the athletic tape mooshes into the clay for better 'stick'.

Btw, it's crackin me up that the camera is adding pounds to this boy. He's still in the emaciated stage as I get his joints (shoulder & hip ones right now) to stand still where I want em.

Anyhow, so that's the follow up to the last post there! It became this beastie who was inspired by a horse (well a couple actually) I saw last weekend. :D

And where that all wound up after a day of "can't pull me away from this!" :D

I'm going to set him way way aside for a good long time and get back to more pressing things now. :D Pony who's also got to wait for further attention is very curious about him...