Last week I finished the dapple grey “Halfling” (5″ tall) Boreas bone china for client Marilou Mol of Illiniois, and here are 2 photos:

On to the next!
This week I’m glazing one of my “large” Boreas Percheron sculptures in bone china. It will be a dark dappled grey with rose coloring in the coat, (or bay going grey).

The first thing I did was to paint some bay-colored dappling across the back and sides, with the airbrush, and fired it:

Most of this will be covered up in subsequent overglaze layers, but I wanted this subtle texture to be underneath everything. The overglaze paints I use are nicely translucent so this can be used to produce all sorts of depth and subtle details in the coat.

Next, I applied a “dry” coat of overglaze—bay color and then black over that—to one side. By dry, I mean that the glaze is mixed with an airbrushing medium that dries immediately on the china to a powder. Usually, I airbrush china paints with a wet medium that never dries; the horse goes in the kiln wet. But to get the dappling effect I want in this dark horse, I have to use an air-eraser and remove paint where I want dappling to be. This is because we don’t have any opaque white paints in glazes that can be airbrushed on top of dark colors. So anything white on this horse, is the white of the bone china coming through. The air-eraser works exactly like a double-action airbrush, but instead of paint it blows air and baby powder and this removes paint! (In more or less the same way a sand-blaster does.)

These two photos show the layer of powdery glaze applied, and the areas of dappling that I’ve “painted” (removed) using the air eraser, before going in the kiln:

Because I’m not yet sure what color I will want the tail to be, I removed all the paint on that, too. The horse looks kind of uniformly “brown” because of the matte-looking powdery paint, but there is both black and bay shaded into it which will show up when fired.

I can only work one part of the horse at a time because my back and hands get tired (painting with the airbrush and air eraser requires intense fine work) and the danger of making a mistake in the paint or bumping it becomes pronounced. So I will be working around the horse with the paint and air-eraser, and firing after each session. It took about an hour to do the work shown in the 2 photos above.

I’ve spent a little time on the new horse sculpture. I am creating a new sport horse for myself! The tentative name is “Clarity” but the work will have to live up to my goals for a sculpture with that name, before I give it to him. Here are a couple photos of the clay:

I’ve also been continuing on the buckskin “War Chant” glazing work, and started glazing a couple of other chinas this week. Photos to come in a day or two when I can show progression.

Well, look what came in the mail yesterday. Oh my.

Last June I had the pleasure of a visit to Breyer’s offices in New Jersey, and I painted 5 test colors on the Cleveland Bay mold (that I sculpted). This was my favorite of the group, and I am completely thrilled and grateful that they allowed me to keep him! I am calling him a “Belgian cross sport horse”, heh. Maybe this color and or a few of the others will show up on a CB model in the Breyer line or as a special run!

Well, I’m back from our trip to our Nation’s Capital, and what a super week it was. I haven’t been there for at least 15 years and we did all the obvious things like tour the White House, Congress/Senate, Supreme Court, and Library of Congress. And all the memorials. My horse-radar perked up at the Civil War Memorial which had gorgeous bronzes:


I took photos of this very nice equestrian U.S. Grant statue, and a close-up of the horses in another sculpture. My new sculpture will have a tucked head (though not this much) so I am collecting shots of heads like this for reference!

The highlight of the trip was two FABULOUS exhibitions at the National Gallery of Art. They had an incredible J.M. W. TURNER exhibition; I couldn’t believe our luck that it opened the week we got there. I am a huge fan of Turner’s work and to see such a large anount of his top work in one place was amazing. We went to the Tate in London last November specifically to see their Turner collection, and I was very disappointed in what was there but didn’t really understand why; we almost had the feeling we were missing something. Now I wonder if this exhibition was already touring because many of the pieces were from the Tate!! I was especially excited to see his watercolor of Tintern Abbey; my all-time favorite especially because the Tintern Abbey bookstore is where I first discovered it and learned about Turner’s work.

The NGA also had an EDWARD HOPPER exhibition, which was also tremendous. I was so excited to see “Night Hawks” in person. I loved all his moody paintings of New York and New England. Now whenever I see a building with strong side-light, I am going to think, “I’m seeing a Hopper moment”. There is just nothing like seeing paintings in person; printed reproductions just don’t have the same power especially in the colors and being able to really look at them both up close and able to step away from it. We were just in heaven. The NGA also has several Vermeers and awesome Canalettos which were a pleasure to see. My first and only love in paintings is realism and landscapes, so I was thrilled to add some great treasures to my “seen” list last week! Oh, and I learned that I love Winslow Homer, too!! I had never really paid attention to his work before.

Here is a link to the NGA’s exhibitions page with links to these 2 exhibitions if you want to look.

I am very glad to be home however, because it was unseasonably hot in DC last week, and the humidity was almost overpowering. We didn’t rent a car and walked, rode the Metro, or bicycled everywhere, and we had to keep dipping into airconditioned places just to get relief.

ANYway, back to the workbench now!
Here is a photo of the palomino Caprice, which was finished right before I left. His happy new owner is Julia Harmon of North Carolina. I sure didn’t want to send him away, Caprice looks simply spendid in palomino!

I have to finish up the War Chant in the next 2 weeks, and then I will be spending more time on sculpture projects in addition to several chinas I will be glazing. OH, and the Mountains got a lovely dusting of snow this week, can snowboarding season be far behind??