Happy New Year!

Blimey, I’ve just been reading all of the wonderful New Year blog messages of my friends and those I admire, everyone is SO ORGANISED!  I so don’t fall into that category, in fact I’m embedded about as far as it’s possible to be in the opposite end of things, in the Chronically Disorganised category!! So, I’m quite impressed that I’m writing this only about 3 days late, as usually my delays fall into months, sometimes even years!

Happy New Year!  I hope you had a lovely holiday period, whatever your faiths/beliefs.  Mine involved a heady mix of family, food (lots of!), films, fun, fine wine, festivities and unfortunately also a bit of flu, but hey, you can’t have it all eh!

So, news – well, the major piece of news for me has been courtesy of a dear friend in the States.  I have been offered an opportunity to attend the BOYCC Convention being held in San Marcos, CA in May this year.  I need to raise some funds to get myself over there (it’s precisely 5416 miles from me) but the offer of accommodation, transport and financial help has made what I thought of as a Pie-in-the-Sky idea into a real possibility!  I am a real clinky fiend, about half of my collection consists of china pieces and having read in blogs and seen myself at the studio of Donna Chaney, making any form of china models is an artwork I can only aspire to explore some time in the future when I have more space, money and time, and even then I think you need a heavy dose of experience and lady luck on your side to be able to produce anything vaguely worthy!  I’m in awe of the people I see who create these fine objects!

With such an epic opportunity, I’m having to rethink things a little; I will most certainly be selling a portion of my collection off soon in order to raise funds but I don’t think that will be enough, so I am pushing forward with Little Too, the traditional scale sequel to Little One.  Little Too is roughly based on a Poitou, or Mammoth Jack foal, I’m not sure how “woolly” the coat will be just yet but I love the fuzzy texture and am hoping to be able to nail it, though so far it’s proven pretty tricky!

Little Too will be my first 4-legged, standing sculpture to be cast (though of course Jasper has been around the longest!).

Talking of Jasper, I am making headway with him.  The front legs are still proving a little tricky (normal equine anatomy just doesn’t seem to work with a draft horse!) but I’ve been working on making the changes I mocked up in this photo, so far I’ve bulked up his barrel, adjusted the supporting back leg, made some changes to his head/face/ears and currently the neck adjustments mean that Jasper is now in this condition:

Although he appears to have gone backwards, I am quite happy with the way he’s progressing now, moving him from clay to resin has made it easier to plan, execute and fix the changes required, requiring less in the way of mental acrobatics from me as I flit from one part to another, though making those changes is a messier business than ever!  Perhaps Jasper could be this year’s resolution…?

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A few other little notes to add – my website, www.kelly-savage.com has been changed now.  Well, actually the .com version has gone altogether (following a debarcle over the domain hosting), instead it now redirects to my www.kelly-savage.co.uk website, which has been there all along, but which I’ve not publicised very much.  I kept the two separate as the .co.uk site covers my other hobby; Pet Portraiture.  I’ll cover this in another post I think.

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Very Little One Update:

Whilst I’ve been on my holidays I’ve not been selling any resins, but the latest figures have me just over the 200 mark sold, so I will be issuing the “final 50” warning as soon as I bring myself out of Winter hibernation.  'I’m hoping to wrap up the edition before my US trip, I might even cut it a little short if I find it interfering too much with progress on the other projects.