Hi there!
I can't believe my last post was early October! I've had a couple of hectic months, with Tayla doing her final exams at high school, her 18th birthday just last week and me needing to get stuck into my commissions now that the warm weather is upon us. So I decided to put myself into internet exile so I could get through as much as possible!
Tayla also found an interest in dirt bike riding. She dived in head first, she just loves it! After riding a friends bike just once, she knew she wanted to do this on an ongoing basis! So she bought a bike, a Kawasaki 250 and then of course needed a vehicle to get the dirt bike out to the tracks! So she bought this ute just last week. Oh notice she put her hair back to it's natural colour for her 18th :)
The photos below of her jumping the bike were taken about four weeks ago, this was the first weekend she rode her new bike - she has no fear this girl! A guy at the track asked me "How long has she been riding?" I replied "Oh in total she has probably been on a bike for one hour" He replied, "No I don't mean today, I mean how many years has she been riding" I said "Yeah, about an hour!" LOL
So what commissions have I been working on? Well two appaloosas in tandem. It was interesting to work on one light on dark and the other dark on light and the different technique needed for each. Both pieces have been based on real horses of similar type. I managed to finish Toot Sweet last weekend, she is such a cute little resin sculpted by
Adalee Hude.
The other appaloosa I'm working on is my all time favourite resin, Backbeat Thunder sculpted by
Lynn Fraley. This is the second BBT I have painted and he has been just as much fun as the first and I cannot wait to paint a third! This is the first black I have ever painted and was a little nervous about it, he has warm undertones, his lower legs have a stronger bronze tone to them because the reference photo does. He is still a work in progress, more work to be done to his mane, tail, eyes, hooves and just a little more detail to his roaning. Again, his colour is based on reference photos I found on the internet of a draft horse.
So I plan to keep trying to focus as much time as possible on my finish work, which will of course impact on my free time I have to spend on the internet and seeing to emails. I still have so many emails to catch up on so please forgive me if I am yet to reply to your email. I've been trying to work through one or two emails while at lunch at work this past week to try and start to get through the back log - replying to emails when I get home from work is the last thing I feel like doing at the moment while trying to juggle so much. Hope all is well in your neck of the woods! :)
I started this guy a few months ago but had to put him aside because I wasn't entirely sure how I was going to cope with him - he is SO heavy! There was no way I could paint him using my traditional method of 'hair by hair'. So after some thought and testing I have achieved this look so far by using just pastels and a tiny applicator, no paint or brush! It looks nicer in person and I think the technique will work out well in the end with the random graininess caused by this technique lending itself nicely to the overall appearance of a dapple grey.
