A busy week!

• Sorry, I'm bulletting again, I tried to avoid it by working in Html code last time, but even THAT didn't work! Sigh, I wish I knew what was going wrong with my paragraphs!
• So, I apologise that my last blog came through as a single, jumbled paragraph, please know I did all I could to avoid that! (grumblegrumble!) So, on Sunday I held a sort of mini-Workshop at my home, for two young up-and-coming artists. We had a blast and the time flew by, BUT I can't actually share photos of what we made until I receive some copyright permissions from Breyer, soooo, that report will have to wait.
• In the mean-time I've been busying myself with quite a lot of new projects!
• Firstly, I have to show this off - it's my new camera! I was quite happy with my old camera, I discovered this week it had taken over 27000 photos for me (wowsa!) but it was still going strong... however, new technology waits for no man (or woman!) so the new camera, which is effectively an up-to-date version of the last one, has even more bells and whistles!

Next up is a work in progress, you may remember this blog, well I've been pretty slow in getting started with this one (partly due to the unplanned Workshop at the weekend, the preparation for that took me a week!). Well I finally got cracking last night and have got this far with the portrait of "Casper".

• This is only a very early photo, the intention was to get everything into the correct position and block in the colours very crudely. I used the white pastel from a new Sennelier set I got last month, and the difference between that and the hard, square pastels I like is incredible. The only way I can describe the softer pastel is "buttery"! I'm very pleased, as although I will use the harder pastels later on, geing able to get the foundation colour down in the softer pastel made for much faster, more enjoyable work.
• Poor Casper looks a bit like a Terrier at this stage, but once his nose and mouth are blocked in more he should begin to take shape.
• Casper's owner tells me she likes beach type colours, so I've chosen this Sandy colour, a pale grey and a light brown. This paper is 12"x16"

• Another little project I've been working on - this is my "secret" project, though I'm pretty awful at keeping secrets so most people who know me know what I'm up to, hehe!
• I couldn't help but post this shot, it's just rather funny!

• More little projects - this bunch of ugly looking things are all potential future models. Pickle is due for a V3 version, and for a long while I've been wanting to make her a tad bigger, to make her a perfect model for Arabian tack-makers. Sadly V1 and V2 were just a touch too small, so, armed with my magic growing resin (the green coloured stuff) I took a cast of Pickle V2 and am now watching it slowly grow.
• I also took a cast of just one side of her face (the other green blob), which I'm wondering about turning into some kind of medallion.

• The cream coloured blobs are casts made from the magic shrinking resin. I took a cast from the Pickle mold and also from the Fly Fishing mold. You can see how the two kinds of resin work when you consider that all three Pickle casts in the photo are from the same original mold! The effect will be very noticable when the two cream models are fully shrunk; then they will be a brown colour, like the Halfling Frodo was after fully shrinking which takes about 2-3 weeks, but as it's winter could be as long as a month.

More to come!