Liveshow Prep

Long time no see. I have been very bad at keeping up with blogging the last couple of months but to be honest I have had pretty much nothing to blog about, I haven't painted anything since NaMoPaiMo, haven't bought any new horses or made any tack.

I think the only model horse related thing I have done for the last two months have been to listen to the Mares In Black podcast, which I have thoroughly enjoyed.

Anyway I am going to a liveshow later this year and since it is still a couple of months away and I finally got some motivation to do some model horse related stuff (hopefully it'll stay for awhile), I went through the class list and decided that I might want to bring some new faces to the show.

That means, quite a bit of work... 

This is my little gang. The three big ones needs quite extensive prepping, the three stablemates will be resculpted and the little resin needs an ear fixed and a little prepping.

I wonder how far I'll get in time for the show but hopefully I can at least finish some of them!

In the works

For quite some time now I've had a distinct lack of motivation to do pretty much anything but eat, sleep and work. I still try to find my motivation one little step at the time and yesterday, I actually felt like doing some small work on my models.

So I picked up this little group:

Adib is now a mare and I fixed a few pinholes in his tail and a tail strand that was missing. Tiny is now also a mare. Realta is a second so she had some serious issues! The bigger issues I've already fixed but I filled in some more pinholes on her. She still has quite a bit of prepping left before being ready to paint but I work on it one small step at the time. The two medallions are full of pinholes (mostly the fjord) that I need to fill in so that I can start to paint them. I filled in some pinholes and will give them a light sand and priming when dry so that I can see if there are more that needs fixing.

Not a whole lot of work but I am happy for every little thing I get done!

Hard work, work

My, maybe NaMoPaiMo 2018 project, has had some work.

This is what he looks like at the moment:

In these pictures he's just had a bath (hence the wet look).

So far he's had one small round of sanding with regular sandpaper and then 2 sessions with the electrical file.

He's body is mostly ready for the finer sandpaper but his face, legs and chest still needs some more sanding with the electrical file before he's ready for the finer sandpaper.

After all the sanding is done I'll spray him with primer just to see if I've missed any spots then I'll fix his tail and ears.

Hopefully I'll have him done in time but we'll see 😊

Portrait to be

For next year I really hope to be able to send one of my to-be-portrait models to a painter but in order to do so I need to have her fixed and prepped.

The model in question is my Eberl Primula resin. She arrived with broken ears and some prepping to do so I started with the ears. Her left ear is mostly original (broken piece glued on) with some reinforcing with apoxie as they where extremely thin! 

Her right ear is mostly just blocked in. This ear was also broken at arrival, into two piece. One of which crumbled when I picked it up. Atleast I was able to glue on the other part so she was only missing about 1/3 of her ear. I blocked it in with apoxie and I will file it done to match the other ear better. 

I also gave her some more forelock as it was practically missing on her left side. She also got new private parts as they hadn't survived the molding process well. There is still some work to do on her but I hope I'll be able to finish her before we leave for New Zealand!

NaMoPaiMo 2018?

The last couple of weeks, I have seen a lot of people preparing for NaMoPaiMo 2018 and showing of their prepping and sculpting work of their project horses. I haven't even thought so far ahead yet as I have been very busy but today it hit me. In a few weeks I will leave for a month in New Zealand and I will be back in the middle of January. That means limited time to prep and prime my project horse.

Unfortunately I haven't quite decided what model I will use as my NaMoPaiMo horse. But one evening when I was home alone it just hit me. It would be fun to get my newly acquired project Akhal-Teke painted.

If I manage to prep him and resculpt him in time I will use him for NaMoPaiMo.

As you can see there is quite a bit of work left to do on him but I'll try my best to finish in time.

Atleast his offside is a tad better than his showside at the moment.

I'll have to look through my bodyshelf to see what model I can use as a back-up plan if I won't manage to finish my akhal-teke but I'll try my best to get him finished in time.

A little bit of everything

At the moment I have a really hard time sticking to just one project. So at the moment I have a few different ones simultaneously in the works.

My "stable" has had the inside painted:

I also managed to put in the bars over the window:

I've also started removing some ears and manes on a few poor models, preparing them for some resculpting.

I also did a tiny bit of painting:

I just blocked in the mane and tail so that I get a better feeling for how dark the body colour really gets as I have some layers left on it.

Pardon the bad picture (and messy table). This is Tambo for my Silver Brumby project who has gotten his markings started.

It's nice to see some projects moving forward!

Pony in the works

This little guy recently joined my project pile. This is the Animal Artistry Welsh Sec C Stallion. I've heard that Animal Artistry resins can be a pain to fix when broken and I was a bit hesitant to get him but I thought why not give it a try. The breaks where very clean and all the pieces were included.

This is what he looked like:

He does have a base but I will fix the horse up a bit more before attaching him to the base. This is what he looks like after some superglue:

My plan is to strengthen the breaks and fix some small things with apoxie before attaching him to the base and start the prepping.

I have no idea what colour to paint this guy so any suggestions would be greatly appreciated 😊

In the spirit of NaMoPaiMo

In the spirit of NaMoPaiMo I've prepared several other models for painting. Mostly prepping and priming but some slight resculpting on some has also been done.

The two guys below are CollectA Hanoverians and will be painted dark chestnut and buckskin going grey.

These three girls are planned to be medium-dark dapple grey, dark bay and bay leopard or blanket.

This little shire foal will be baby black.

I gave this thoroughbred boy-parts and he will be a buckskin dominant white.

These two girls will be silver bay and chestnut perhaps with rabicano-like markings.

This guy is still undecided but I think I might resculpt his ears a bit as I'm not too keen on their look.

This tiger mommy will be painted a white tiger.

Her cubs have had some work done. They were separated from each other and the cub below got a new tail sculpted. This one will be painted as a white tiger.

The next cub got his back lower leg and paw sculpted. Will be painted in "normal" tiger colour.

And the last cub got both back lower legs and paws sculpted. This one will be painted as a golden tiger.

This is what they originally looked like:

As you can see they are all molded together.

Here's the first cub original vs. separated with new tail.

Here's the second cub, separated with sculpted back leg and paw vs. original.

And last but not least, the last cub with his "middle" counterpart.

Can't wait to get some paint on these guys!

Realta

The sharp-eyed people have probably seen this girl in my unpainted resins post. This Realta resin was my graduation gift for myself.

I only found out about this resin after she was sold out but got the chance to be put up on a waiting list in case anyone decided to pass on their copy.

I got an email about a few resins and a few seconds that the sculptor had for sale and I jumped on the opportunity. I bought a second who had some airbubbles and small pinholes.

I used my apoxie to fill in several of the holes and sanded down most of her seams. She'll soon have her first layer of primer so that I can pinpoint the areas that need more work.

She has a beautiful face and I'm sure she'll be an absolute beauty once she's painted.

At the moment I'm thinking dark bay or dapple grey, warmblood or riding pony.

She came with the cutest thank you card...

...and her Certificate of Authenticity.

First coat of primer

This is how the models look after the session I had on Sunday.

I managed to sand down the areas I could see needed it with good old sandpaper (I used 320, 400 and 1200 grit). Unfortunately I forget to time myself but I think it took approximately 10 minutes each with sanding and priming since I've done a lot of prepping work with the electrical file it was mostly smoothing of those areas that were needed. Then it was time to put the first layer of primer on.

No, my primer is not glossy. It's just not dry since I took the pictures right after priming :) They do need at least 1 or 2 more coats of primer but I can already see some imperfections that needs to be taken care of.

I might also have an idea for the Paso Mare:

The tail is originally from the Morgan but I happened to put her right beside it when I was prepping and just thought that it could fit her. I'm thinking something like a white "fairytale" horse. Not sure about the breed though. Might make her a unicorn or something :)