Max and pals have a play date

Someone asked me (in a nudge nudge sort of way!), if I’d posted any pictures from any other angles than that the left side.. doh! So here’s some other angles in size comparisons... (Max is still not ready for his glamor shot close ups)..

& I’ll be quick in my babbling because this is a visual anyhow. I’ve already promised to provide “real” measurements on Max (congrats to Heather for getting it again!) for those who make tiny tack… but I’m getting lots of questions on relative scale and I though it would be fun to show some group shots with some of my newest members. I also am (yes of course) doing a self-check on any possible more last minute revisions… you may or may not be able to tell I removed some hoof from the last time (daintier still yes! He’s got the machismo to carry it off imo!). ;)

Max is 1:9 scale – on the slightly small side. He’s 11 inches long, 7 inches high at the crest of his neck (probably would be 8 to eartips if he wasn’t looking down, getting all haughty!) ;) … true to form as a Criollo stallion they come in surprisingly small packages for all their “big” looking selves!


Max and Johann – Johann, 2010, is robust & hardy lil (small traditional) 1:9 scale / 8.5” tall all around riding and driving horse of early American design.

Again from a different angle – I think here you really can see that Max is a taller at the wither, despite his “height” measurement being smaller.


Kipling and Max – who spent a good deal of side-by-side time on their poles when being created. Kipling, 2011, is a 1:9 scale miniature horse/petting zoo pony who's super inquisitive nose is just a hair over 5 inches tall.




Max, Kipling and (hoohaa GIRLpower!) Hazel! Hazel is a 1:9 draft cross mare, standing 10 inches tall on her base & stretching out 14.5 inches long.

And just because it’s supremely entertaining to me (Max standing around regarding EVERYthing…)… here we have Max looking on while little 1:24 scale Flitwick leaps over his rock wall. Flitwick, 2006 stands a shade under 4 inches tall at the top of his tail.

And there you have it. I’m taking a break while his latest coat of primer dries & figured now would be a good time to address that before I go & mar the finish up. I’m thinking that next week I’ll hopefully be ready to go with him.

Good grief, are we there yet???!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More sketches

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

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


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

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

Ok ok ok....

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

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

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

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

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

But I could NOT resist playing with my tack.

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

More very soon, I swear!

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

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

Ok, back to it now. ;)

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

Head revisions and an old art class exercise

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


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

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

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

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

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

I just have no self control…

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


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

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

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

Warning! Weird workshop ideas in progress… !

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Breaking the radio silence!

Eek I let a whole month slip by here without posting a thing – oops! No good reason other than each time I've intended to update this, other things have come up & caused me to put it off for a day... until a whole string of days here really built up apparently. And now it's overload time as a result!

Well the part I’m most ashamed about is not giving a report (after mentioning it several times here) on my workshop. It went well!





I’m always delighted by student’s enthusiasm. I would bet that most teachers I know (and most artists are I know are teachers), find this enthusiasm both inspiring and insightful.

At any rate, the class progressed better than I could of hoped in many respects – the students were able to dive in & take home animal-shaped objects & spare Apoxie sculpt to do more tweaking later on (yes, that 2nd photo is a human head bust - I allowed the human animal too). :)

I do have to confess that I was a little dismayed by my newest batch of Apoxie Sculpt procured for the occasion. It supposedly begins to cure in 2hrs time, I time tested 6 colors to be sure of this actually since it had been so long since I’d actually really paid attention… well suffice to say you should not just test the color but the specific container you’re using. The black cured on schedule but my brand new container of grey was exceptionally slow – taking 2-3x as long as it should really. So the take home for me was that a beginner class with a goal of taking home a ready-to-display work would be best if they could be 2 day events.

The entire class left me brimming with ideas too for my (far more challenging in terms of goals in a fraction of the time!) 2hr Breyer sculpting workshops this summer (I believe you'll be able to sign up for these in March). Primarily the Advanced class. I’m really hoping to make this as informative as possible so overcoming the serious drawbacks of limited time especially, and thus lack of certain prerequisite elements being in place, I have much to work out! Some of my fellow sculptors have given me some wonderful ideas here. I love a good challenge and at the very least, my hand out materials are bigger and better this year with more sculpting principals.

I also neglected to mention on the blog this past month that I put another of my horse head busts up for auction (editing to add in that link; http://www.ebay.com/itm/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=290670638045 ). I just shipped that out yesterday, it was one of my favorites so far – an aluminum one that really looked pewter. There was another aluminum one made to date but it’s MUCH lighter colored overall. Right now that lighter colored one is in Hollyhocks gallery.

There are other exciting things on the nearer horizon too. I hope to share soon… mmmmm daring to leak a little info I guess – clinky things! :)

Mostly though after the workshop was over and my writing was done. I came home with tons of inspiration & dove right back into my Criollo horse sculpture. I’m to the point now where I’m just tweaking little things here & there… they make a big difference though. Like yesterday I shaved a significant amount off of the tail. You can make a “full” looking tail far too clumpy very easily. So while I’m going for that “show stallion thick full groomed wavey hair” look… somehow in sculpture it can look like a large fat octopus has fixed itself to the horses rump (or human’s head to be honest) quite easily. Hair tendrils are a time honored challenge. I’ve taken different approaches with them in different sculptures. Different methods of sculpting them = different ways that paint lays into them. I do not like the texture-less look.. but I do try not to over texture too. That said, I liked Kipling’s the best for displaying “heavy hanks” of hair in clumps. And then Johann and Godiva (who’s manes and tails were show-ring groomed) have it for ease of painting imo.

AND speaking of Johann....

What finally prompted me to post today was this delightful custom by Sue Kern. Sue has a knack for coming up with very creative derivative (customizations) ideas. In this case I’ll confess I had sort of considered doing Johann in china as a Friesian like this… seeing her custom makes me think this idea for the future isn’t out of the question! It wouldn’t look quite like this of course but when sculpting Johann here I thought about all the offshoot breeds like that quite a bit! Anyhow, I’ll end with sharing this. Kudos to Sue and thanks to Gea – the proud owner!


Hopefully my next update will be a lot sooner now. There is rubber & resin on it's way to me for the criollo. Now I probably will take a week or two after that to work out many details - one major one too is lengthening the back a little just a waste of energy to do on the armature stand - a waste AND possibly a big risk to the rest of the work. I did that big change with Kipling right after he was in resin prototype form & it was a few hour project - making a vast difference in the final impression. In part that is one reason people won't be seeing this Criollo until after that. In part because I simply want ALL the details, veins and whisker bumps, in place this time so most people (not my critique team but the public at large/customers who might be on the fence about him) see my whole "picture" completed. But ooooo I can't wait to share him! So stay tuned.. & with that (!) back to the grindstone!!

A nice surprise!

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...

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. ;)