Rewind: Lengthening Legs

I knew I’d taken some photos while working on my Pebbles Saddlebred’s legs, but I didn’t find them til now. So this is a bit of a rewind to before this post.

The photo I did fail to take were the ones showing the original issue. This borrowed picture of another OF shows the issue a little- notice how the fetlocks on the near side end lower down then those on the off side? The cannons and hooves are significantly longer too.

To adjust the legs, I more or less followed the same steps I would to fix a broken leg. Although I did have to “break” the leg first- or , to be more precise, I sawed it off with my dremel.

After paring down the amputated legs a bit to match the others (as well as the hooves on both sides), I reattached them using a metal pin and super glue.

The next step was filling in and resculpting with epoxy. And a whole bunch of filing and filling to get the hooves even and flat. But now I’ve got a much more balanced and correct horse.

A Splitting Headache

Har har har! I’m so punny.

In the last post I left my poor Citation ornament both headless and hopeless. It seemed like the Chips Thoroughbred head I’d gotten for him would be too small.

I revisited the project and realized that the head isn’t entirely too small- it’s mostly that it’s too narrow.

What he really needed was a slightly wider head, and maybe some slight enlarging on the cheeks and muzzle. As I mentioned before, I don’t feel ready to sculpt a head from scratch, but I am confident that I can add to an existing head. It helps to have the guidelines that provides, even if you are adding a lot on top.

First step was to cut the head in half lengthwise. This is easier said than done, especially at Stablemate scale! (You can also split a head to narrow it down, as mentioned by Jennifer Buxton).

It took a lot of patience with the cutting blade, but finally I got there.

It was even harder (and more patience-requiring) to get the head pieces onto the horse. I tried connecting them with wire and then attaching them to the neck, but the face was too wide and it was all wonky. So I broke them back apart and went one at a time.

With half his face on

This method made it easier for me to get the sides of the head properly on the neck, and to better gauge the additional face space that was needed. Finally, after a lot of work, a lot of super glue, and some choice cursing, his head was attached!

I’ve been putting off any heavy work on the face until I get his hooves figured out- if you look at some of the earlier photos you can see how pointy and weird they are. Plus he has no pasterns and intermittent fetlocks. So I’ve been working hard on those. I moved a few of his legs slightly as well. He’ll likely lose the mane and tail, but for now I’m leaving them so I can see how he balances aesthetically.

Here’s my guy as of today, with his legs and head still very much in progress. But what a huge improvement!

It’s really exciting to see the change in him. He’s super fun to work on. Plus he looks just like the kind of horse I like to ride. I’ll likely paint him a deep bay with minimal whites- something like his original color, only better

Destruction of a Racehorse Ornament

A while ago I got my hands on the Breyer Citation ornament, and I’ve been excitedly working to turn him into a floaty-trot horse. It’s been quite the process- and I’ve been quite remiss in blogging about it.

The victim

The most immediate issue was that pesky jockey. The Breyer ornaments are made of a hard, somewhat brittle plastic, but the dremel did relatively quick work.

The other big issue, which became very apparent when I took a decent look at this horse, is that his head- or at least, his eyes- are terrifyingly anatomically incorrect. It’s like they’ve been rotated 45 degrees to face forward… in a really creepy way. That combined with the molded on bridle meant off with his head!

Poor guy…

So then I had a headless horse with a big hole in his back. I filled the hole with styrofoam, wire, foil, super glue & baking soda, and finally, a layer of epoxy. You can see above where I also crammed some scrap paper to fill in his neck. Whatever works, right?

Building up his new back

I’m not confident enough yet to sculpt a new head from scratch, so I acquired one from a Peter Stone Chips Thoroughbred that might do the trick.

With his new back roughed in

What you may notice from the above picture is that alas, even the Chips head is a bit small. It seems the Breyer ornaments aren’t quite Stablemate scale. But have no fear… I have a plan to recapitate this long-suffering model!

The Start of a Roan

I had planned on painting my roan draft stallion using acrylic paint to do hair-by-hair roaning. But after a couple sessions, I really wasn’t satisfied with how it was looking. At the same time, I ran across part one of a nice roaning tutorial by Amanda Brock (Rogue Horse Studio) and Caryn showed me her first roan (done with a similar pastel technique) who was turning out quite nicely.

Caryn’s horse (in progress). Can you believe that’s her first roan?

Inspired, I washed the acrylic roaning off my resin and started to work on him with pastels and pencil. He already had a sealed blue-grey-brown base coat, and I started in on some white pastel using Amanda’s stippling technique. I also added some hairing detail with colored pencils. I was all ready to start doing some serious hairing with white charcoal when I dropped him on the floor. Sigh.

I was actually pretty lucky- all he lost was an ear. But it took me another few hours of work to get him whole again.

Building a new ear using Sarah Rose’s super glue and baking soda technique

After shaping his new ear, it took a few coats of acrylic to get it somewhat matching again. Then finally, using my white charcoal pencil, I started adding individual white hairs.

It’s crucially important when doing hair-by-hair roaning to a.) keep your pencil very sharp and b.) keep references handy. I’m using multiple hair growth charts (download them here) as well as close up pictures of flanks, armpits, and other tricky areas.

Keeping the pencil sharp enough to draw hairs on a stablemate scale resin requires a lot of sharpening. I used a regular sharpener plus sandpaper. You have to do it almost constantly, and that means you go through a lot of pencil.

When I started roaning, I had two full sized pencils.

Happily, there’s an art store within walking distance so I was able to pop out one afternoon and buy six more pencils to use.

I’ve got a whole collection of nubbins now, but I’m done with the first layer of hair detailing.

Even with all the sharpening, it’s basically impossible to get all the little hairs quite right. To keep things from being too stark, I go over each section with a medium-stiffness brush, keeping with the direction of the hair growth. It smudges the drawn hairs slightly and takes off any excess dust, which softens the detailing in a nice, more realistic way. I seal each layer with Dull Cote before moving on to the next. As with pastels, the sealer “pushes back” the color a bit which also helps prevent any stark lines.

On his neck and shoulder, the hairs have been brush-softened and sealed with Dull Cote. The starker hairs on his barrel have just been drawn in with the pencil.

I’ve been finding time to do a bit of work every night, and by today the first layer of hair-by-hair roaning is done. I need to do a bit more blending in some areas, but I’m going to give him a break for a bit so I can come back with a fresh eye. I also might work a bit on his acrylic details so I can better picture how his coat color will look on the finished horse.

I’m still working on a name for him- I’d like to find something from French Brittany, since the Breton breed is from there. It’s an area highly influenced by Welsh and Gaelic language, which is always fun.

Back to Finishwork!

Hurrah hurrah! I am finally working with color again. It seemed like forever prepping these guys… I’m not sure if that’s because I’m a cruddy prepper, a perfectionist, they were really rough, or some combination of those. I haven’t had much time for models but all of it has been prep, prep, and prep some more. I wouldn’t be surprised if I’ve put 15 hours of prepping in on these two.

But yesterday, with primer smooth, pin holes filled, and veins applied, they were ready to go. I got about 2-3 layers on each through the afternoon and evening.

My Hale resin is going to be a blue roan. Right now he’s what I think of as an “Impressionist roan”- he looks more or less like a roan, but the body is an approximation of the hair mix instead of actually hair detail. Since I’m going to do hair-by-hair roaning on him, I think I’ll do a bit darker with the pastels.

I added some brown to his coat too, which I think really makes the roan even richer. Some black roans are very black and white, while others have a lot of brown tons, even though they are clearly not bay roans. I assume it’s something like sun-fading on the black hairs mixing with the roaning to make a brown-highlighted black roan.

My Fritz resin is also getting clothes! He was a beautiful and generous gift from Caryn and I’m super excited to see him come to life. I was eager to find him a name too, since Fritz is the name of one of my other horses. His new name is Martouf, and he’s a Warlander (Friesian x Andalusian).

Martouf is going to be a dapple rose grey. I’ve only sketched in his mane and tail in acrylics here- there will be a lot more grey and variation in there eventually, but I like to have an approximation as I go to help me get the body color where I want it. I’m using a sharpened eraser to do the dapples, which is pretty tedious, but I do like the effect so far. The hardest thing on him might be knowing when to stop adding color, since he is supposed to be nearly grayed out.

The fun continues today! I was thinking about leaving the house, but while writing this post it started to downpour furiously. Sounds like a perfect afternoon to stay indoors