In the Studio - Painting and Sculpting

Using a telephoto lens probably wasn't the best choice here; poor Truffle looks a bit squished from this angle.

I have a lot of different projects going on a the moment. Probably too many, and I probably should just pick one and finish it before moving on to something else, but I've never been able to get that to work.

First, as you can see above, the second artist's proof Truffle is coming along, albeit slowly. He's looking a lot better now that I'm starting to add shading to his white areas, started on his mane and tail, and hit him with some dullcote (I've mostly been using Golden Fluid Acrylics for this piece, which I love because of their high pigment load, low viscosity, and good adhesion, but the tend to be a bit shiny)

 

Left is my OF Joker, right is the custom. How many differences can you find?

Next is a Breyer Smart Chic Olena that I'm just starting. Normally, I don't endorse customizing special run models, but I'm making a exception in the case of this model (Joker, the celebration horse from BreyerFest 2006, in case anyone's curious).

 

Despite being, in my opinion, one of Breyer's better pinto patterns, Joker is not particularly rare, nor is he particularly desirable (as of the writing of this post, the last Joker to sell on eBay went for only $19.99 + shipping, despite being a new-in-box, autographed model that included all the box inserts as well as a program, magnet, trading card, and 2 bracelets from the event.)

 

The Joker I'm working on was never that nice, having suffered from a big box rub. My original plan was to etch him (you can see where I started on his neck) but it was clear that the his reddish basecoat color was going to make him look really purple, so he ended up sitting in my body box until last week.

 

If things go well with him, I hope to enter him in the BreyerFest Best Customs Contest (in the finishwork category.) He's the first repaint-only model I've done in a long time (though 'repaint-only' is a little misleading, since I did make a couple of very minor corrections to the model, and still have a lot of work to do cleaning up his seams and such before getting to the actual painting part.)

 

What're you looking at?

This is another custom Breyer. He started out as a G1 Stablemate Draft Horse. I did most of the resculpting on him a couple of years ago, but then got busy with other things. I finished cleaning him up and started painting. He's going to be a seal brown, though he looks more like a dark bay at the moment.

Far Ute Keno wonders why I'm taking his pictures next to two big blobs of gray epoxy.

 

And lastly, here is Boxer with a few friends. The pony in the front is a sculpture that's been around the studio for a bit, but I don't think I've shown him here yet. The two on either side are OF Breyers shown for scale (Far Ute Keno and the mare from the New Beginnings set, in case you're curious.)

 

I've had some questions about scale, and in the future I'll try harder to remember to make note of any sculpture's size when I mention them. Right now, all the sculptures I'm working on (the pony, Boxer, and Hello Seattle) are all 1:12 scale. Boxer, if he were standing square, would be 6 inches tall at the shoulder, which in 1:12 is equivalent to 18 hands. The pony would be a mere 9.3 hands, and Hello Seattle - who will hopefully be making another appearance on this blog soon -  would come in at 16 hands.

 

I hope to have the final part of my base tutorial up sometime in the next few days. I should also have a couple of unpainted Truffle resins available soon! Once I have more details I'll make a post with the sales time and other pertinent information.