Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas! I hope you all had a great one! :)

The War On Prepping

The lack of posts hasn't been for lack of want. I finished midterms and thought 'wow, I can do modek stuff again.' I imagined a manufactoring belt prepping models. But that has been going not as well as I had hoped.
I reprimed my rugged painted lark custom and had decided on an Appaloosa. It had seemed like a good idea and seemed to be something I could do. Nope. The pcture looks much better than the model.

A mixture of primer not mixing well with models to drops to lack of art-ability, Murphy's Law has been taking up my progress! Maybe I'll go back to tack making for a while, ha.

Wordless Day

Today I only have pictures to show you. They're from the barn I ride at from a couple of months ago, before winter came. The two horses are Henny (chestnut) and Spotty (bay). They are both retired Thoroughbreds.

Old Horse Books Are Awesome

Older horse books are awesome. This is my most recent buy. It does look like it has been through a war, but Saddle Up! by Charles E. Ball is worth it.

It has great pics from before 1973, including this Arab.

It also has great references for performance,

Keyhole Race

and for scene.

Woot woot

Five Paws Studio has passed 10, 000 page views. Thanks so much everyone!

The Pony of Many Colors

No snow day today, but instead I got a two hour delay.
There's supposed to be another storm on its way so.....maybe a snow day? I hope.
Anyways, while priming the drafter, I started to also prep Phoenix (again). I want her now to be an appaloosa mare, similar to the one I found online. So instead of messing her up, I decided to just reprime this guy and experiment on him.

I kept my reference near by while I did a base coat until it was even.

Then I broke out my new pastels (black Friday, yay) and started to add shading.

No New Updates.....but more pictures!

So between more basketball,

kitty fun,

and a snow storm, I haven't had a chance to do anything but put a layer of primer onto the draft horse. Crossing my fingers for no school for tomorrow!

PS. Five Paws Studio is close to 10,000 views!

It's All In The Details

Mr. Trotty started to get his details done.

 

But that was after I got home from taking pictures for yearbook of the varsity Basketball game.

The underside of his mane was sculpted.

His hind hoof was sculpted.

Wrinkles were added.

The next part of the journey is prepping.

Mane Event

So Mogwli got a new mane today. It still needs to be detailed on the bottom, underside, but my dear draft horse is coming along!

I did it by rolling out pieces of apoxy and pushing it into the mane, and then cutting and shaping it with my exacto knife into triangle shapes.

 Then I used my clay tools (end of a paint brush, pencil point) and textured in his mane. The underside will be sculpted once the top has hardened.

Cat Fun

So today I didn't do anything model horse related. Instead, I worked which consisted of playing with cats. They live at the bookstore until they are adopted (although two have been dubbed store cats)

Drafty Stuff

The Trotting Drafter now has a name. Mowgli. I gave him a new tail,

sculpted a new hoof,

 and did further details on his muzzle.

Then I gave him a forelock and some of his mane.

Books + Horses=Christmas

Today I made a book tree made out of horse books, mainly the Thoroughbred series. 

I started with a base.

And built it up. If you haven't heard of the Thoroughbred series, it surrounds the life of Ashleigh and her horses. Sadly, the pile of books you see aren't the entire collection. I started reading them and realized that I didn't have a book, and I stopped reading them then. (I will buy the book one day). Anyways, the series is very well written and I recommend it to horse lovers and people who don't want a large horse book.

 Some of the books are from another book club, called Pony. The top book, Battlecry Forever by Joanna Campbell (who also created the Thoroughbred series), was one of my favorite books that Pony sent out, so that's why I placed it there.

Hopefully you're enjoying the season!

Drafty Trot

I finished my *gag* paper and felt up to doing model horse-y things again.
Even though I didn't show at NAN this year, it was right in my backyard. Peter stone was selling bodies/seconds, so one of the three models I bought was a draft horse.

I decided to make the draft guy a little looser. I chopped off his ears,

Tail,

and the bobs.

Next I added a piece of wire into the butt and secured it with super glue and backing soda.

Originally I was going to sculpt the tail tonight, but I decided to resculpt the muzzle instead.
I used my dremel and carved some of the muzzle.

Then I took it a step farther and resculpted alot of it.

The bottom lip and part of the top lip were partially resculpted.

Parts still need further detail added, but I will do that after the apoxie has hardened.