What am I working on?

To be honest I'm not completely sure. It has been quite a while since I did any painting at all. Hopefully 2013 will be the year when I'll actually finish some horses. At the moment I only use acrylics. But hopefully I'll get to try pastels sometime soon, since acrylics doesn't really cut it for me and my patience doesn't allow me to use oils ;) Or if I get a working air compressor I can start working with my airbrush again!

Back row:
Schleich Trakhener Mare from 2002, painted chestnut and is almost finished. Her name is Scent of Roses and she's a thoroughbred mare.
Schleich Thoroughbred Stallion from 2003, painted black and is almost finished. His name is Black Glitter N and he is a thoroughbred stallion.
Schleich Holsteiner Mare from 2002, painted bay and is almost finished. She is named Nimble Thief and she is also a thoroughbred mare.
Breyer PP Thoroughbred, painted bay and almost finished. You might have guessed that he is also a thoroughbred and he is called Unforgettable Gold.

Middle:
Breyer Sm. G1 Arabian Mare, painted bay and almost finished. Sarab is a pure Polish arabian mare.
Breyer G3 Sm. Pony, painted black and almost finished. Dimma is an Icelandic mare.

 

Front row:

Schleich Chestnut Mare from 2002. Will be painted palomino and be shown as an morab mare named Serenity.
Schleich Hanoverian Mare from 1995. Will be painted bay and be shown as a thoroughbred mare named Unforgettable Memory.
Breyer PP Arabian. Soon to be finished flaxen liverchestnut SE arabian named Aeton Ibn Aemathion.
Breyer Sm. G2 Andalusian. Soon to be finished black leopard appaloosa/P.R.E cross, Bello Punto.

Breyer Sm. G2 Warmblood. Soon to be finished dark bay warmblood mare, Dakota.
Breyer Sm. Scratching Foal. Hard to see in photos, but soon to be finished, cremello. No name or breed yet.
Breyer Sm. G2 Stockhorse. Soon to be finished chestnut tovero paint mare. No name yet.
Breyer Sm. Lying Foal. Will be painted after the well-known Zorse Eclyse. Will be shown as a Zorse but no name yet.

Breyer Classic Dream Horse, will probably be a palomino with mohair :)

CollectA Thoroughbred Mare. Not quite sure what to do with her yet but it would be fun to try somethng new! Suggestions anyone? Thinking some kind of grey perhaps?
Schleich Andalusian Mare from 2010. Will be a chestnut pony mare with the elastics in her mane painted pink, like a real girly pony mare :)

Breyer Sm. G2 Thoroughbred. Will be painted some kind of grey and be shown as a thoroughbred.
Breyer Sm. G2 Stockhorse, not sure what to do with him yet. Perhaps an appaloosa of some kind. Suggestions?

Unknown make. Both have hade some sculpting done, but not by me. The first one will probably be a fleabitten grey and the other will probably be some kund of bay or maybe I'll try a roan :)

Breyer Sm. Trotting Foal. No Idea what to do with her yet. Suggestions?
Breyer Mini Whinnie Stockhorse, will be painted a red dun quarterhorse mare.

 

Peter Stone Chips Mule, will probably be either, dark brown, light chestnut or some crazy mule pattern :)

Bat Girl resin sculpted by Morgan Haberman. Very bad picture. Will be painted a Splash Overo. Probably palomino but maybe chestnut :)

Christmas gifts

Okay, so I might be a little early, planning my Christmas gifts already but when you find the perfect gifts you can't wait.

My three closest friends (let's call them E, M and J) are all horsecrazy but they are not into modelhorses. I got the idea when E and I discussed birthday gifts for M. M is really about caring and helping animals as much as she can. E is all about homemade gifts and J leased a ponymare very similar to the mare on the medallion, and she had some plans to breed her. I love to give personalized gifts so I thought this might be my chance. So why not give them a handpainted TIBBP Medallion?

http://www.resinsbyrandy.com/tibbp/medallion.html
M's medallion:
I haven't quite decided how to paint the mare and foal of M's medallion. She has three horses I could choose to portrait and that makes it harder. I thought about portraying her pony on the foal and her current horse as the mare. I thought about making a portrait of her former horse (who sadly had to be put down due to severe osteoarthritis) on the Dreamer medallion by Rebecca Turner for her 22 birthday next January. But we will see.

E's medallion:
The mare on E's medallion will be painted after the fleabitten grey arabian she leased and competed with and the foal will be painted after the darkbay colt she trained at our school.

J's medallion:
The mare will be painted as a portrait of the bay pony mare she leased (and dearly miss) and the foal will either be the bay likeness of her mother J wanted or the chestnut with blaze who we all joked she would get if she bred her.

Oh, I can't wait to start painting! :D

 

 

Upcoming liveshow!

Excited! The first Saturday in May, I'll be attending a liveshow again :D I can barely wait! I've got three days to figure out which models to bring and I can say that it is NOT an easy decision.

The show will, except for halter, also have a performance division, a vintage division and a fantasy division. This time I will only show in the halter division since I'd like to try to make some time to visit a friend of mine not to far from where the show is held :)

And this time, hopefully, there will be no accidents involving my models ;) And hopefully, I wont forget my camera this time...

Throwing in a picture of my beloved Athame who had an accident at the last show I went to. She is still not home from restoration but her space on the shelf is empty and patiently waiting for her to come back :)

Athame, an AA Sabiha painted by AA. Actually just realised that this is the first show, since I bought her, that she wont be attending...

My horses

At the moment there are two horses in my life. I'm surrounded by more but these two are the ones that I ride and take care of.

The first one is my mothers and my fjordhorse gelding Unik. We bought him when he was 9 years old. That was a little more then 15 years ago. Today he is a healty 24-year old who enjoys life with light riding, good food and horse friends. He is the sweetest and always has time for some treats and cuddling.

I've loved horses for as long as I can remember and I've been very lucky since my mother share the passion. That meant that I didn't even have to beg to begin riding at a riding school. When I was six my family bought a sweet fjord gelding named Unik. He was 9 years old by then and he was just the sweetest. I continued riding at the riding school for a few years before I fell of a little, grumpy, black pony mare at a lesson. I wasn't badly hurt but I got scared and that combined with the fact that we got a new riding teacher (whom had no respect for her students and whom I didn't trust) made me take the decision to quit riding.

I didn't quit entirely, I still took occasional rides on Unik and I was in the stable a lot, just to care for the horses. I was satisfied with my occasional rides and simply taking care of the horses for quite a while but as time passed by the urge to ride regularly rose. A riding teacher I knew, and trusted held riding lessons at another riding school and I decided I wanted to try again and I got a place in her group. I rode there for a few years and slowly but surely regained my confidence and motivation to ride.

When my trainer quit I did too, at least I quit my riding lessons. Instead I took up riding lessons for a dressage trainer. Unik and I definately had our ups and downs during these lessons but slowly we got things right and we went to our first dressage competition. There were only 3 competitors in our class and I didn't have high expectations (hell, my only wishes were that I wouldn't fall off or forget the programme) so when the results was announced and me and Unik was named winners I couldn't have been any prouder.
My sweet, stubborn fjord and I had actually won our first dressage competition! That was huge to me since people had told me things like: "Don't expect to much, you do have a fjordhorse". We went to a few more competitons and we were mostly quite high on the result lists, earning a few ribbons (I wasn't competing for the ribbons. As long as I was happy with our performance I wouldn't have cared if we finished last, but I wont lie, it was nice to see that the judges appreciated our performances).



The second one isn't really mine. He is owned by my dressage trainer. He used to be her competion horse but he got injured and his career ended. He wasn't ridden for at least a year to give him time to heal the injury. My trainer asked me to slowly begin riding him when I did my work practice at the stable. And I wasn't hard to convince. I've been fond of this horse since I saw him for the first time.

My dream horse has, for as long as I can remember, been a chestnut mare with a blaze and 4 white stockings. Poppes (also called Prinsen (The Prince in Swedish) since I've always seen him as unattainable) was exactly that, except that he was a gelding instead of a mare. Now that I'm a few years older and wiser, I'm happy he's a gelding since I've ridden enough horses to know that mares are generally not my cup of tea :)

Poppes is a gentleman with a little nerve. He's quick to flee if something spooks him but as soon as he realize that you are on his back he stops and almost apologizes for what he did. He is the sweetest horse to ride and care for, yet no horse for a beginner since he gets nervous if he doesn't understand what you want him to do.

He is also kind of a local celebrity on dressage competitions in this area, eventough he doesn't compete anymore people still talk about him when my trainer is out with her younger mare.

Anyway I began riding him slowly and I quickly fell in love with him. That was 4 years ago. The first two years I shared him with two other girls. A friend of mine and I shared the weekends and school breaks and another girl took care of him during the week. This because my friend and I went to a boarding school and we were only at home during the weekends and school breaks. Shortly before we graduated the girl who took care of him during the week quite so it was just me and my friend left. We shared him and talked about leasing him for real since none of us could afford to lease him alone we decided to do it together. Unfortunately my friend had second thoughts about it and had a disagreement with the owner so she decided not to lease him. I was sad since I wanted to have him but couldn't afford him on my own.

Fortunately for me, the owner and I, made a deal which made it possible for me to have him as my own. And, with a little help from my mother, he has been like my own for the last year and a half!

Remembrance and Helios

As promised, here is the introduction of two of the newest members of my herd. First out is my little adventurer from my last post. He is a original finish Peter Stone pony. This particular version is called Shoal.

 

 

I'vee been wanting this one for a while. I saw this particular model at a show and really liked his soft look and beautiful colour. And I'm always a sucker for a dressage-looking-horse with four white socks and a blaze :)

 

Please excuse the bad pictures, they were taken very quickly before I had to go to work.

 

I plan on showing him as a Swedish riding pony stallion (Connemara x Thoroughbred) and his name is Remembrance.

The other horse has been here for quite a while now and I don't even have a good excuse to why I haven't introduced him. So without further ado:

*Drumroll please*

Welcome Helios!

Helios is an Oliver resin sculpted by Sarah Minkiewicz-Breunig. Isn't he the sweetest? He's painted by Sue Kern and will be shown as a Haflinger foal.

I just can't get over that cute face and that little tounge sticking out! It will be so fun to see how he will do at his first liveshow :)

Adventures of a package

Yes...

Today I got a notice to pickup a package at the postoffice. The only thing is that the notice was sent to the wrong house... It wasn't just that it was sent to the wrong house. It was even in the wrong village!

My parents are divorced since approximately 3 years. My father kept the house so I decided to stay with him. So I've had the same address for over 20 years. Today when I was visiting my mother she went to get the mail and she said that there was mail for me... I was surprised to see that it had MY name and address correctly written on it but still it ended up in my mothers mailbox... I was actually pissed off when I saw that because our addresses are not similar and the only similarity in our names is our last names, which we share, other than that nothing is alike. Anyway I calmed down, thought about calling the postoffice but decided to let it pass as a mistake... If it happens again I will however call them...

Anyway I went to the postoffice to pick up my package just to see that it had a slight damage to the box it was packed in...

 

When I haven't dealt with a seller before I'm always a little nervous about how they pack their models. And even if it wasn't too badly damaged I've seen badly packed models get injured with less damage to the package. But I had no reason to worry since my new addition was well packed and had survived the trip with no damage :)

I won't introduce him today ;) But he will be introduced together with another little fellow who has been here for quite some time now... :)