I was struck...

... by an unexpected inspiration today so for the first time in quite a while I took out my acrylic paints, my brushes (which was way more than I remember, I'll explain why) and a willing victim.

I brought out my old, trusty paintbrushes...

Old and well used.

And they looked just as terrible as I remembered them... Luckily I knew that I bought new paintbrushes. I knew I bought 3 brushes before school began, two tiny, round brushes and 1 larger flat brush. Somehow I've forgotten that I'd actually bought a total of 7(!) new brushes. Not a day to late and even though I now have more brushes than I thought I would, they will be put to good use.

They look so much better than the old ones.

For the willing victim I took out my old Schleich Arabian mare that have been in my bodybox for quite a long time. This is what she originally looked like.

I honestly liked her colour the way it was, but she was one of my first Schleich horses and she was well-loved and played with so her colour got scratched and rubbed of at some spots. I decided years ago that I wanted to repaint her to a palomino. She was actually on her way to become bay at one point as a friend of mine started to repaint her but it wasn't quite smooth so when my friend lost interest in her I striped and reprimed her and started on her palomino coat. The thing is that she got too yellow and I had to redo her.

So this is Serenity, in her current state of base coat. I usually do the base coat in acrylics (sometimes I do a little shading in acrylics as well) and the shading and highlighting in pastels.

The light in my room is really bad for photographing so I apologize for that but the colour of the horse looks true to reality (at least on my screen). 

I know base coating one model isn't much for most people but to me this is a great step in the right direction as I've finally picked up the paintbrushes again :) I just wish the weather could be a little bit more co-operative so that I could prime and seal the ones who need that.

Hopefully I will be able to keep this up so that Serenity finally will be finished, my painting skills can improve and hopefully I'll be able to write you some interesting in-progress posts :)