I’ve been busy with some china glazing commissions this past couple weeks, plus squeezed in a whirlwind trip to St. Louis last weekend for the wedding of Paul’s niece. Here’s a photo of us at the reception; we don’t look half-bad for a couple on the downslope of our 40s, I think!

I thought I’d share some photos of the in-progress work which will be finished this week.

First, is a “War Chant” Mustang sculpture by Kathi Bogucki, cast in bone china by Horsing Around. I’m glazing this piece to a sooty dappled buckskin. This photo below shows several firings of the golden buckskin undertones, plus the first airbrushed application of black.
I’m taking this one slowly, because painting solid shaded colors with overglazes means the glaze goes on wet and goes into the kiln wet, so at some point I always get to a place where I need to stop and fire, or I am likely to accidentally bump or touch or smudge someplace with wet paint! I wanted to get the legs painted black before I started on the more detailed areas of dark color like the dappled shoulders and the head.

I’ll post more photos of this horse as it is finished this week.

Below is a lovely palomino Caprice that is almost finished.

Any horse color that has the mane and tail lighter than the body is more difficult. I have to keep those white areas white while airbrushing on the body layers. That means each time I airbrush another layer of color, I have to go back in to the white areas and remove all the overspray color with a damp paintbrush. I need to have places to hold onto the horse while painting (usually the legs). With solid color legs I have to paint the front of the horse, fire it, and then paint the back. I also like to keep the eyes and hooves, etc. white, so that I have a nice pure white “canvas” for those details that I will do last, by hand with a paintbrush rather than the airbrush. This Caprice will have another airbrushed coat on the body to deepen it a bit more, and the it’ll be ready to finish the eyes and hooves.

Here’s a cute dark chestnut Meribel that I am completing this week also:

This one just needs the facial detailing and the hooves painted, to be complete. I will be able to do all that in one painting and firing session. It certainly has been the week for the golden palette of colors, for some reason!

Lastly for today, here is a new tile I just finished glazing:

It is the first time I’ve painted one of my tiles with a dark background. The others have all been left with the natural white porcelain as the background. The nice thing about a colored or dark background is that I can leave white markings on the head and mane/forelock. With a light background, there’s nothing to define the edges of the whites. I loved this look so much that it is now displayed on my studio wall. I plan to do a series of these gradient-background tiles; I have a whole palette of colors to use as the accent color!