Customania!

Well, it has been almost exactly six months to the day since my last blog post. Part of that time was spent finishing the not-very-fun-to-look-at prepping on all those horses seen in previous blog posts (what an undertaking!), and part of it was spent on yet another family emergency (my dad needed open heart surgery). In between driving around to more doctors than you can shake a stick at and working on the first batch of paint jobs, I have been plowing through my Breyerfest loot! It's seven months off but I feel like it's already pedal to the metal time and much epoxy and paint has been flying around here. Hold on to your hats, this blog update is going to be a doozy.

It can be a mixed blessing and curse taking pictures of horses in progress. Usually it means seeing something that needs fixing that the eyes just didn't see in 3D. So hooray for showing the errors before the work is really far along, but boo for having to fix stuff! Most likely several of these will get culled from the Breyerfest lineup due to just not having the time to properly fix the errors and being a lot of work in general.  Better to start with a ton and wind up with a bunch of good ones though, right? So without any further ado, the horses (all clickable for bigger pics). Try not to laugh too hard at the ones with giant ear blobs! :-D

In Progress

 

Who thought it would be a good idea to prep 11 Eberls at once? This person! Thankfully the bulk of their prepping is over. I'm sure more pinholes will be uncovered and there is more smoothing to be done but the major resurfacing is finished. (Notice how I've been working on Lancelot bit by bit for so long he has three different colors of primer?! Click the photo for a much larger version to see everyone better.) After these guys, the other horses are going to be a breeze to prep! :-D

Whew!

Well that was a long month of nothing but manes and tails! But finally all of the sculpting is done and the horses are primered. It's shaping up to be another long month of prepping. It's such a joy though to be able to pick up a horse and just start painting; it's so worth it! About half of these are commissions, with the other half being prepped for future sales pieces. The pic is clickable for a large version if you'd like to take a closer look.

Long Time, No Update!

Well, it seems as if I am yet again long overdue for an update. Since my last post a lot has happened both in work and in life. Sadly, my mother passed away in April. She fought a long, hard battle with cancer and ultimately wound up in hospice at home with her family. It has been a very difficult time not only emotionally, but also with the sheer enormity of the workload when dealing with someone who has zero mobility. She was the best mother anyone could have hoped for and is sorely missed. The photo above is from her garden; she was a Master Gardener and especially loved her dahlias. My sisters and I are keeping up the tradition, and we are pleased to see the dahlias now poking their little heads out of the ground.

In happier news, I have moved back home with my full studio setup and have been madly working away at the last of my backlog and starting on the new orders taken in March. This is what my lineup looks like currently (clickable for a bigger pic):

It's shocking, I know... I actually love working in batches on customizing though! Right now I am still working through all of the body work, with around 8 or so of what you see here left to finish up. Once that is done, almost all of them will be getting new manes and tails. Most of these are customer horses, with a few sales pieces tossed in to peck away at as well. Thankfully, I'm not painting all of them! Several are customs for Tracy Eilers, who will be adding her lovely paint work.

Neighner is still in progress. I had to set him aside for a while because all that bending over adding little hairs really messed up my back. Hopefully once I'm done with all that sculpting and prepping I'll be ready to finish him up. (That pic is also embiggenable!) And last but not least, I had the opportunity to finish this Dante:

He was, as you can see, auctioned earlier this month. I am so pleased with him, and I can't wait to paint the other little guys! Dante is one of my favorite sculptures of Sarah's, and happily he'll look good in just about any color. I don't have Hephaestus' gallery linked on the website yet, so to see his full set of pictures you can use this link.

Custom Books Open!

It's that time again... the custom books are finally open! I will be accepting submissions for two weeks, so put on your thinking caps and send in your ideas. For all the details, click here.

In Progress

A lot of progress has been made on all those little guys since the last post, but my priority has been working on this Rose Reiner CM. It's been a long time since I've worked on a really nice piece for auction so I'm super excited about him! It figures that I'd pick a horse that's extremely difficult to photograph (thanks to his leaning and turning position), but he's such a dynamic, neat guy that I couldn't resist. He looks like some kind of cream leopard right now, but that's the last thing he'll look like when he's done. Stay tuned for lots of in progress shots on this fellah! :-D

In Progress

Hey, they have heads now! :-D The pics are all clickable for larger versions if you want to see more detail. Some of the necks aren't attached quite right yet, so they'll be going under the knife again. It's just the nature of such a bendy, stretchy-squishy body part!