Oops! Missed off the list of rescues from my previous post - here it is:

Horse Rescue's sponsored by TIBBP:

• Miracle Horse Rescue Inc:
• http://www.miraclehorse.com/contact_us.htm
• The Animali Farm:
• http://www.theanimalifarm.com/
• NorCal Equine Rescue:
• http://www.norcalequinerescue.com/index.php
• United In Light Draft Horse Rescue:
• http://www.draftrescue.com/
• Napier Family Farm and Animal Rescue Inc:
• http://www.napierfamilyfarm.com/
• Pure Thoughts Inc:
• http://www.purethoughtshorserescue.com/index.php
• Spring Creek Rescue Inc:
• http://www.springcreekhr.org/Default.aspx
• Brumby Watch in Australia (% Siobhan Nicholls of Maynards Well):
• http://www.brumbywatchaustralia.com/
• And one charity with no Website - Greener Pastures Equine Care - out of California - Stacy Johnson runs this rescue with NO advertised outside help.

Fund-Raiser raffle

• Hi All!
• Today's blog is a bit of a plug for a raffle that is currently being held by my good friend Janice Williford, who is a fellow member of the The International Blessed Broodmare Project (TIBBP).
• I may have mentioned previously, in my "drawing" phase a few weeks back that I had produced a little pen sketch inspired by an image I just found online. Well I wanted to donate it to TIBBP but wasn't sure how to present it. Janice told me to get it sent to her and to let her deal with finding a little frame and hopefully it could raise a few dollars (pounds, euros, yen...) for the cause.
• Below is the sketch, that pad is about A5 size so it's not huge, you can even see a bit of a scale rule behind it which may illustrate the size too. In this photo the drawing is unfinished.

• Well, Janice has done an amazing job of turning this little drawing into a lovely piece of art; she found and bought a beautiful frame that tones with the drawing perfectly, and also had a piece of matting (I call them inserts but I'm not sure of the official term) made up, with a very attractive double-cut to it which frames the image very nicely indeed!
• Here is a photo that Janice took of the now complete artwork that is being raffled off. I will copy the terms of the raffle below as I don't want to miss anything out.

• The artwork is the ORIGINAL drawing I did, it is signed and dated by me and I can supply all in-progress images to authenticate this if requested.
• Tickets cost just $5 each, and ALL proceeds will be shared out in $25 blocks to the list of rescues that TIBBP supports (listed below).
• There is no need to contact me about entry into the raffle, all queries should be directed to Janice but if you would like to contact me first then that's ok.
• Good luck to all who enter, it'll be interesting to see to which country this piece is destined!

(The following text copied from the TIBBP Yahoo Group message from Janice, bullets added to help it read easier as blogger doens't like paragraphs!):

• The link below shows the original artwork up for Raffle - tickets are only $5 each.
• http://good-times.webshots.com/album/563575388RVcCqV
• I will accept NON CREDIT and NON DEBIT PayPal, personal Checks, Postal Money orders for the tickets. Please email me if you need my address to mail a payment in, or you can paypal (NO CC/NO DEBIT CARD) to the following (piece the email together to use it please!) email address :
• wistfuldreams2 (at) earthlink (dot) net
• Please note in the PayPal subject line: TIBBP RAFFLE and in the comments how many tickets (although I SHOULD be able to add it up...heehee!) AND your mailing address should you win. IF sending payment by mail, please provide an email address for me to send you your ticket numbers as I will NOT be mailing stubs to people - this is a FUND RAISER not a fund spender! HEE! I will use the address off of your check or MO stub for the mailing if you win, so be sure they are correct!
• Please feel free to forward this to your other Yahoo Groups that might be interested and ALLOW this sort of thing!
• Thanks for looking and reading, hope to see your names popping up for raffle tickets! This item will make a LOVELY Christmas present so get your Raffle Tickets TODAY!! Janice Williford - Sales Manager for The International Blessed Broodmare Project.

...Fun Frodo, continued...

• Continued from my previous post; this is the "shrinky" cast of Frodo, next to a full sized copy. As you can see it's about half the size, which not only adds to the "aah" factor, but also means I can afford to use the more expensive (and exciting) materials when I come to make copies.
• I actually made this copy back in July, but it's been on hold for a while, just in case you remember it from my July postings.

• This is NOT the final prototype for the little run of models I wanted to make; I wanted to remove the border, shave down the background part at the top to re-centre the sculpture, and there were a miliion teeny tiny pinholes (50% of the size they were when it cast, so even more fiddly!) that needed sorting out.

• As this copy was made from the special resin, it was rubbery and flexible, which is no good for making these changes on. So I made a mold of this, and took a normal resin copy to work on.
• After doing as much as I felt necessary, I took a mold from my new prototype and the made the first finished copy....
• ...so I thought! The photo below shows this first copy, it's a brass head on a slate background, and has been treated on the mane, eye and nostrils with chemicals to darken them. As you can see this copy if far from perfect - there are an uncomfortable number of pinholes still there, and the background isn't as smooth as I'd hoped.
• I still felt this model was pretty cute, and was very pleased with the effect hat the chemicals had on the brass - I've had mixed results using chemicals like this so this model was a good learning experience, and made a pretty little gift to a little girl I know who likes ponies!

• So finally, after taking ANOTHER cast from the new mold; filling in many many pinholes and making a couple of adjustments, I had a second Prototype, which I'm happy to say was much more successful, it is the white model pictured below.

• I had to be a bit more clever than usual when I made this prototype - now that I have my great new vaccum casting machine I have to bear in mind that during the vacuum process the poured resin expands as the air inside it is expelled. This has lead to a few messy encounters and I was keen to avoid these with this little guy!
• As you can see, although the background to the model is actually only about 5mm thick if that, I built up the base using clay and Lego (Lego is a handy thing to have around during mold-making, I've discovered!) to give a deeper mold and allow any expansion of resin without spillage.
• This copy looks quite dirty as there was some slate residue left in the mold from the first cast; not very good practice on my part to be honest, oops!

• So, with the new prototype I was ready to make a (third and final) mold, ready to make lots of funky little colourful copies!

Wanna see the results? Here they are!

Inspiration restored!

• Well, I'm VERY pleased to be able to say that my artistic block didn't last for long, and soon after my last post I was back to work again!
• I've gone back to bullet-point style blogging as my last few posts have lost all the paragraphs again, which makes them hard to read and really annoys me!
• I mentioned in my last post that I was working on a model for the MECs Championship show, I kept it a secret until the show but can now reveal what I've been up to.
• The model began life as a copy of my sculpture "Frodo" from last year; I wanted to produce a smaller version that I could cast in lots of fun colours (which are expensive sadly).
• Other artists have produced reduced size copies of their sculptures - some do this using rapid prototyping , some do it by completely re-sculpting thier model in a smaller scale. I didn't have time to sculpt a model for the MECs, and don't have the resources to pay for expensive scanning and reduced size 3D printing (which also reduces details), so, after much research I invested in some pretty interesting resin that when dealt with properly, shrinks over a few days/weeks whilst still keeping all the details crisp and clear.
• The resin isn't the nicest stuff to use; it cures in seconds, so took a few attepts to get a half-decent cast. As the resin is mixed with water prior to pouring (the evaporation of the water causes the shrinkage), the cast felt cold, sweaty, and jelly-like (bergh!). Very quickly the water started to seep out of the resin causing it to shrink. This photo shows the model about an hour after it was cast, the lollipop sticks were placed tight around it when first cast, so you can see it has already begun to downsize.

• I took two copies with the new resin, mixed at slightly different ratios (to "hedge my bets" at getting at least one good one).
• The photo below shows the two casts next to a solid (normal) resin cast in black, for size comparison. As you can see, the copy on the left has had a head-start and has already shrunk by quite an amount.

• The photo below shows the progress after a few days - the resin turns from white to brown during it's transformation. The black model is a solid resin copy, for size comparison.
• You can also see in this photo another experimental model; this is a copy of Fly Fishing that I took using another unusual resin that GROWS instead of shrinking!
• Both types of resin grow/shrink at varying rates depending on the thickness of the part, so at these stages the casts are all looking decidedly warped! This does even out though, when they're finally done changing.

• Below is that same giant Fly Fishing model shown once it was fully grown - the resin becomes very fragile as it grows and as you can see this copy has lost an ear from the top horse, but as an experiment I was very impressed! I am hoping to try this method out on another of my sculptures, but for the moment that has to wait for a few other projects to be completed first, and for me to find the funds to deal with a larger model (each copy will need much more mold rubber, more resin, more filler....)
• Sadly this resin is perishable, so the large copy shown below had to be disposed of. The other copy shown is a metal cast cope, and is nicely illustrating just how shiny and metallic these casts can be!

• Back to Frodo! The photo below shows the finished shrunken casts next to that same black copy. As both turned out reasonably well (lots of pinholes etc but those were to be fixed at a later stage) I chose to go with the smaller of the two, pictured on the left.
• This copy is almost exactly 50% of the size of the original copy. Just the right size for what I had planned...

• To be continued.....
• (please contact me if the photos cause problems with email updates, I'll try to limit them to 5 per post)

You can lead a horse to water...

...but you can't be artistic if you're just not in the mood! . As I found out yesterday! . Ok let me put a bit of background into this - The MECs are next weekend, the MECs (Model Equine Championships) are the annual finals for the year's showing here in the UK, a model has to qualify to enter, very similar to NAN realy, but on a smaller scale. This year, I've sponsored a ring (the AR ring, yey!) and have some plans for awards and a surprise class or two, so I've been working on making the prize models (which I'm keeping secret until the show). On top of this I'm working on another (secret) sculpting project and trying to give a bit more time towards my recent drawing obsession. . Well, yesterday was a bad day; it started with a disagreement with colleagues, an upset friend and a computer that wanted to take an AGE doing anything (it's doing the same today, so I'm blogging while I wait for it to catch up), continuing when I got home and opened the post to find I'd underpaid a recent bill, resulting in a charge and another letter that appeared very threatening (turned out it was just "protocal" and was meaningless), and finally ended when, after looking to Adam to cheer me up and finding he'd also had a bad day we did't speak for abut an hour. I fixed that up by making some home-made coleslaw (with cottage cheese, lettuce, raisins and sunflower seeds - aka whatever needed eating up) which definitely broke the ice between us, and was amazingly quite nice (VERY odd for my cooking!). . Which brings me back to the point of this blog - after dinner last night I had a spare hour or so, and wanted to make the most of it as I rarely get that opportunity. So I sat there, and for the entire hour I fretted about "I need to do something" but I just couldn't get myself inspired enough to work on anything! . This is the first time I've found myself unable to bring myself to be creative - I've had a block before where I don't know how to progress, but never a complete lack of inspiration or inclination to approach any of my projects! It came as quite a shock to my system, but it did show me that a) my life is normally good, good enough to keep me constantly inspired, and b) yesterday WAS stressful, however unreasonable I felt about being a grumble guts. Oh, and c) my cooking tastes better if I crash about the kitchen in a foul mood when making it, hehe! . There's no more point than that to this blog, I was just so shocked at not being able to be creative, that I felt the urge to blog about it.