Fantasy Friday

As promised, another edition of Fantasy Friday. This week I have a piece that I did in '05. It is the most extensive and complicated one I have ever done, and have never done another like it. The wings are completely hand-built with Apoxie sculpt over a wire frame. This thing is huge! Nearly 18 inches tall and weighed about 6 lbs! It is a remade Breyer Clydesdale stallion. I took my inspiration from a drawing I did back in '04 or so. The title of the piece is "The Old Warrior", and it was sold along with the model.

Not an exact replica of the drawing, but close. I would LOVE to do another on this scale, though I have done a couple of SM sized ones over the years using Tammey Abbey's wings and horns.

Done!

Finished the dapple gray Anuk Amen-Ra resin. I think he looks pretty good, I really like how he looks on the custom base too. Now to get him sent home. He was a booger to prep, someone had made a rather botched attempt at it.

Inspiration

I rarely do portrait models, some folks are just too picky about things for me. I do them on a limited basis for the most part. Mainly I work from my imagination, and my knowledge of equine coat color and patterns. Sometimes I will use a photo of a horse for a basic idea of what I want to do. This horse was brought to the school where I was a Vet Tech student, it was at the local animal shelter, and we were doing the vaccinations and Coggins testing on it for them. This is the only Palomino Pintaloosa I have ever seen. I know Pintaloosas exist, but have mainly seen them on Minis, this was a 2-3 year old. I wish I could have taken it home!





This is the model that I created using the photos of the horse as inspiration. I love how he turned out. He was done for a show donation back in 07 I think.

More Tack

This is another tack set I made for myself when I was showing performance. It is also a Rio Rondo pattern with the etched plates that I antiqued. It is fully basketweave tooled and sports adjustable stirrup leathers and a latigo tie girth. I did enjoy making this one, it is kind of fun sometimes, and a change of pace. Might be something I start doing more often as I feel like it. I don't know.






The horse is also by me, one of my first Paint patterns that came out LSQ.

Wednesday Tip

Something I have found is that locating good sandable primer can be difficult. The absolute best I have found, and used for YEARS is Duplicolor Sandable Primer. It is normally found in auto parts stores, Auto Zone, PepBoys, O'Reilly's and Advance Auto Parts all carry it. It comes in gray, white, and rust colors. It has a very even spray and once dry sands easily without "gumming up". It also has sufficient "tooth" to hold pastels.

Innovations

Every now and then I have one of those "OH, WOW, why didn't I think of this before" moments. One of those occured when I started on this horse, AL Horatio, for a customer in Australia. She wanted a fleabitten gray and I didn't want to do a spatter painted one again. So I decided to see if I were patient enough to do it the hard way, one fleabite at a time with a colored pencil. Lo and behold, it worked, and it won a NAN card in a tough WB class his first time out and is a multi-champ in Australia.



Click on the photos to see the details, you can also zoom in on them once they open up.