Giselle up for sale (and medallion progress)

My custom repainted "Giselle" model is finally up on MH$P for sale - for all the info, see her MH$P 
Advert here!

She was certainly the start of the "re-spark" that got me back into painting, sculpting and all things arty.

A lot of work has been completed on the Journal Cover/Medallion - I'm actually starting to find out how much it would cost to cast this guy and sell a few as a medallion, and keep around 5 or 10 for journal covers/myself and go from there. I'll start advertising for interest as a medallion piece when it's a bit closer to completion.

Yesterday was basically the day spent doing the background, and I have to say, it was a great call from my partner to change the original flower design on the top left hand corner to a feather instead - very good call!

I'm liking it a lot - just got some refinement to do with the horse (and then attach him) and put on his mane, and then detail the border and/or background (still really waiting for a good idea of what to do for those to hit me).

Productive weekend at least.

Creative juices are flowing!

When I spoke last time about the bug starting to bite again, I wasn't kidding. I've really been hit hard by the need to do something arty, and I'm glad, it hurt me a lot to not be doing anything constructive in the art world for the last few years.

Aside from the model horse re-paints I'm working on, I've also started dabbling into making Journal Cover's, and of course, having them purely horse related. Think square medallions, but on the front of a sturdy notepad/notebook! I had seen someone doing these, and I just had, had, had to convert this idea into horsey-style. I would have given anything to have something horsey-style sculpted onto the front of a journal when I was younger!

First quick mock-up sketch idea in a quick 10 minutes while on break at work:

I liked the design - the other day I had another idea concept sketched out, which I loved even more, but I thought this would be a good starting point, considering I haven't sculpted anything for 5 years now. Let's not get too complex on the first one, right?

I have to say, the horse 'fleshing out' started coming together so well, I had to stop myself from going full ham on the muzzle of the horse and detailing the crap out of it, in case changes in size had to be made. But I was getting the inspiration for this piece pretty quickly.

And here s/he is so far, fleshed out, with a blob for an ear so I can try and make sure the proportions are correct - I've already shortened his face a lot (and feeling like it might need tightening up still), but once I get an eyeball in that socket and work a little more, then I'll have an idea of if the proportions are correct. Thinking I may have to bite the bullet and throw it up on a forum for some suggestions and early critiques before any detail sneaks in there.

I have to admit, if he turns out anything like I'm hoping, I will be quite tempted to price getting a few of it cast to release this in a medallion if there is any interest, and keeping maybe 5 to make 5 different Journals.

We'll see - getting a head of myself a little bit (which is the norm for me).

Long time no update?

Hard to believe I haven't touched this blog in five years... a massive five years. I couldn't even begin to tell you what I've been up to in those five years.

But I am back, beginning to pick up the pencil, paint brush, sculpting tools and getting back into the "arty feel" - I have to say, during those five years, I pretty much lost my muse and all motivation to even look at a model horse, let alone anything else art related.Well I lie, I did try my hand at pixel art for a game that my partner-at-the-time was working on - but that fell in a hole when the relationship started breaking down, and eventually came to an end. I was super happy with the little characters that were being built for that though, and I will cherish those little pieces of artwork. Learning to do pixel art, as well the animation for them was a lot of fun to say the least.

But now ideas are starting to flow, and already I have designs and customs in mind, and I'm slowly restocking the art supplies - sadly my tub of Apoxie Sculpt has long expired and is no longer workable. I would be surprised if it still was after 5 years of being untouched. In the mean time, I have completed an old paint job that I started probably about 5 years ago, and never got to finish - so with some details added and completed, a Giselle/Valentine repaint was long finished. Her inspiration was the gorgeous bay sabino Thoroughbred mare (whose name escapes me right now) that is owned by Flying Colors Farm.

She'll be posted up for sale at some point when I manage to snap some decent (not-using-my-iPhone-camera) photo's. I'll be setting a starting price on her at $250 USD.

The next piece in the words is a repainted Silver, into a bay roan (yup, the sabino Giselle riled up the roan bug in me again!) - so I thought I would try out a slight new technique in mixing the 'roan hair' colours to see how it turns out. So far, I'm only in the roaning out detail stage, before I dull down the extreme, blunt detail of the hairs with some white pigment to blend it all together.

This is the only photo I have so far:

More in progress shots of him to come - and yes, he will be another one for sale when completed and when I dust off the old photo shooting area and find a camera that works (sadly my old digital SLR is d.e.a.d.).

The other thing I got to doing was dusting off the old Dremel and started cutting apart a Smarty Jones model whose paint job just wasn't working for me - he didn't want to be a simple repaint anymore, he wanted some spunk and character added to him. So, he will slowly morph into a misbehaving Warmblood/Sport-horse who is refusing to go near that spooky jump!

Other art stuff? Well I'm working on some glass candle holders (for tea light candles) with feathered designs on them made from paper (even better; made from old books) which I'll post up when completed.

I've also starting thinking of Christmas gifts for friends - with one idea being a sculpted book cover for a journal/notepad type book, with Rocket Racoon as the cover. But we'll see how that goes and if I get to actually making that one become a reality.

So welcome back - and hello again :)