I confess, summer is a rotten time for me to be productive in the studio. Especially now that I’m back in Colorado and enjoying such a glorious HOT summer! And getting my tennis game back up to speed. Going to baseball games and lunches with my parents. Hikes with the Boyz, and bike rides, and camping. Paul in retirement mode coming down and suggesting we go out and do stuff, right in the middle of my work day. Sigh, what a problem to have!  🙂

I was motoring right along a few weeks ago on the above Breyer Porcelain “Giselle” and “Gilen” sculptures by Brigitte Eberl. The bay pair are the factory-issue set that I put in the kiln for a test fire and they turned out glossy but otherwise perfectly colored!! Now, in the reasoning of the model horse collecting and showing society they’d now be worthless as original finish Breyer collectibles, because they were not issued in glossy glaze and the factory didn’t gloss mine! So, it was best to just use them as “bodies” to overglaze. This means they must go darker since they were fairly dark and solid colored to begin with. The mare is almost black but with lovely reds peeking through. And the foal is now a pretty shaded dark baby bay. I just need to detail these out (eyes and hooves mostly) and then they’ll be for sale in August.

The other “Giselle” is the 2nd of two bisques that I own. I started this one a few weeks ago and is the “teaser” horse I mentioned in a previous post. The one to be sold at BreyerFest next week. Well, this got stalled too, and now I’ve ended up liking the color so much that I’m afraid am keeping her for my own collection. (Honestly, being a collector and liking your own work too much is seriously bad for the corporate income!! I really ought to be glazing colors like Appaloosa or lacy overo paints, which I really dislike, then I wouldn’t have that problem so much.) I may still change my mind about selling this “Giselle”. I do have one other bisque left and maybe when I choose its color I’ll like that one better.

I do have a desire to clean out my archive of non-Westerly china whiteware this summer/fall. So watch for those to come up for sale, even before I start on my Go To List of commissions. That is a goal for when I get back from the Kentucky break. My molds from the UK are in the US as of this writing, sitting in customs in Houston. And once my molds are here I want to get up to speed with casting and creating claybody customs from them. I realize that all my sculptures are now pretty dated and “tired”. But I need to learn casting to be ready for when I ever do complete a new sculpture, and these molds will be perfect for learning. Some people might be interested in the customs I complete. Me the collector definitely will be… I hope I will not send too many to my own china cabinet!!

I have also completely stalled out on sculpture. At least for this month. Poor Roundabout! It will just have to wait for that muse to come back around. I just signed up for a beginner oil painting class. It is just four mornings but this should be just what I need: to re-learn the ultra basics like how to prepare your canvas/surface (I actually want to paint on smooth wood rather than canvas), work with the oils, and approaches to building a painting. I haven’t used oils since high school so I definitely need a refresher. I want to paint realistic landscapes. After looking at the all the incredible masterworks in the great art museums of the world for the last 10 years, I now know what I like and the style in which I want to paint. I want to paint like Vermeer. (HA HA HA. Suuuuure.) Well you gotta start somewhere with your inspiration. I am hoping that turning my artistic focus AWAY from horses for awhile might then let get me back to them with a fresh and renewed energy.

I am so happy to be back here. It is exceedingly strange how quickly that significant experience we had for an entire YEAR has faded into the past. I still feel like I just dreamed the whole thing. One lingering clue that I did actually live in the UK is that every so often when driving and making a turn, I get a teensy twinge of panic as to which side of the street I should be on!