Poll time! :) Plus another sneak peek ;)

Ok, well at a show this weekend I got a lot of great input about Ms. Fiesty. There remains a massive dichotomy however about her mane tail. Thus, I've decided to do a poll.

I would like to say this first - mane/tail lifted OFF the body allows for much faster customization should I choose to do 2 hair types ultimately.

Anyhow, here are the options, I've broken them down by 1-4 "ideas" below. Mind you these aren't exactly where each hair tendril would go.. but it's an idea of how they would look ultimately. The mare herself is still under major construction. I'm unhappy with the face in areas and really feel the body needs a great deal more refinement in spots too. That said, since this poll will run for a few weeks I figured I should start it now anyhow. ;) Please keep in mind that these pics were taken slightly from above. It would affect how the hair lays. I'm trying to represent in photoshop 'fake hair' something very 3D.

Pic 1 - hair will be curling back on the mane, tail would be swishing


Pic 2 - mane the same, curling back, tail more straight but still swishing side to side some


Pic 3 - very little side to side on both mane and tail, but a tad of an angle on the tail so that one part could attach to a leg


Pic 4 - obviously more side to side on the tail, mane more unruly (and fragile)


And lastly - a sneak preview of Tiberius! :)

I dunno man... I think she wants to be WILDER..

I think she wants a flingly mane - coming DOWN from whiping her head around... hmmm..

I may go ask on Blab about this... meanwhile I was just playing in PS again to see what sort of refinements I want. Ooops! Photo still reversed here.. lol!

Editing to add this on in... it's a little more congruous (plus in the right direction). I've photoshopped the ears & tried to give her more cranky nostrils.. as well as playing iwth the refinements I'm considering here (for my own 'what does it look like when I do this' factor).

Arab mare, Hazel's last hoorah & Flitwick :)

Well I'll start by wrapping up that last post to say I've learned that little leopard appy Flitwick took home a workmanship NAN card this past weekend. :)

& Here's Hazel's weekend results:

First in Other Sport/Carriage breed & first in workmanship for that class (two different judges)
This was her last show under my proxying for Janice. With these two cards she's now NAN qualified for the next NAN as well. In addition to the 16 needed for her Merit award, and the 2 for her to show in NAN this year (breed & workmanship - no risking the performance classes anymore for this gal - she belongs to someone & it makes me nervous!).

It's been a long year for Hazel. She missed a few shows due to injuries and now it's time for her to go to her very last public showing before she disappears from the show scene. I really want to thank her owner Janice again so VERY much for letting me campaign her like this. I keep sculpting these horses who's legs go in a variety of directions (lol!) and thus they distort and are hard for folks to get the gist of until they see them in person. Duke was by far the worst for this..

And speaking of flinging legs around.. yet another hard to photograph one in the works;


...this is just a photo of the Arab mare w/a "for fun" mane/tail again. Actually, I threw her into photoshop to fiddle with some things. It's odd but you can "see" better when you do tricks like use mirrors, look at pictures (and flipped pictures). There's still a LOT I want to work on so it's not worth going into more. I just figured I'd document her state for now here. :)

Spots for Springtime!

I've really been on this spot-kick lately. :)

I wrapped up one fellow here and he's off to his owner now. His whole gallery is here;
http://www.artbymorgen.com/galleries/FlitwickAPs/AP5/





I've been experimenting with some techniques and media that I'm really enjoying. It's funny how one 'pictures' something verses how hard it can be sometimes when a particular media is limiting you. Being able to achieve a vision is tremendously exciting!! :D

Soooooo I now share with you a sneak peek of someone in his basecoat at the moment. I can't WAIT to get to those tiny hair details like I did there with the above Flitwick artist's proof! But this bitty has to get another coat in oils before I launch off into that... sighs... waiting waiting waiting... but there's another spotty fellow I can play with in the meantime too. ;)

He wants to be called "Tiberius".
;)

Just sharing stuff here

A quickie silhouette snap shot of the arabian lady. :)


She's starting to speak to me again about what she wants to look like. I'd gone up with her head and back down again b/c that wasn't working for me. I've changed a great deal about her abdomen, back, tail & muscling in between since I had a couple folks look at her in person too. Still fiddling with her nuances tho soooo it aint so pretty when the lights come up. hehehe! Poor girl! She's getting somewhere I think tho. :)

And a random share of a fun video and then a public service announcement.. first lessee if I can embed this;


And then the public service expose on "Current Trends In TWH Soring"
Videos here; http://www.youtube.com/user/foshvideo
(had a hard time sitting through all of those because it made me ill - just warning you!)
The Rowdy video I dug up when I was reading through the discussion (I like Rowdy) over on blab here; http://www.modelhorseblab.com/forums/showthread.php?t=86160

On a dare...

I tried my luck selling bitty's via a new method...


(after the show of course.. I was judging and I figured the Aussie trenchcoat might be awkward to wear.. nevermind hot.. this is all said tongue in cheek of course). ;)

In all seriousness tho I've now shown my nifty cool cold cast bitty to many people in person and they are all pushing for me to find a way to create bases to sell these. The issue I'm seeing is that the general (non-hobby horse item collecting) public wants these type of mass produced bronzes for around or under $100. My cost with a wood base & adding in a cold cast bronze ground scene under him would be around that. So there is almost no profit or a negative profit at that price. SOooo I need to think about it. Ideas welcome. I have many myself at the moment.


Need a better picture in the sun.. the bronze (it's a powder mixed in with the resin) really makes the details crisp.

I've known many artists who sculpt or paint who sell essentially for the cost of the materials. At a loss even. Nevermind the notion of getting paid for your time. The general public doesn't value purchasing art directly from artists nearly as much. Hmmm.. to stew to stew...

Anyhow, while fun, the method of selling via trench coat isn't all that productive. I wouldn't recommend it. Trying to always think out of the box here I guess but this time I gotta report back that it seems a little less effective, lol! ;)

There are no eggs here! ;)

Just a reminder that there will be no eggs hidden on this blog..

And that it's T-minus 2 and a half hours now until eggs magically appear on my web site (www.artbymorgen.com)

Well for starters I should announce my fun contest here!

Except that I'm not sure you can get at it at the moment.. my web site is being serviced. -sighs-

ANYhow -> well here that is! http://www.artbymorgen.com/egghunt.htm Strangely that link works for me but I fear it's just b/c I have it cached right now. Hopefully the server will be fixed any minute now tho!

Annnnnnd for posterity the arab mare today (in need of massive refinements to the hind end and yes, obviously things like the neck - lol!). I said it over on that Blab post but her eyes for example are just drawn on. I haven't thought too hard about her nostrils either for example (except that given what she's doing they shouldn't be too 'soft' and relaxed).





Well that's it for the time being. I have a couple of bitty orders to ship out today so gotta run fer now. :)

Fwiw, my current dilemma..

:)
I'll share some of the things that occupy my thoughts MOST of the time... I suppose that's rather sad really but well, I can think of worse things to focus on. ;) I prefer to dwell exclusively on things I can change where ever, when ever possible.. and today here's what's driving me crazy.

From the side she almost looks to have too big of a head. Not quite but a tad. But from the front (didn't get a pic and it would be distorted anyhow & probably not show what I"m seeing b/c it might look big enough), from the front her head looks too short.

Is it an illusion of arabian heads? They are quite wide btwn the eyes and quite narrow around the muzzle...

Anyhow, so without a literal stable of arabians I can measure - and mind you the only accurate measurements would be of ones SNORTING WHILE they're being measured.. well.. I'm a tad stuck here. I tend to work things out by holding the horse at various angles and looking at hundreds of photos till I can find a focal point (tear bone & nostril tip for example) to compare amongst them all. Hope that made sense. This is what I do with all those photos int he links I"ve been sharing.

In the meantime, I snapped a couple quickie ones as she sat here on my recently (rare event) cleaned off desktop... Terrible pics I know - sorry! (the 2nd is a flash photo so you can see how hard it is to see details. ). Soon she's going to need primer so I can move forward with the more refined detailing of actual muscles and joints. For the time being it's still nit-picking at proportions. :)

Uhm ... yeah..... lol!

I say that with the dry "Office Space" boss character's tone... "uhm yeahhhh.. we're going to have to have you come in on Saaaaaaaturday".

It's the sorta tone you hear in the voice of someone speaking to you before they drop a bomb. The kinda tone that makes your shoulders tighten up in preparation for the weight that's about to be dumped on them.

My computer began to slow down badly last month. It had it moments. Notice the past tense term for "had". It's still "alive" but not well. I'm now typing on an expensive new system... expensive b/c ANYhardware & software seems outrageously priced to me... it's all relative. I only had to replace the tower.. but I had to pay a good deal to make sure all my work and sales data was safely transferred.

The irony? It happened on April Fools day. My geek squad geek came over and promptly showed me why it was failing to recognize the things (printer, camera card reader, etc) that were plugged into it. Only sometimes... which had made me hope it was fixable. APRIL FOOLS! (dry tone there again). It was not after all - the hard drive was either damaged or weak out of the box. I'd honestly believe it was weak out of the box. When I installed it before it was lightening fast until I put the programs in it... so something about it was gimpy from the get go. I don't care to learn too much about these things because guess what? (snorts with a smile) It'll all be different in another year. I used to learn and keep up with all this. Now I'm just disgusted with it all.

When I was getting gas yesterday I spied a sign on the credit card swipe on the pump -> it said "mini credit cards not accepted here". Now WHY on earth would you even want a mini credit card? It's thin/small enough? This trend towards too tiny to use & easy to lose is ridiculous.

That's all I have to say about that.

Meanwhile my biggest dilemma now is that my new tower has a Windows Vista OS (can't get older anymore at a store). I buy at stores now because if there are install conflicts out of the box they'll address it. The price difference isn't that much. And I needed new tiny card reader (phone card!) options my last one didn't have. Vista displays on my screen are MURDER on the eyes. I've fiddled some with my screen settings via the funky button game... that actually helped. It's still all got a shadow... tricks my eyes into feeling tired. Totally annoying. Switching to the 1 other display option doesn't improve any of it. I was VERY much ready to buy a Mac but I have old programs that are extremely expensive to replace/upgrade (to me anyhow). Web design stuff I use periodically and photoshop of course which I use near daily. Mac is learning tho so maybe soon they'll have more backwards compatibility. Another reason I hired the Geek Squad guy (it's a gamble who you'll get but I know a lot of techie dudes having been in web design for years and I really lucked out with a guy who knew his stuff)... it wasn't just about the diagnostics, it was about the options for what I need to do with what I have.

Now at least it's easier than ever to port my files (biz and reference stuff) around on a card too. And cheap! So that's good. I bought this external hard drive backup years ago after losing client data for shipping (hard copy print outs cut off some info). I never wanted to go through that again.


HEY! But good news. All systems seems to be going and now I can get back to what I'm really doing over here. It wasn't entirely a day wasted. Imultitasked during my time while uploading/configuring/and before that diagnosing and saving ... my little arab mare sat here beside me and I had a few books with proportions and a few favorite references.. while every proportion told me the head was the right length and width, I wasn't happy. I spent the time sitting there (watching paint dry on my computer screen).. to study & compare. Then a quick slice & removal to the right parts behind the poll and the angle changes giving proportions more pleasing. THAT said, these photos distort it a good deal but I'm not wasting time on doing better pics... I'm just sharing with folks & documenting this for myself right now. I like the angle a lot better, it adds "mare" to her for me somehow. I can't explain. But it also balances up both sides of the neck better imo (in real life anyways). :)




Annnnd a silly sneak peek of what I'm about to go photograph and offer over to my yahoogroup:



Of course I've got a whole photo of him somewhere below but whatever. It's fun to do sneaky pictures too! lol!

Ok! Well I seem to be back in biz here except for the misery of this computer display. Stay tuned for when little arab girl gets more lovin. I'm really starting to "feel" her again. :D