My air compressor remains in the shop, so I can’t do any glazing work with the airbrush. It’s all at a stand-still! But I did make 4 Keeshond tiles, and I’m plugging away at the sculpture. Though I’m feeling a little stuck on it at the moment. I’m having trouble with the whole right side/legs of the sculpture and I don’t think I’ve got the action right. It just doesn’t look right. I have a bad feeling that I need to reverse the action of the legs or have the head turning the other way, but I’m not ready to go there yet!

I did finish another Hagen-Renaker “Sheba” custom glaze last week, for a customer in California. It’s a warm dappled fleabit grey. I completely re-painted the eyes and think the head is especially pretty:

I want to congratulate Lisa Sents, whose custom glazed Optime won the National Champion CM Glaze China Halter-Light/Gaited at the 2008 NAN show in Kentucky last week:

That’s the only result I know of, because they don’t show photos of the Top Ten winners. I’d love to hear if any of my other work top tenned at NAN.

The odd thing about this new clay horse is, that I keep having this itchy feeling that I have seen it before. I hope it is not because it is too similar to someone else’s sculpture!! Or maybe it has been lurking in the back of my mind these last 2 years of hopelessly non-starter sculptures and not wanting to sculpt at all? Waiting for the right time? Maybe so, because I am incredibly charged up about this one and I am actually disappointed it’s now Friday night and the weekend is here. That means it is now “quality family time” and I won’t get back to the studio until Monday. And oooh I don’t want to wait that long!

I got some more time on the sculpture this week mainly because my air compressor decided to stop working. (Maybe protesting the heat wave!) So it’s in the shop, and I get to do things like sculpt and cast Keeshond tiles instead. Never mind that I have 4 china horses I really wanted to get started now. The last thing I did before the compressor failed was spray clear gloss glaze on a whole batch of horses, so I’m surrounded by these lovely shiny white horses at the moment! They all look so wonderful in glossy white, sometimes I wonder why anyone would want to color them.

I received a nice surprise in a box from England today: a claybody-custom bone china Caprice made for me by Donna Chaney!

I asked if she might be able to remove the existing mane braids and replace it with a short neat mane and forelock, and slim down the tail a bit. She was able to accomplish this in the greenware stage, before firing the china for the first time. (I wanted to be able to take this china to model horse shows and exhibit it in both english and western tack, which motivated me to ask Donna if she’d be interested in giving the changes a try. Ironic that I got this piece right when I think I am done with performance showing…!) Anyway, I’m totally thrilled to have this one-of-a-kind china in my collection. Now, what color should he be, hmmm!

Here’s another shot of the new horse in the works.

I’ve got the limbs and the proportions more or less where I want them. So I’ve started refining refining refining. You can see how much clay I’ve carved off; lots more to go! He’s no longer going to carry the “Imperium” name. That’s for some other work, someday. This one has morphed beyond that idea and will need a much more fun and exuberant name—which is how I feel about the project so far anyway!

Unresolved… is this horse going to be able to stand on those 3 legs??

What a difference a day makes.
I walked into my studio yesterday morning, took one look at “The Imp”, and what I saw was… “Booooooring!”

What I wanted to see instead was some action!

I know what I need right now in my equine sculpting life/evolution, is to be seriously challenged. To get pushed right out of my little cozy comfort zone, or I pretty soon am just going to end up not sculpting horses at all. For me to attempt to sculpt a heavy warmblood-type stallion who is starting to turn/pivot as his head swings around to look at something, is about as challenging as I can get as far as horse anatomy and biomechanics is concerned. I will likely fail… but wow I love the movement so far and you should have seen the clay being flung about and my hands flying as I strove to get the clay to do what I was seeing in my head!

Unfortunately I had to stop before I could get into the back half of the horse and work out what those back legs should be doing. Yesterday I strained my back trying to lift a 5-gallon bucket of earthenware slip (what was I thinking??), so it hurts to work in an upright-back position too long. (I had to stand to do this much, sitting is worse!)

Anyway, wheee I’m really excited now!

OK, true to my word, I actually spent a couple hours on the “Imperium” sculpture today! I always forget how much I enjoy working the clay once I get going on it; but for some reason I am a terrible procrastinator about getting going on each session!

At this very early stage, all I am interested in doing is finding out whether this “idea” is going to have legs with me. Whether I am going to buy into it enough to pursue it to the end. It really has to speak to me (though I hate using that kind of arty-jargon)! So I am not concerned much at all with any details, just the big picture. I don’t sketch (on paper) my sculpture ideas at all, ever, so I guess this is sort of my sketching-out stage. Here is how it looks after a couple hours “courting” this idea. Will I want to fall in love with it?

Funny, how when you take a photo of a sculpture sometimes you see it so differently. Is it the camera lens or my eyes, that actually show the truth? I know some people rely on photographs to help reveal flaws in their work, but I remain very skeptical and prefer to trust my eyes first. (I know for a fact that my camera “bloats” its photos somewhat, making the center closer than the 2 sides, which doesn’t help.)

Even though I’m not supposed to be fixating on this stuff at this point, I see that UGH the body isn’t long enough and UGH the head is too large/massive. (Possibly one is influencing the other into wrongness.) Oh well, those issues require a lot of work but thank God for non-hardening clay; it is soooo easy to change things around. The important thing is that I think I could love this idea enough to continue.

I’ll let you think about what horse breed I’m actually going for…! (Hint: I am not sculpting a historic “Roman” horse or an Italian horse breed.)

Oh, and because this is just the idea-play stage, I have only worked one side!

Does this mean I’m only working in about 2 1/2 dimensions instead of 3?