Spring got me pastelling

Hi! Well I haven't been the most productive person the last few weeks; casting copies of Fly Fishing and mailing boxes seems to have filled my time. I have a few photos to share though, first up is this one of Jasper, poor old Jasper, I do despair with him and wonder if I'll EVER have him finished! I accidentally amputated his o/s rear leg recently, I'd been playing with it for so long trying to get it to work that the wire inside gave in! Every cloud has a silver lining though and having the leg away from the rest of the model meant that I got the chance to have a good look at it and get some wprogress made on that bit, so as you can see from the photo his raised rear leg does appear a little further along than the rest of him. The leg is still unattached at the moment, but I arranged it roughly where it will eventually be. As always, photography alters the reality; in this photo Jasper's neck looks a little short, in actual fact it appears much longer in person, I think it's just because his head is turned slightly, though the neck and shoulders are areas I'll be reviewing when I can. His head also appears larger in this photo, perhaps due to the angle but probably because his ears are still very small (just lumps of clay for now). His body appears very short and deep, this is a tricky one, as his whole body is twisted as he's resting one leg, his belly hangs lower on the far side, and his hip is higher on the near side, which give the impression of a very large bottom and very deep belly! I look forward to the day that my photography skills improve, along with my sculpting skills!

The next photo is an indulgence, I took it last month on my way home form work (I stopped the car to take the shot). I travel across country to work, but live and work in quite built up areas, so my drive to and from work is always a complete pleasure, I pass horses, alpacas (!), a thoroughbred stud, several very sweet villages and fields of various crops including rapeseed with it's spectacular bright yellow flowers - I always open my window when driving past these fields and take deep breathes of the sweet, buttery smell, mmmm! This shot isn't of the rapeseed fields, but of a lovely sunset, I'm a big fan of sunsets (I'm not a morning person so rarely see sunrises), no two are alike and I can't help myself from taking lots of photos when I have the pleasure of experiencing them.

And finally, a rather poor attempt at adding colour to a resin medallion. This model is "Gillespie" expertly sculpted by Niroot Puttapipat of the UK. Niroot is an illustrator by day and his work is truly exquisite, his illustrations can be found on www.amazon.co.uk and probably www.amazon.com too. I hasten to point out that I've made a pretty poor effort of adding colour to this model, but I couldn't resist going for a more ethereal style, and had a little experiment with a few types of media that could only be used on a fantasy model.

I also managed to try my hand at a more realistic colour at the weekend; using pastels for the first time I was going for a deep colour and was a little pessimistic of my chances of being able to achieve it to say the least, but after a good few layers I was able to get a good colour and am now looking forward to completing the model. That particular model is for a gift so I won't show it here until it's been sent, it's very exciting though!! In other news - on 31st May I'm meeting up with a new supplier for Resin, Silicon, etc; I'm quite excited as this supplier carries some of the materials I didn't think I could get over here in the UK, such as Smooth-On products. I'm to have a mini-tutorial on casting with the man I'm meeting so am very much looking forward to trying out the new materials and developing a few new skills, including making block molds, perhaps even of the TIBBP Mare and Foal Medallion, and Pickle V2!