SM Mare

I am having the hardest time getting the white balance to work on my grey models. They either look too blue or too yellow, and no amount of fiddling in Photoshop gets them right. Maybe it's because the background is so different in color, I don't know. I use the same setup and lighting every time but I never know how it will look. At any rate, this model is not as blue as it looks.  This is now the 5th layer.

I'm also making progress on my prepped models. I'm almost done with Pepe, Nevada and a few others. I can see light at the end of the prepping tunnel! It's the Breyers that really bring me down, even the ones that are pretty clean. The seam splits still need to be finessed more than most of the resins, I have found.

Weekly Update

I've added a layer of oils now and will start with some dappling next. Thanks to Sandra Hottinger of C.S. Richmond Studio for telling me about a medium called Weber Rapidry. It's an alkyd medium that has something added to it that makes it dry a little faster, and it works really great. Weber claims that it is non-cracking, and I have always had good experiences with alkyd mediums before, so I'm glad I found out about this. I'm still too paranoid to paint after 24 hours, though, I always wait at least 48 hours (and sometimes 3 days) before adding another layer.

I've been working on the mottling on the appy stallion, also. I did a small amount of customization on this ear because of the weird way Breyer molded this piece. The right ear was a huge wedge, so I tried to refine it more by making it more "ear" shaped, and then put some mane around it. At least I think it's the right ear, it's been so long I can't remember anymore lol!  I'm going to set him aside for several days to dry thoroughly so I can work on the blanket some more. I'm getting close to the finish on him, I think.

I'm also making good progress on prepping. The few Breyers that I have left are the worst to prep, the seams are always so irregular on them. I've been working on a Pepe, Wixom, Susecion and LeFire (not sure about spelling on those),  Nevada, Equus Maximus, Turko and Tango the last few days.

Ya Gotta Have Faith...

That's what I have to say to myself every time I start a new project. The beginning of each piece I do starts out looking like this: a mess! I have an end result in mind, but it takes many, many hours of work and belief that I can make it look good, before I get to a point that I can look at the piece without cringing.

I'm not sure how others work, but this is my standard procedure for starting all pieces. I was taught in art school to always start loose and work my way tighter, and that's pretty much how I do it. Sometimes I use an airbrush for my base coats, but for greys like this one, it will be so covered up that it's pointless to go to the trouble (plus my airbrush station is filled with bodies-in-prepping). So for this piece, I've started with some warm grey washes in acrylic. This will be a dapple grey when it's finished.

New Yahoo Group

I am going to be super-busy this week with taxes, hanging a gallery show and attending a copyright seminar, so unfortunately my studio time will be almost nothing this week. However, I will be able to check my email periodically, so I'd like to extend an invitation to any of my readers out there to join my Yahoo mailing list . I will be announcing upcoming commission availability and other sales and specials from the Yahoo list, though there's nothing there at the moment. I will also be posting an announcement on some other boards to let people know about it, but thought I'd give you all a heads up here first.

I was hoping to have a commission opening for February, but that may have to be pushed back depending on my circumstances. I will give more details on the list.

Here's a quick shot of the semi-rearing appy, I finally started working on his head a little bit. The changes seem so incremental when I work on something that sometimes it doesn't seem worth it to post a picture. I'm still prepping like a madwoman, too.

Tour of Daniel Smith Art Supply

Daniel Smith art supply store is based in Seattle, and yesterday I took a tour of their manufacturing facility with an art group I belong to. It was really interesting! They manufacture all their paint right in the same building as their main retail store. Their chemist took us around the plant, and explained how the paints are ground, how they get their pigments (they have a dedicated geologist who travels the world looking for rocks that might make an interesting color), and how they're tubed. The chemist, and later the tour guide, answered a lot of technical questions about various colors and safety considerations.

The guides cleared up a couple of specific questions I had about a couple of their products. For instance, I found out that their alkyd medium (pictured above) has real turpentine in it,not mineral spirits like I had always thought. Also, they have discontinued their cadmium colors, but said that their new replacement colors, which they call "cadmium hues," are not the inferior student-grade products that other manufacturers use. The chemist went to a lot of trouble to get both the hue and the handling abilities of the replacements to be as close to cadmium as he could get. I meant to go check out the tubes on my way out but forgot.

One other thing they stressed: if you're working with dry pigment, you must use a full respirator, and wear gloves and/or barrier cream. He explained how the dry pigments are so finely ground and pure that they're easily aspirated, which is different from pastel dust, which is bound with another material and always heavier and bigger than any pure pigment dust.

So that was a great day for me. Last week was a bad week for me in the studio because I had jury duty, plus I was getting my taxes together, but this week I'm back on schedule. In addition to the semi-rearing stallion, I've been prepping up a storm. My goal is to get all the bodies I have on hand prepped before I buy anymore. I'm maybe halfway done right now.

Getting there...

Here's the semi-rearing appy from the other side. I spent several hours on the blanket but it's hard to really tell from my pictures, I didn't have time to take closeups. I also went over part of the body in oils, I think I will work on the legs next. I'm still trying to decide if I want his mane to be darker or lighter.

On another note, I am starting jury duty this week, so will be out of the studio at least two days, possibly longer. Ugh! I hate when my schedule gets interrupted! I am also having some computer problems which may include a trip to the repair center, so I might be out of commission for a little while.

Semi-Rearing Appy

I'm still slogging away on this guy. I still have more work to do on the blanket pattern, and then I'll probably go in with oils for the color. I'm in one of those "only-work-on-this-one" moods, so most of my time last week was spent on this model.


I did fill in the leg holes on the PAS, and have been prepping a few models, like a Classic Arab Foal, a Huck Bey, and a mini-Caprice. I have about 15 models on hand that I would really like to get prepped this year, some of them have been sitting around for years waiting for my attention. I don't understand how other people can work so quickly; I have yet to figure out a productive method to work. I tend to go over things a couple of times, or maybe I take unnecessary steps, I don't know. I like each piece to be individual so I don't think about doing several bays at once using the same body color or anything like that, though I may have to start thinking that way, or at least thinking in small groups of colors.


I'm still trying to get the eye and ear right again on the medallion, no picture of that this week!