I Did It!

Better late than never but my NaMoPaiMo model is finally finished (actually he was finished Wednesday) and that makes him my second finished model this year! 😃

He started out as a Breyer Stablemate Andalusian that I gave a new mane and tail, a straighter profile and some new neck muscles.

I chose to paint him as a portrait/semi-portrait of my all-time favourite dressage horse, Briar.

I'm quite happy with how he turned out and even though I most likely will give him a better, permanent base at a later date he now happily resides at my shelf with all my other finished models.

He is probably my best horse to date and hopefully I'll keep improving with every horse I paint.

I had a great time with NaMoPaiMo and learned a lot! I really hope that I might finish my model in time next year.

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I named him Bailando and of course, I show him as a Swedish Warmblood stallion. I took him to his first liveshow last weekend and he placed fourth in his class. I had hopes he'd might be able to snag a qualification card but not this time. I still got some nice comments on him and I am extremely happy with him any way 😊.

The real Briar.

The real Briar was actually born at a farm not far from my childhood home and I have been fortunate to meet the real Briar at two occasions, one at a competition and one at the stable where he lived when ridden by Swedish rider Jan Brink. I've also seen him compete at several occasions, both live and on tv. So I'm very happy that I now have my own mini version of him in my collection.

I Didn't Do It

I had high hopes to post my I Did It photos today. However that is not the case. My model is not done yet.

Bad pictures but I love him and I will finish him in the next couple of days.

Progressnotprogress

My NaMoPaiMo model is coming along.

Although progress is really, really slow.

And I've encountered a problem I haven't had before.

Normally my models go much darker than I plan. But with this guy it's quite the opposite, he just won't go dark enough for me!

I still have quite a bit left to do and I'm not sure I will be able to do it in time.

But that doesn't mean I'll give up without a fight. Just keep swimming painting, just keep swimming painting!

NaMoPaiMo Progress - Basecoat

On Thursday I worked the late shift so I took the liberty of spending my morning on my NaMoPaiMo model. I plan to give him a basecoat in acrylics and then build up the colour with pastels. I usually try to find the lightest colour on my reference photo and mix colours to get a shade lighter than that to basecoat my model in. For this model I mixed white, yellow ochre, raw sienna and a few drops of water to thin the paint.

I painted one layer:

Let it dry, and painted another layer:

Third layer:

Fourth and final layer:

After the colour had dried I realized that it is a bit too dark to start with for my reference so I need to lighten it up a tiny bit, I'm not yet sure if I'll do it with acrylics or pastels but I'm confident I'll make it work either way :)

NaMoPaiMo

When I read this post at Jennifer's blog I recognized myself in every step.

I really want to paint some models this year, I have the models, I have the supplies I want to use and I have blogs, video tutorials and reference pictures to get me going and help me on the way.

I just lack the motivation. So when I heard about NaMoPaiMo I wanted to join in on the fun! I applied for the Facebook group and it was really inspiring to see all the pictures and tips and tricks that the members share. Hopefully this will give me the inspiration I need to get at least one model finished in February (if I'm not too intimidated by all the great artist and their beautiful work 😅).

A few days ago I actually signed up to join NaMoPaiMo. The model I intend to paint for this month is my Breyer Stablemate G2 Andalusian that I remade to a be a Swedish Warmblood.

I will share all of my progress on this blog. Hopefully I'll be able to finish him by February 28th :)