2014 Part One - Sculpting, Restoration and Painting

Hi all!

I wanted to post a summary of 2014, much like I did for 2013.  However, 2014 was a pretty busy and chaotic year and it turns out I did a LOT of stuff!  So, I'm going to break the post into several and cover each aspect of my creative year including Sculpting, Casting, Pet Portraits, My Collection etc etc, so if you are signed up to receive posts by email you can expect a few from me over the next day or so.

So, firstly I'd like to talk about the sculpting side of 2014.  In early January I took some time to work on my two "fun sculptures", Jasper and Lady Anne.  

But once I'd got "back to work" I had a serious project on the go: The Welsh Cob!  His studio name, and the official name of the mould is "Celtic Warrior".  I'd had to keep to reason for sculpting him a secret, though I had been able to share his progress, so it was a lot of fun at the same time as being quite frustrating, working on such an exciting project but not able to explain about it.

I delivered the sculpture to Utterly Horses in March, it has since travelled across the globe to China where it was used to make the production moulds for the Copperfox Welsh Cob models.  At some point in the future I hope to borrow it back, as I have retained the rights to produce a small china (clinky) run so will need the original model shown in the photos above so that I can have the china moulds made.

In the early part of 2014 my husband and I decided that it was time to move to a bigger house, so I wanted to wrap up some outstanding projects I had on the cards.  I restored a few AA models including this classic scale Resting Arab Mare and a couple of minis.  I used a blue primer as it was a particularly thin formula and therefore didn't affect the mare's details as she was yet to be prepped by the finishwork artist.

While I was restoring these models, I thought I'd have a look and see what other models I had in the studio that were in need of some work.  It turned out there were quite a few!  I repaired legs, stated new legs, fixed to bases and removed one from a base.

Then I got a little carried away and did some chopping!  This guys is still in this state but I'm excited to see how he turns out - the sculpture has beautiful details in it and I hope to do them justice.

Another project I'd been working on for a long time is this little AA Welsh Sec C Mare.  She's not the one I was restoring in the pics above, I have a few repeats that I have a variety of plans for.  I'd painted her once before but wasn't happy with the finish, so stripped her back down to the resin, re-prepped her and got painting!  Now, I do not paint - there is a good reason for me not painting, so please don't be cross when I say I am quite proud of this.  She's still not finished, the base, hooves and white markings need completing and her finish is not what I would call LSQ, but thanks to Carol Williams and her colour (Color) formulas, this is the first ever palomino I've attempted that could be described as palomino, so I'm chuffed to bits with it!

 

Anyway, the fun had to stop as I had a job to do - I needed a new resin to offer for the Hullabaloo.  In 2012 I offered Union Jack, in 2013 I offered Dancing Daisy so I needed something new.  I have sculpted lots off foals so I decided to sculpt and adult Fell Pony mare.  Then I saw the photo at the top of this page and all bets were off - my mare was going to have a foal!  So I got cracking making little wire dinosaurs pony armatures:

I needed more for the Hullabaloo, I wanted to offer some new options to the attendees.  I didn't have time to sculpt any more new models, but I had a few copies of Dancing Daisy in-hand and a few copies from the original Union Jack edition (they needed more cleaning up than I had time to do, so I put them to one side and cast the edition out, so they couldn't be sold as Union Jack resins, I needed to make a change to them!).  So I put on my thinking cap and decided that I should offer Dancing Daisy with a more plain base, as I know some collectors aren't fans of bases and she can't stand up without one, so I came up with this:

I wasn't sure if it would work, but Daisy can now stand on a plain metal base using magnets in her hooves! I was thrilled that this worked, her hooves are so tiny that I wasn't sure the magnets could be big enough, but she's good and solid on there, so I now had this to offer to the UHH attendees!

Then I looked at the Union Jacks.  What could I do with them so that they could be sold?  Of all my sculptures he's been a very popular one, I'm certain that collectors would be cross with me if I simply chopped them up and disposed of them, as I would!  So, I donned my thinking cap once more and came up with this:

Um.... ok, so it's not a finished concept, but you get the idea, right - I'm going to give the remaining Union Jacks wings and turn them into Pegasi!

I'll fast forward here a bit so you can see where I got to with the pegasus wing models.  They're tantalisingly close to completion but I've just not had a chance to get back to him since getting to this stage.  The plan is to supply each remaining UJ with a set of wings, there's aren't many copies left, maybe 20 or so if that, so I figure people that buy them will WANT then to have their wings on, but the artists that paint them won't thank me if I supply them ready-attached, so I'm confident in sending them out as separate parts.  I'm not sure if I'll cut holes for the wings to slot into or give the finishing artist some freedom on how to position them.  As he is lying down there isn't much flexibility, but I'm still thinking on that and will work it out when I come to cast them.  Here's the wing detail from the wing that is complete (on top - I still have to complete the underneath but will do that in resin):

And here is the model complete with the wings, sorry it's a dark photo, I do a lot of work during the night through Autumn and Winter and photography is not my strongest skill!

So, zipping back in time to the Summer, we were now in June and I had another job to do for Dancing Daisy.  I had decided to have her cast as a china model, this time offering both earthenware AND bone china options, by Donna and her amazing team at Animal Artistry.  Daisy's base was causing me a headache again though, as I felt it was a bit too "fussy" to be taking into china production, plus the height to weight ration of it would cause a potential tipping problem with the china casts.  I experimented with making it bigger:

But after some market research and deciding that the new base would still cause tipping issues, I decided to make her a new, simple base.

However, after making a base that I felt was pleasing on the eye, kept her nice and stable and had lovely detail, I realised that I'd had my "resin" head on instead of my "china" head on, and that if I supplied that to Donna, all detail would be lost under the glaze.  So I remade it with deeper details which have translated into china beautifully.  This base is affectionately know my my husband and I as "the banana base" as, paint it yellow and wouldn't it look just like one of those foam banana sweets, hehe!

Here's a peek at how the base looks when glazed.  This copy is now sold, I hope to be able to offer another freshly glazed copy soon :)

We were now in July, the Hullabaloo was approaching fast!  The Fell pony mare and foal were developing quite quickly and soon looked quite pony-shaped.  It took quite a while to get the details in (as always - the final 20% of the work takes 80% of the time!) but I am quite proud of my little Fell pony mare and foal.  I didn't get any showy photos of the finished sculptures, these are the best I have that show the tiny scale of the pair:

I did have a little fun whilst working on them, they are just such a different scale to the other models I've been working on!

So,  I was ready to start mould-making, I'll expand on this in the Mouldmaking part of the 2014 blog series but over the next few weeks I made a nice fresh mould for the Fell Mare and for the Foal.  Sorry about the rubbish photo of the mare and her mould - I was working through the night to get these done so quality photography wasn't really up there on my priorities list!

The first casts came out beautifully, these are shown fresh from the mould, raw casts without any tidying up done on them:

I'll share more on their casting but for the sake of the story I'm telling, I managed to cast a few sets before we moved house.  These are all shown as raw, untouched casts:

So, I was now casting.....

...and then we moved house!

Ok, so this is a CG image but this is our new home; a typically English, double fronted, white rendered house that is indeed our castle :)  Moving house happened mid-July (on the hottest, most humid day of the year - still, it wasn't raining which was a blessing!), but we had to work fast as I had well over 100 models to cast in time for the big event!  So a few days after moving in, I

We unpacked and I was up and casting again by the 7th August - with still over 100 models to cast before the Hullabaloo started on the 30th!  As I'll be talking about casting in another post, here's a shot I took on the 27th August at 8:45pm - August was just a blur of little white resin things that needed cleaning!

Sadly August also involved some bad resin, which ruined several moulds including the Fell mare and foal and also my Sweet Lullaby mould (so she is now retired as she was a 2 mould run and that was the second mould, only about 15 copies in!).  More on that in the casting post too!

The Hullabaloo was looming and I still needed something for my presentation/workshop.  I decided that, as presentations take a lot of time to prepare, I could save precious time by planning a casting workshop instead - I would just need to pack the right things and then I could do all the work at the event rather than before, when I was already so busy.  So clever old me thought "what can I sculpt quickly that will make a nice little model for people to cast?".  The answer was obviously a medallion of some sort, but time was ticking and I didn't feel I could create a whole new design in time (planning medallions take a while, sculpting them usually takes around 25 hours which is pretty quick in sculpting terms).  So, the thinking cap came out once more and I sculpted this (the centre circle is a clear acrylic disc, which is why it looks odd): 

As it turned out it took almost as long as a horse medallion to get all those creases and folds smooth!  But I had created a model that could be used for the Hullabaloo and which also had tonnes of potential for donation models for live shows or little prizes, or card toppers.... I really feel this simple little model has a big future when I finally get round to thinking about it (now where is that cap?...).

I made a bunch of little moulds, took them along with resin, pigments and a heap of safety equipment to the Hullabaloo and to be honest, it was a huge success! :)

Photo Courtesy of Jackie Radwanski - thanks Jackie!

Check out Jackie's other Facebook albums for more photos from the event.

More on that later anyway - back to sculpting and restoration: In September, after I'd sorted out the orders received during the Hullabaloo I was tired, I need to spend a little time tinkering, so out came my fun projects; Jasper and Lady Anne. Thought subtle both sculptures have come on a long way this year:

Photo taken in January:

Photo taken in September:

I didn't put a photo of Jasper in there as his should come with a warning:

WARNING!! - graphic resin surgery depicted in the following images!

I'd been struggling with Jasper's face for a while.  Namely, the very hard resin that it was cast in (which I've been fighting with for years!).  So I decided to do something about it at last.  I'd got his face to a point where I was happy and so didn't want to start over, so I thought that if I removed the resin from the middle of his head and replaced it with nice Apoxie clay, it I could then take away the surface resin a little at a time and replace that too, leaving me with a head the same as the original, but in a much easier-to-manage material.  I'd already replaced his off side eye with onyx (the reason Jasper has his name - I couldn't really call him Onyx so chose another precious stone that suited him better), but felt a more drastic solution was required:

Not so bad, right?  I carved much of the resin from the inside of the near side of his face and filled with Apoxie.  He looked pretty good and future work should be much easier.

But then I did the other side:

Aargh!!!  I was a little more drastic, taking away resin from his cheek to save time later.  He looked very sad, but when I replaced the resin with the clay, he looked so much happier!

I was so much happier too, the new material immediately allowed me to give him the expression I wasn't able to when he was all-resin.

I enjoyed my tinkering but I had to get back into productive-mode, I wanted to move forward with the Union Jack Pegasus edition, so I needed to check that all of the copies were still ok to be working on.  They were all fine, but as they'd been stored in a box since before the move and had been shaken about and resting awkwardly, some of the long legs has warped a little and needed realigning.  I've not needed to do this before, but after a bit of research and reassurance from fellow hobbyists (thanks guys!) I got to boiling some water up and did the old hot water cold water process to get them lovely and straight again.  While I was there, I experimented a little with repositioning a few of the foals' heads into either more alert, straightened poses, or into more relaxed, sleepy poses.  

As you can see one little guy's leg was broken when casting, he will be repaired and highlighted, al the other copies are perfectly in one piece and they will all look forward to get their wings and flying off to new homes soon.  I'll make a really big deal about that when they're ready, "like" my Facebook page or sign up to have this blog emailed to you if you want to know about them first!

With me new-found skills at repositioning resins, I decided to tackle a model that had bugged me for a long time.  This Tumlinson "Dicaprio" resin;s back legs were quite badly warped, but after a quick dunk and little cold soak, he's good as new again too!

Before and After

My final little project for 2014 involved this super-tiny "Wee Lassie" resin produced by Michael Lovejoy many years ago as "the world's smallest resin" - I think it still holds that title as artists usually use pewter for models this small.  She's been in my collection since I bought her from Michael all those years ago, admittedly she is STILL only painted on one side, and not greatly at that, but she's a special little thing and so when I bought this resin base a few months back and a War-gaming friend offered to decorate it for me, I felt it would make a great little home for her - it'll also help to stop me losing her, as seeing as she is under 0.5 inches tall, that is always a risk!

So, if you made it this far well done and THANK YOU!  I hope you don't mind my indulging in reminiscing on a year that proved extremely busy, after failing to post enough updates to my blog.

Next up - Pet Portraits (a much shorter blog!) :)