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

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…

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

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!)

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!.:)

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! :)

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…

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...

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...

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

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!! :)