A Couple of Coopers

I'm painting several Coopers; these two are the furthest along! The first one, in chestnut and with hair, is my NAN donation. His hair still needs styling and trimming, and his hooves need some more work, but otherwise he's nearly done. I'll be braiding his mane and tail, in a way that they can be un-braided if his new owner would prefer them loose. Should be neat.


The second one, in bay tobiano, is going to be for sale when he is finished. Sorry about the silly base--I use this while painting to avoid getting paint on the clear bases. He's not quite so far along as the other one; I need to paint his hooves, tail, probably more coats of white and do shading in the white. Drop me a line if you're interested in this guy!

In progress sculptures

I'm betting most equine artists don't misplace their original sculptures and have to go searching for them. Then again, most sculptors don't work in micro mini scale! I, on the other hand, do work in MM scale, and fairly regularly misplace sculptures and find them months later. Most of these guys have been sitting around forgotten for months if not years! The two at the bottom right are closest to being done, and they're also probably the most likely to actually get done at some point in the future (you may have to click the photo to see the whole thing so you can see them).

Micros don't take too much effort or materials to start, so I usually start a bunch and see what works out and what doesn't. As you can see some of these definitely haven't worked out!

Traditionals, on the other hand, take quite a bit more effort. That doesn't mean that I don't start and discard them too, but I do put quite a bit more thought into what I'm planning with one before I start. And, since I went out and got some reference photos and video this past weekend, I was able to get some work done on Supernova:


I've just started roughing in his entire hind end, and something is going on with his back that I can't put my finger on just yet. It probably doesn't help that my video references are of a lovely QH, and Supernova is meant to be an Arabian! It's going to be an adventure seeing how he develops.


Here's a screenshot from my video! Check out how deeply he's digging in with those hind legs--really pushing off hard.

Woo hoo! New website!

I am so proud of myself! I managed to totally re-do my website, by myself. It's not quite so fancy as it was before (previously, I hired a professional to do it, angeldancehill.com--and while the site really was nice, I couldn't update it myself, which was getting to be a problem). I decided to re-do it myself so that I could understand how it worked and keep it simple enough to add onto it by myself.

Feel free to go check it out at http://www.maggiebennett.com/ I'm still working on some of the pages!

My NAN Donation in progress--Cooper!

Well, the camera really wasn't cooperating, and of course he's in progress (he has no hair!), but I've been working on this guy a lot! He'll be flaxen chestnut--not sure how light I'm going to go on his mane and tail, but they'll be at least a bit lighter than his body.

I can't wait to hair him, since I love hairing and I'm going to try something new and different: first properly hair him and then braid him--so if his future owner wants they can actually unbraid him. Hopefully it will work out properly; I did a little test run on another model and it worked out fine!