End of Year Cleaning

This is about the cleanest that my studio table gets. There's no getting around it -- I'm a slob. This is our cool retro kitchen table. I have an actual room set aside for my studio but I tend to work here a lot because the light is better. I covered the top with a piece of plexiglass. It's usually so cluttered that I end up holding the model in my lap while I work. 

I wish I had a picture of the awesome cake that I made for Christmas. It was a spice layer cake with cream cheese frosting, the first layer cake I ever made, and it turned out great. The slices were beautiful. It tasted good, too ;-)

Hope you all have a great new year!

Weekly Update

I've got a couple more layers on Johann now. He still looks too orange, I can see this is going to be a difficult color that will need a lot of finessing. He's going to be more of a browny-gold with sort of chocolate darker areas. It's hard to describe. So I'm still in the process of toning him down.

I've been working on the roany patches of Oliver. I wanted to get some of the roan work established first, and then I will go back and tighten up some of the markings. I worked on Elsie's mane and tail but she still looks pretty much the same so I'm not showing her photo, I'll be setting her aside to dry for a bit and then will start roaning on her.

And here's the fleabit Sushi that I'm doing. I'm trying something a little different with her and doing the initial fleabites in oils. It looks really stark at this point but there will be a lot more layers and blending in later. I'm really enjoying the larger flea bites and the fact that they're different sizes and more random, it's so much faster than doing a roan where a lot of sections need to be pretty uniform.

And that's all for now! I doubt if I'll post anything next week, so Happy Holidays to all of you :-)

I know I've been AWOL from the blog the last few weeks, as you can see I've been busy working on Equus Max. I've worked up his roaning and now I'm going to focus on his head, legs and mane and tail before I go any further with the roaning. I need a break! I can't tell you how many days have gone by where I've worked for hours, only to think at the end of the day: "it looks the same!" He's finally starting to get somewhere now. I really made a mistake by not doing a scumbled lighter gray base before starting the roaning. I'm a slow learner and stubbornly seem to do the same wrong things several times before a new idea sinks in. I've done a little scumbling over the hairs here, but will need to do more.

In the photo above, I've photoshopped the ribbons and the frosty mane and tail. His ear tips have rubbed off so I'm touching that up, that's why his ears have white tips.

Here he is from the other side:

and here is a shot of his chest area:

You should be able to click the photos to enlarge them.

This week I was able to work on Elsie and a little bit on Oliver. After I work on Max in oils I will need to let him dry for a while, so I will get a chance to work on my other pieces. I'm looking forward to it! 

Uh oh!

Hope you all have a fun and safe Thanksgiving!

Oh, my bleary eyes!

I've been spending the bulk of my time now working on this gigantic Equus Maximus. He still has a long way to go, but I can definitely see him starting to take shape. I did some scumbling of paint under the initial roaning, but now I'm doing more hair-by-hair roaning on top of that. I wish the photos showed the complexity that is going on. He has only been sprayed with Krylon matte fixative, which is actually kind of satin, but after I do more roaning on him I'll spray him with Dull Cote and that will flatten the color and make the contrast pop a little. 

This guy will probably be taking up most of my time for the next couple of weeks, so forthcoming blog posts will be sporadic. Sometimes it's relaxing to work on a piece like this, but after days on end, my eyes are not happy :-0 I also get really tired (or really antsy) from sitting in one position for so long, it's like I get into a trance and forget to move or look up.

I have managed to work a little bit on Elsie. I still have some more to do on her body color, but she will also be a roan. At least she's small!

Ollie's picture is a little blurry. He's going to have roany patches on him, so I'm starting to work on that before I tighten up the pattern.

Warm Greys

Here are a couple of warm grey color that I've been trying out recently. I like both of them.

The one on the left is Sennelier Acrylique Warm Grey, and the one on the right is Old Holland Warm Grey Light oil paint. They're both pretty similar which is good for matching acrylic colors to oils if I need to do that. They are so warm that they're almost brown in color (in fact, both these colors are a mix of browns with white). I've added titanium white as a tint and mars black as a shade on both of these for comparison.

The tints are really nice, great for highlighting, light dapples or to incorporate into the base color for white markings or a grey horse. The darker shades are great for greys again, muzzles, and also for some grullo colors. Out of the tube, these greys would make a great base color for a classic champagne (haven't tried that yet but it looks like it would work), or a dun or brownish grullo color. They're also a good base color for chestnuts, can be mixed with a darker brown, black, etc. for a variety of grayish-brown colors. Very versatile!

The Sennelier acrylic is pretty thick so will need to be watered down before use, and the Old Holland oil is thick also, so you might want to try a medium or thinner to help smooth brushstrokes. I used to hate how thick and hard Old Holland colors were, but I really like this color so I've gotten used to it.

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.