I was thinking this morning about what a value it is to your work, to upgrade your tools whenever you can. And buy the best you can afford. I upgraded a tool in the past few months, and every time I use it I sigh with appreciation about how much easier and more efficient it has made my work life.

I use an air eraser to paint dapple greys with ceramic overglazes. (The dapple grey color or any horse color with dappling, is in huge demand, and it has to be executed right or not at all!) Essentially, it is like painting the white areas of the horse by removing paint to expose the white china underneath, rather than painting white on a dark color. (Which is the way I used to paint dapple greys with acrylics, for the most part.) The air eraser blows away the powdery glaze pigments I have applied with my airbrush. I discovered that there was a sort of “industrial strength” air eraser I could buy, that instead of using a little cup on top of the eraser (which looks like and works just like an airbrush) it uses a big metal can attached with tubes:

This makes painting so much easier for several reasons. I don’t have that annoying cup sticking up from the eraser, often preventing me getting the eraser into the small areas of a piece. And I don’t have to refill the erasing powder hardly at all, because of the big metal canister.

The new air eraser system also came with an accessory which is the true amazing upgrade for me. I got a separate air pressure regulator for my air eraser, attached off the compressor next to the hose for my airbrush.

Now, instead of turning down the air pressure every time I want to use the air eraser, and then turning it back up to airbrush, I can set the air eraser’s separate pressure gauge to its ideal pressure, and leave it there forever. I can switch back and forth between the airbrush and the air eraser as simply as picking up one or the other. Instead of fiddling endlessly with the air eraser pressure (which has to be practically zero) and refilling it all the time. This consistency has allowed me to paint faster and more pleasurably, like on this pretty Hagen-Renaker “Sheba” that I am glazing for a client this month…

Honestly, I really dislike using these mechanical sorts of tools to create art. But in order to get the results the way I like them to look, the airbrush and the air eraser are my tools of choice for glazing ceramic colors.

Another tool I have to admit has made my work life amazingly better, at the sacrifice of my vanity: my reading glasses.

I realized gradually that I was losing my very short vision, and my contact lenses prescription won’t fix that anymore. (Turning 50 next year sucks!) I didn’t really realize how it was affecting my ability to see what I was doing in the small painting and sculpting details, until I got the glasses. Now I can’t work without them!

“I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.” —Michelangelo

I decided to start on the “Imperium” horse sculpture today, and as a way of pushing me to keep at it (I tend to start sculptures and then never finish them) I am going to post progress photos here at least once a week. In fact, you can poke me via emails if I don’t post, that will help!!

In very broad terms, I tend to be a “subtractor” rather than an “adder” when it comes to building a clay sculpture. I more often carve clay away rather than add or shape (although there’s always a pretty good mix of give and take with that, especially in the early stages). Hence, the Michelangelo quote above, which I feel an affinity for and like to think of while sculpting. (Though I simply can’t imagine how difficult it must be carving marble!) I definitely can see the horse in my mind right now, and the task is releasing it from the clay.

Here is the very first shot of the clay, as I have packed it on to the simple stick-horse wire armature:

I have to get a good pile of clay slapped on there, in order to start removing it to find the horse’s proportions. So that’s all you can see here today! Doesn’t look like much, does it?

A clarification from my last posting. There are many, many ways to enjoy model horses! Just because I finally admitted to myself after several years of trying to stay interested, that I am just not getting anything much out of just the showing part of it anymore, doesn’t mean I am not still participating in other ways. (If you think about how many other major equine artists serving the model horse hobby don’t participate in showing, you’ll see I’m not alone.)

I will always be an avid collector, of both plastic and ceramic model horses and horse art. I’m never giving up on horse art. It will be produced in ceramic, and that will still be offered to my main customer base, who are model horse collectors! I do think it is wise for me as an artist marketing to the hobby to take a big step back off the discussion forums. I will be writing this blog as my communication and commentary channel. So don’t write me off totally, thanks!

Just a heads-up to those who I know are waiting for this auction:

The auction will start on Wednesday, July 23rd, as a 5 day auction on MyAuctionBarn. That will allow everyone who went to BreyerFest to get back and use any unspent funds! By the way, he won two NAN cards at the “China Buffet” model horse show in June (1 in workmanship and 1 in breed), and is also qualified to show at the Region 10 Regionals show.

Wow, here I am in July already. July has usually meant for me, working like mad to get new horses done in time to take to the annual Ultimate Model Horse Event, BreyerFest in Lexington Kentucky. I have been to this event every year since 1993 except for one. And this year, I decided to skip it as well. I have reached “been-there, done-that” with BreyerFest. The hobby and the hobby community and my place in it has changed so much since the “glory days” of BreyerFest which I would say were the mid-to-late 1990’s. If you are into collecting model horses or horse figurines, it certainly is the place to be. I still am and will always be, a collector, so it will be hard to miss out on that collector-fun. And nothing beats the Kentucky Horse Park for a superb horse-filled setting.

Though it used to be THE place to “see and be seen” for artists serving that hobby, I don’t think that is true any more. Now with the web being such a great visual communication tool, many artists like myself have learned that we can sell anything we create, right to our customer base online. So there’s no need to go through the hassle and risk of getting your work to Kentucky, and paying for the hotel and the airfare, just to make sales.

I am just one of more than a few equine artists skipping BreyerFest these days, which is another reason I chose not to go: I miss those people! If the people you want to socialize with aren’t there, the experience is diminished. BreyerFest was so wonderful because of the socializing as well as the shopping! I admit it may be hard to be here that weekend in July, after so many years of being there… but I am immersing myself in an array of projects this month so I hope I won’t even notice!

I was glad instead to spend my “travel funds” in a wonderful road trip around New York and Massachusetts a couple weeks ago. A lovely week of family and friends. I spent 3 days in Brooklyn with my sister Kristin, her husband Craig and their 2 sons. Here are Ezra and Malachi doing what they are champs at, getting ice cream all over themselves:

Kristin and I spent a glorious day in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC, ooooh! Among so many inspiring pieces of art, I got to see in person a wonderful example of equine art: The Horse Fair. An awesome 199 inches wide of ravishing equines!

I also got to meet a fellow equine artist in person for the first time (we have been web-friends until now!), Jennifer Danza at her home and studio, also in Brooklyn. She possesses prodigious artistic talents, apparent all through her house and studio. She’s a fellow ceramist, too, with much more going on in that department than I! We didn’t spend nearly enough time and we pledged to schedule more of it in future!!

I also attended a large 3-in-one model horse show weekend in Mass, which while fun and entertaining, had an unexpected outcome for me. I think I am done with model horse showing. I have been struggling against this for a couple of years now, even to the point of getting back into the miniature-saddles part of the hobby and showing my models in “performance” events, to stave it off. But after this show, for some reason, it finally put me over the edge. The competition aspect just doesn’t hold any fascination for me any more. Plus, recent discussions with like minded friends and peers have me agreeing that the flaws in that part of the model horse hobby are just too many and too off-putting to ignore any more. And there just isn’t anything I haven’t achieved in model horse showing, honestly. There are no more goals to strive for there.

Now, I never say never about ANYthing… but I’m pretty sure I’ll be looking to grow my art work now instead of spending any more time on model horse showing “skills”! In fact, one of the things I want to do this year, is take a basic oil painting class. I have seen far too many masterful works of art in museums the last few years, to ignore scratching that little itch much longer! I want to paint big landscapes!!

Time for another dog photo.

Kanab rolled in something stinky the other day, so he got a bath. He looks so hilarious wet, I had to snap this photo. It really shows off his oversized ears! But I loooove those ears, because they are one of the reasons why I got to have him. Those ears would bounce him right out of the show ring!

What have I got going this summer in the studio? More china horses being glazed of course. I am happy to report that chinas are on their way from England! Another Boreas, and happily, at least one more Caprice, which were not surviving casting this past year. Donna Chaney hasn’t been able to successfully cast an Optime yet however, but she is working on it and we just decided to try a few in earthenware instead of bone china. That will be interesting if they come out, because earthenware doesn’t shrink nearly as much as bone chinas when fired. So I’ll have a couple Optimes that might be almost as large as the original sculpture (same size as the resin).

I poured slip in my Keeshond dog tile for the first time last month, and successfully fired two of them! I was so pleased, my first time doing all that! I will be getting those into “mass production” in the coming weeks, and will sell them via my ETSY shop. I may have an opportunity for a new sculpture commission from the dog community, I’m keeping my fingers crossed on that one!

I am also taking on a couple graphic design projects, even though I’m supposed to be retired from all that! I still have my health care industry client that I produce a magazine every month for. And they produce two books that I designed, which are releasing new editions. So I’ll be plodding along on those this summer. It will probably be a good thing, because jobs like that make me pine away for the more creative and artistic work so I’ll be hot to sculpt and paint!

I also bid on what could be a really fun and interesting design project for Breyer. We’ll see if anything comes of that this summer.

People always want know where artistic inspiration comes from. Well for me, it can be as simple as a word. I am a bit of an ancient Rome-o-phile, and I have been reading Colleen McCullough’s great 7-book series about Rome, “The Masters of Rome”. I came across the word “imperium” that just resonated with me. Now, what kind of an equine sculpture would bear the name Imperium? That’s where I’m going next I think… chasing that one down!

These two Hagen-Renaker earthenware chinas will be for sale at the MyAuctionBarn site on Monday June 30th, for a 3-day auction.

The “Swaps” Thoroughbred was an original unglazed bisque, that I have glazed to a warm dappled bay-going-grey. The “Sheba” Arabian is one of their re-issue chinas that came out in the last few years; it started life a palomino and I have completely repainted it using fired overglazes, to a lush chestnut sabino.

I’m heading out to New York and Massachusetts starting Thursday; I’ll be back on the 29th—and unavailable via email while away. The auction link will be posted here on the 30th. (I’ll take better photos, too!)