Mr. Steady and Mr. Drama

Mr. Steady, "Zap":



and Mr. Drama (who still is in need of a name):


The pair together:


Zap is a portrait of a real Quarter Horse gelding. The other guy is an Arabian stallion, and is still in need of much work--like hind hooves, as well as the obvious mane/tail/overall work/facial detailing! They are both in LB scale--it's a fun scale to work in, being big enough to be detailed but small enough to be easy to handle. I've been working on them in between painting, prepping, and resculpting other horses for Breyerfest, which is only a few weeks away!

I am moving several states away between now and Breyerfest, as well. It's going to be an extremely busy month. I'm hoping to have 4-5 Coopers finished and for sale at the Artisan's Gallery; if you are interested in a specific color and would like to reserve one let me know. As of now I am planning: chestnut appaloosa (nearly finished), bay with mohair, bay, palomino, gray, and perhaps pinto or something else. It's hard for me to remember to post updates when I'm workign so much. I'm looking forward to quitting my current full-time day job and just doing model horses full time.

Finished NAN donation!

He is finished, and already in the mail! I'm quite pleased with how he came out; it took at least a dozen times of braiding, unbraiding, and re-braiding his mane to get it right! I believe the auction will be starting with proxy bids in a few days; information will be posted here.

You should be able to click on the images in this post to see them much larger. As you can see I have also made him a custom base, which makes him quite stable.

Micros...

Here are some more photos of the micros I'm working on. These guys are the closest to being done; there are a few more that need a bit more work before I take pictures of them. These still need some things done, too, but at least they have a full complement of legs and heads!

NAN Auction Cooper

Here's a headshot (photo by my brother, who likes to get artsy). His hair is totally untamed and fuzzy right now!

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!