Some close ups and status :)

Well I have gotten farther than I’d hoped but sadly I’m going to be really busy with outside work for the next 2 weeks. I hope to accomplish more now that I’ve got ‘the hang’ of the material better than when I worked on dinky duke. It’s a porous material and I’m only working on the right side at the moment. The mane and tail will come last. :) I managed to drop in to Baystate Live yesterday (I had some resins to pick up and drop off), but several people asked about the tail being so narrow, it won’t be in the end. I don’t plan to have it “fluffy” but somewhere in between (not as thick nor as hard to prep as large Bosco was...yes, I've heard your feedback!!). ;) The mane and tail will be done in epoxy and by then the horse will probably be primered at least once to ensure he’s smooth. (I will also probably take more close up photos because I'll need the camera's macros' to help me find flaws!).. Suffice to say he needs to be smoother and MUCH more crisp in detail (I’m sure the photos will tell you as much!) before I have hair details I might sand/chip off and have to redo? Hope that makes sense! Lol!


Wet sanding (solvent actually) helps see where the staggered Objet print lines remain.(Objet is the laser reproduction method used.. believe it or not it's one of the best methods available... currently... hrmph! lol!)


The main body is easy enough to smooth but even there there’s detail in larger contour emphasis that needs to come back in my estimation


Some crispness on the face now and I’ve hollowed out ONE nostril – lol!


Check out what I get to work with to start at this size!!


(and speaking of, I went to LARGE stablemate, or small Little Bit size. I’ve seen it called both frankly and haven’t had the time to go look up what 3.2” is in hobby scale terms.. he’s a shade smaller than dinky though and a lot less long of course!) ;)


And this last shows crisp detail but how the porous material needs a lot of filling in with primer/sanding/primer etc in order to get a piece worthy of casting. You can also see on his braciocephalis how those staggered lines are.. what a battle eh?! Tons of smoothing AND detailing clearly left to do!

Hot off the press!!! :)

eeee!!!!! :D

Soooo much work to do now though... trots off to studio. ;)
(he did wind up being large SM size - I'll give real ratios later on..!)

Virtual Bosco! :)

This just in...





There are more angles of course. This is how I get to "approve" of the digital files before they are printed out. Of course it'll be virtually flipped too:


They just look so nifty, eh? Mind you I am actually groaning about the TON of detail I'll have to recreate (resculpt with smaller tools). The hair I decided need to be smoothed before scanning so I could just resculpt it on anew with Apoxie Sculpt (or etch it... I want it to be REALLY fine lines and the scanning just won't produce that so there was no point in creating it fine before scanning). Things like feathers, eye details (like lids? yeah.. those are too fine for the scanning to reproduce too) etc etc.. with those nothing but good old fashioned wittling away and tiny work as you would with any mini is needed on the miniaturized version. And when all the detail is added THEN it goes off to a caster like Mountain View Studios to be cast as any other sculpture to resin would be.

Hope that made sense. I was bursting to share the screen shots!

Added on Sat afternoon for to answer Alicia and a few other's questions.. :)

(big files worth viewing to see how rough they are)

Duke's scan for "dinky duke":


What I'll get back with bitty too:



and what I'll have to get it to in terms of smoothness and detail before it's ready to send out:


Actually, I'd like to pack in even more detail or emphasize it more this time. Always trying to improve on things ya know.. :) Anyhow, since a bazillion dinky dukes are out there you can see that the lines are crisp in spots, it just takes time (almost like resculpting the whole final stages!) to smooth and then add crisp details obviously. :)

So far so good! :D

I * LOVE * THIS * SCULPTURE. :D


Sarah Mink really outdid herself with this gal's face imo... color just flows on so nice and real and you hardly have to do anything as a painter imo to draw out life. Just pick a shade and apply and viola! A little wee horsie!


So far I've only applied one coat of oils here. The shine is partly because I've used a slow aperture flash setting. I have no idea how to use that thing after 9 years. Isn't that sad? lol! Anyhow, it's in the painting case drying and I wasn't about to bust out with the real lights and move her too much.

I'm making a base too. I won't permanently attach her but she is so small and fine that tipping is easy. If her someday owner wants to, a tiny dab of sticky wax would help prevent it. Plus she just *needs* a dramatic stand imo. :D

Now I need to wait forever for her to dry more before I can get to the second coat of oils. -sighs- :(
She is SO much fun to paint... the torture of oils! argh!!

Work smarter..

Have you watched the move “Office Space”? There’s this saying repeated throughout the movie about having a “case of the Monday’s” that’s pretty entertaining. In a related vein, try telling someone with perfectionist tendencies like me to “work smarter not harder”. ;) Really. Try it with your favorite overly self-critical artist friends. Duck after you say this. :D

Seriously though, when you do this sort of thing for a living you really seriously MUST work smarter. Each work is an endeavor to balance the airy-fairy idealism of what most perceive fine art to be.. with the brutal cold fact that we are striving to make improvements and yet not invest our lifetimes on one piece in fiddling ad infinitum. I can forever fiddle with the best of em. My artist friends and I all remind each other not to get sucked into the vortex time warp of the never ending work. It’s one thing with a sculpture to put that extra month (or year – coughcough) in. The sales for castings will only pick up the pace as time goes on and the work gets out if all that extra time was well spent (and the converse of that is dire to sculptor to overcome in future sales if a sloppy sculpt escapes the studio). However with individual painted pieces this isn’t so. Sometimes they never get viewed at shows and yet they are a precious addition to a prized coveted collection. I’m not talking about prices. I’m talking about the portfolio that is what gets to shows around the world. So it’s a far bigger gamble for the painting artist to be low-output. (tiny voice -> like me!).

Do I wish I could create amazingly detailed works faster and faster and still maintain my personal hyper-detailing style? Sure. Not entirely realistic unless I’m getting the hang of the media. THIS said however, (big sly grin), I am getting the hang of it in some respects. And for my wee tiny Vixen casting I’ve departed from a paint-over style to a blend-throughout all coats style. This is her in primer.

Red and white primers. So that the final work preserves the crazy insane detail this miniscule piece has. I’m simply stoked! :D

Already I’m not dealing with color blending issues typically seen with appy blankets. I loath the painted on white look and strive (succeed or fail) to really overcome it. And man do I love the silly miniscule hair details. There aren’t any of those yet. She’ll be given several oil layers over this. Ah but the macroscopic view is already inspiring to me and this only makes the crazy close ups (the ones like on that Mindy I’d done earlier this year that can only be seen by camera macros or magnifying glasses) just that much more fun to add in the end. Snoopy dance of joyjoy!

Chestnut mare beware! Heh heh.. (that’s not her name but that’s certainly her motto!)

ps I will (when done) sell her in the usual way. I give the heads up in advance only to my yahoogroup peeps. I haven't decided on the venue. I'm pretty sure I won't be using eBay for a long long time again. I was looking for something for sale there the other day and searching even by it's name and keywords in the auction wouldn't bring it up. Nor would sorting by the price it was currently at. Bad times with the DSR rating system. Not a fan over here.

Guess I should submit Hazel for a Legion of Merit Award?

I have never really thought about those but someone pointed out to me that the award points are cumulative. Anyhow, this past weekend she got first (yay!) at Gold Country Model Horse Show in Sacramento, CA. in American WB under judge Sharon Carabajal. So she now has 9 NAN cards from across the land in halter and perf. Hmmm.

THANK YOU Vanessa Dahl for showing her there for me!!

Hazel’s next stop is in Nebraska with veteran proxy shower Diana Parker. :) Diana has 3 upcoming shows in the next 3 months. I haven’t managed to coordinate performance as well (I stink at coordination!). In fact there was someone who’d offered to show her at Stone’s show in KY during Breyerfest and I TOTALLY dropped the ball there. Duh.

Well anyhow, I have to wait until some cards show up but how fun is that? :) I really need to set up another performance shower because Hazel has told me she would only be honored if she could earn a “Versatility” award. ;) She’s a competitive minded woman you know. Lol! :D

Update on the little Lippitt fellow (was "Rocky")

[added on later] moved front legs fwd and fiddled with some other spots to accentuate today! :) plus photoshopation of course there ;)


I think it's almost been a year now since I shared any photos of this little dude.. maybe? I dunno ut since then I really redid a lot of his body type and he's departed quite a bit from the ASB/tube shaped show-style Morgan that the real horse I knew named Rocky was. I LOVE the Ethan Allen type Morgan.

It's funny b/c the proportions didn't change much at all, just where the beef was laid down on the sculpture did.

That left hind is a nightmare to get right. It cracks me up too b/c I have TONS upon TONS of photos of Morgans (thank you Tom B for all those wonderful magazines!!!) with their legs exactly like this and it's still hard to get. Right now the pastern and hoof are set on wrong and the hoof angle is off. I moved it around some and thus have to recenter and shape all that... I won't really address it full until I'm satisfied with where the muscle groups all are and the details of their shapes are all carved in.

Oh yeah, lol -> and make sure all the measurements still stayed the same. ;)

Speaking of details, I soooo soo can't wait to get to the ones on this guy. The little plump neck wrinkles. The wavy tail and mane (love thick wavy Morgan manes and tails).

He's large classic or very small traditional. 7 inches or so at the ears.

So these are the fun things I've been working on while Lisa handles orders and time payments! YAY! :D After nearly 3 months of almost absolutely no studio work (because of the night job sleep and daytime t-storm watches), this feels so wonderfully productive.

Take the horse in-progress photo as it is thought iwth a major grain of salt - he's 2D practically! He's got almost nothing on any of the other sides. lol! ;) Lots more to do. And with "bitty b" being anticipated back in a few weeks I won't touch him after that until "bitty" is done. Oh but I have been painting up a storm too. :)

Off to slather up in sunscreen and work outside for a while now... can't wait to get back to this! :D

Aww heck. I'll throw in a REALLY hard to grasp flash shot too (flash takes away all shape with apoxie sculpt sans primer):