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

Ring in the New Year Live Show: Resins & Chinas

My travels this spring mean I’m missing a number of live shows, so I made a special effort to get the Ring in the New Year live show. This show was held in one of most interesting venues yet- a huge woodworking garage!

The show was all minis (perfect for me!) and had four division running two at a time. First up was OF China and CM Resin/Advanced CM/CM Glaze. I only had a few horses in those classes. My one ribbon was a third for my new Clydesdale foal, which was pretty nice since I’d hurried to finish her for this show.

Check out some of the other beauties on display that morning:

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Furry Foal Friend

Well, I haven’t been very good about keeping up the blogging. Things have been busy, as predicted- Friday was my twelfth straight day of work. I’m enjoying this weekend immensely. Believe it or not, I hope things will get busier soon- because that will mean we’ve bought our dream condo, which even has a little room for me to use for crafting.

I’m attending a little live show next weekend. It’s all halter, which is good because I can’t even be tempted by lofty performance goals. I’ve got my class sheet drawn up so I won’t miss classes. I even managed to get one of my in progress ponies finished in time to show!

This is Kaylee, a First Draft resin (Mary Osedo) in bay sabino. She’s about stablemate scale (1:32). She’s about 95% done here- she still needs more layers of fixative and painted and glossed eyes. But I’m confident I can get that done by Friday, if nothing else.

Chop Chop part two

I found some more pictures from the lengthening of the HA Fritz resin’s back. He’s currently in primer stage, but he’s getting close to paint-ready and I’ve picked out color references for him.

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I’m really glad I decided to go ahead and do this- he looks great now. Between my upcoming busyness and my complex color choice, I’m sure he’ll be a work in progress for a long time… but it sure will be fun!

My main color reference

Chop Chop

One of the pony projects I’m really excited about right now is my beautiful HA Fritz resin, a gift from Caryn. He is so cool and dynamic, and even though the casting was sold as raw he was really quite easy to prep.

But of course, I couldn’t leave well enough alone. I was researching breeds for him and kept seeing that his back was just a bit short for any of the mixes I had in mind. Furthermore, if I ever wanted to show him in performance, saddle fit would be tough. So with the blessings of both Caryn and Horsing Around, I set out to lengthen his back.

The first thing I did was take the above photo into a photo editing program and add length digitally, as a way of testing things out.

I liked how that looked, so I set to work. First I went back and reviewed Jennifer Buxton’s post on halfsy horses. Not all of her tips were applicable for this much smaller scale, but I did make a point of drawing lines across Fritz’s barrel so I could match him up again, like Jennifer did with her Boreas.

Then I did a whole lot of dremeling. The resin turned out to be totally solid, and with those trotting legs it wasn’t always easy to get the dremel blade where it needed to go. I did my best to cut as straight as possible, and to not cut away any more material than I had to.

After that, I pegged the two pieces together with three big wires, filled the gap with aluminum foil covered in super glue and baking soda, and then epoxied over that to get a nice smooth barrel.

And here he is, several hours of sanding and priming later, nearly ready to go:

I’m thinking a mulberry grey or bay going grey for him, but I’m open to suggestions. He’s already so pretty just in his naked white, I can’t wait to see him painted.