Weekly Update

Hmm, let's see what I've got today. Turko is drying but I'm so close to finishing him up now, I'm happy with how he's turning out. A lot of things are in the drying stages at the moment.

Johann's body is still slightly tacky to the touch so I started on his mane and tail. I'm doing the darks first so it looks kind of like mud.

I'm still adding white on Oliver, I went into the grooves with a darker grayish color and now I'm going over that with the lighter white. I still need to do his legs.

One thing I'm finally starting to remember is to do the underside of everything first. I can't tell you how many times I've painted the body up to a pretty finished state, only to realize that I haven't painted the underside of the mane, tail, etc. Elsie has a lot of underside crooks and crannies so I'm making sure to start on those areas before I go too far with her body.

This picture came out a little blue. Max is drying right now so I started on the base. I will do some more pencil work on him, and then some roaning with a detail brush after that. If you're interested in seeing more detail on him, I think I uploaded this picture at full size so you can click on him for a bigger picture.

Here's a Taboo that I've just started roaning. He's going to be a chestnut roan overo, and I wasn't sure if I should start with the pinto markings or the roaning. I opted for roaning. I kind of hesitated to show this picture because it looks so terrible in this early stage. Also it's about 5 times bigger than the actual model.

That's it for now! Since so many things are waiting to dry at the moment, I've been putting the finishing details on the chestnut Jezebel I've been working on. Hopefully she'll be available for sale in the next couple of weeks.

Weekly Update

Johann has his first layer of oils. He's a little too red-caramel colored right now, I intend for him to have more brownish points and a cooler gold base color.

Ollie also has one coat of oils now. I'm doing something a little different with his white markings, I usually start with a white coat that has a tint to it, but this time I'm using straight titanium for more covering power.

Elsie's basecoat airbrushed in. This is about as worked up as it ever gets in airbrush for me, I'm so inept with it. When I paint I tend to get over-excited and start doing things fast, and with airbrush I've found that it really helps to go slowly and with a more measured pace. That's hard for me to do!

Here's a detail shot of Equus Max. He's got about 3 or 4 layers on him at this point. Roans are one of the things that I am able to move slowly with (sometimes too slowly). I actually practice breathing slowly and looking up a lot while I'm doing them. I find if you go too fast with a roan, you make the marks too long and it ends up looking streaky and unnatural.

Here's a Nevada sales piece that I'm trying to sneak in when I can. He will be a dun overo.

That's all for this week!

Here's the Rose Reiner, finally finished! This was my first Traditional sized full roan, and he was really a challenge. I still feel like I'm learning when I do these, and with this guy I really made a mistake by starting with too dark of a base, so it took a long time to build up the color. I used pencils, dry pigment, and acrylics in various areas for the roaning. I tried keeping track of the time that I worked on him, and he clocked in at 212 hours (including prepwork). That's just way too long. So for the Equus Maximus that is also a roan, I'm adding some glazes/scumbles of a lighter color in paint to try to shorten that painting time a bit. I hope it works! 

Here's a little Ollie that I've just started. He's going to be a pinto. I just love this guy's face, he is so adorable.

Here's that classy Johann, I've given him a warm basecoat.

Jezebel is just taking so long because I haven't had a chance to work on her. I'm adding her markings and still tweaking her color a little bit.

That's all for this week!