Still no name here on this fellow..

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

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... ;)

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!!

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)

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!

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...

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

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...

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 ;)

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