Muddy Monday: Reunited in Clay

Is fifty-five years too long to wait for a "boyfriend"? 

As covered in this earlier post, my research indicates that the real mare used for Hagen-Renaker's Roan Lady model had only one recorded mate. This stallion was two-time World Champion, Go Boy's Shadow, and for reasons already discussed, I aimed to sculpt a portrait of him.

I wanted to sculpt him in Trad size (1/9th scale) for the purpose of a resin run that is in scale with my other 2013 resin editions. At the same time, I wanted him to be around mid-DW or classic size (1/12th scale-ish), so that he stood just 1/8th of an inch taller than HR's Roan Lady. The goal was that the ceramics could be plausibly displayed together. After all, Zara has Amir, Sheba has Ferseyn, Erin has Two Bits...

First, I poured a waste mold on the original sculpture, salvaged after the resin edition silicone mold was made by my husband. I had to glue an ear back on, but otherwise went straight into it. 

Original epoxy sculpt clayed up and ready for the first plaster pour.
Waste molds don't have to be big and fancy.

Here comes the plaster!

Many pours later, this is what the cleaned mold looks on the inside, 

several pieces removed for photo.

Left: first generation bisque
Right: 8 3/4" tall original epoxy sculpt, after plaster molding trauma

The previous post about this sculpture mentioned pouring a rubber master. This plan changed. My husband helps with the rubber pouring, but he was swamped with his own work. To stay on schedule, I went forward with a technique that is tested and true, but might be a bit horrifying to ceramic fanciers. It involves destruction! 

I have to pour a "waste" or "clean-out" casting in each mold, to remove any mold soap residue my sponge may have missed, after I pull the original out. This clean-out casting was quite riddled with plaster and soap gunk, and to glaze him would have been folly. I don't want any of that to cause a resist while airbrushing or firing the piece! So, if it is to be used at all, it has only one reliable state: being unglazed bisque. The great thing about bisque is that it loves mold soap. It just yums it right up. A clean-out bisque casting is just the thing to mold off of, when you want to shrink the sculpt down a generation and retain all that first-shot mold detail.

Soaping up the first gen bisque for the next gen plaster moldmaking.
The two dark gray patches are epoxy, filling the vent in belly and a divot on face.

The bisque awaits its final plaster piece pour.

Rather than mold the second generation off a soft rubber, I molded directly off of the first generation bisque out of the waste mold. Its lovely, clean surface was just saturated with mold soap, and even water mist droplets beaded up on it. As each poured piece of plaster cures, it does a little expansion-contraction dance, pressing against the hard bisque that lacks the "give" of a rubber master. If the planes and parting lines have been planned correctly, the two main outer halves, and most of the small pieces, will come away from the bisque in perfect shape, without coaxing. However, the inner leg pieces of a mold with a parallel-legs stance and/or a belly piece between the thighs (like this sculpt) are pressing against two bisque surfaces, locked in place. You can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs, and this holds true for the bisque.

Strategic bisque breaking yields a clean release, with no damage to the plaster.

So, now I have a perfect second generation mold; in fact, it's much better than the waste mold. I made a mistake on a waste mold piece (chest) that I did not repeat on the second mold, which saves me some greenware cleaning grief.

How do the greenware casting measure up to each other? Here they are, dry and raw.

Next, I poured a clean-out casting as before, but this time, in the smaller mold. This casting wasn't perfect, and I could have very easily tossed him away, but I really wanted a black portrait model of my own. Badly. I cleaned every bit of plaster and soap off of him (he was much cleaner than the first guy), ran him through a first bisque, and started the airbrush stages of underglazing him a realistic sunburnt black. In the raw underglaze stage, the color rubs off like pastels on your hands, or any surface where it rests. I use the softest things I can find to handle him, and I try not to sneeze, talk, or cough. Any of that can permanently stain him with moisture drops!

Raw underglazes.

After the bisque fire, his color sharpened up. I then decorated his eyes and details by hand. I love hooves with detail, and it takes some tricks to give them the optic effect of layers of hoof wall.

Bisque underglazes.

Final height: 7 3/8" tall.

Top left: In his prime, showing snip and sock on this side.

Top right: in retirement, showing sunburnt black

Lower Left: in prime, showing other side of sock

Lower Right: completed portrait of retired horse

Real horse images used with permission of webmaster Judy Handel.

Then, I had to spray on satin glaze. Satin hates black underglaze, or vice versa. They don't play well together. It either is a drought, where the black sucks up every bit of glaze and leaves a dry surface, or it's a flood. Then, the glaze looks opaque white or gray, obscuring the true color below. Anxiety over how it would look kept me from sleeping.

I had worried enough to sate the kiln gods, I guess, because he came out as I'd hoped. Many collectors find black horses boring, but you'd be surprised how many colors and layers went into this black. I was so smitten, I took him outside for photographs in his "native environment", a pasture of Tennessee.

This sums up what I wanted to do, and now I am satisfied. I will now make a few of these for sale, in different colors. It will be less painful to part with each one because I have my Go Boy's Shadow. Roan Lady has him, too.

It is fascinating to compare the masculine short back with the mare-long back.

The masculine shoulder and neck is contrasted with the feminine.

The feminine face against the "hard" stallion face.

Overall, he lost 1 3/8", but he gained a whole Lady.

Gratitude to everyone who wrote to me (publicly and privately) about the TWH series of posts, and to those who gave me encouragement in person and on the phone. I'm looking forward to seeing more representations of Heritage TWH in collections and in the model show ring. The availability of this particular sculpture is:

Unpainted trad-size resin (link to ad)
Small trad-size ceramic
Roan Lady-size ceramic

Left to right: original sculpt, small trad-size ceramic, RL-size ceramic with braided forelock customization.

I am the only source producing all of these, at Lucas Francis Studio. You may private message/email me for more information on the ceramics; the resin has all its information in that ad. Thank you for following the progress!

Muddy Monday: A Walk In The Mud

As a resident of Tennessee and a professional equine artist, I get struck by the shrapnel of hate-bombs directed towards this state's native horse breed. I dodge the landmines of local horse people. The social and news media drive non-horse and AR people into such a froth that they have difficulty separating the Horse from what is done (to the Horse) in the name of Fashion. The Horse did not ask to have these things done to him. His only fault is being such a forgiving and compliant being, that this could even go on, at all. I've run into a few serious horse people who fail to grasp the distinction, and there is a tendency to throw the bay out with the bathwater. Or the black, dun, gray, chestnut, roan...

To see the breed before humans really took it to extremes, all one has to do is look at great old paintings, early photos, and sculpture (like last week's blog feature, Hagen-Renaker's Roan Lady). Why go to extremes, in the first place? One reason, although not the only one, is financial. The horse with the flashiest, most visually-arresting movement (in other breeds, it is flashiest color or most extreme skull shape) wins, by any means necessary. A World Championship meant lots of breeding money in a state, and a whole region, that had been economically depressed for a very long time. This is the sort of business that doesn't require higher education in the day-to-days, with the exception of needing veterinary services. Financial ambition, limited education opportunities, agricultural setting, and a state with weak or non-specific laws about animal welfare all contributed to the perfect storm of Fashion superseding Comfort. Some laws have been added, others amended. 

Today, enforcement is imperfect, as seen in the statewide "leash law"; every owner except three or four of us on my entire street let their dogs roam, without so much as a warning. Again, this goes back to the agricultural and hunting traditions that defy or circumvent paper laws: if the owner can prove that the dog is currently engaged in hunting or herding, it is exempt. Sadly, breaking from the history of soft enforcement will take an enormous coordinated effort, time, and an attitude shift. For example, our county animal shelter has made huge strides in the past seven years, including rescuing horses, not just small mammals and poultry/fowl. If I told you of the amount of difficulty, the number of concerned citizens and volunteers, the hours of meetings and labor, and listed just a few of the community events that it took to turn this single shelter around, your head would spin. If that's what it took to make one TN county shelter state and federal law compliant, I have some small perspective on what it will take to completely eradicate the statewide soring of Tennessee Walkers. To be honest, it doesn't feel like enough people reside here to vote and enforce it into extinction.

What Fashion and Greed have done to the Tennessee Walking Horse is not the Horse's fault. Please, stop blaming the victim. The TWH was originally a beautiful and handy all-around riding horse, sound with ample physical substance. They had bone. They had chests. They grew abundant manes and tails and didn't need wigs. They could live long lives. They had natural movement that made them famous, before anything was augmented or artificial.

I've seen educated horse people take stands on social media, but a photo or a shared link does not touch what I feel and experience. Most of these well-meaning people have the comfort of distance. A few of them turned their venom to the mistreatment of this breed, rather isolated to this region, but were silent about Thoroughbred racehorses, Arabians, Quarter Horses, or any other breed with even worse death, misuse, and inflicted injury/drug/soring/surgical records. Unlike most of those vocal folks, I live here. It affects my entertainment choices, my business, and my relationships with locals. I do not attend real horse shows here, for fear of what I'll see. Non-horse people, upon learning what I do for a living, attempt smalltalk, and ask if I will be going to the World Championships for inspiration this year. I have to gauge my response carefully, because you never know who is related to someone in that industry; this is a state where the pride is strong and a little dangerous. 

So, like any artist in the midst of a turmoil they sense around them, I needed to make a statement that no one else could make for me. I was going to make a natural TWH portrait. At ease. No parked-out stretch. I needed a vintage subject for the sculpture. The modern two-legs-out -of-one-hole log-head Fashion was not going to cut it. This needed to say, "Do you remember when they looked like this?"

There are people still breeding for this old type. They call such horses "Heritage" Tennessee Walkers. Here is one of the last breeding farms for this type, in our country.

While researching the blog post about Roan Lady's real life identity, I ran across retirement photos of her only mate, Go Boy's Shadow. While he was a two-time World Champion, and was show-shod in the early era of the Fashion, he was kept natural for most of his life. 

At age 23, photos taken in 1975 by Mary Ellen Areaux.

Photos used with permission of Walkers West webmaster Judy Handel.

At the stud farm, he was barefoot, had a natural tail set, and looked better at age 23 than most of today's representatives of this breed look in their prime. Even in an early publicity photo (see below), he had one hind leg casually forward and under him, as if already defying the future Fashion. This was my portrait horse. "This guy", is what I needed to say.

I tried sketching him in a few different ways. To get a feeling for the conformation of a portrait, I sometimes trace a show-prime photo, and stare at it a while. Then, I freehand a drawing, then stare at both to see what meshes. I then trace my own drawing over, about three more times, adjusting model size while examining his retirement photos, because I am trying to teach myself to shed perception vs. what the horse actually had grown into. His underline had dropped, his head carriage had risen, and his hips had rounded.

Then, I made the armature by laying it directly on the drawing. I have grown into a very untraditional sculpting method of finishing the horse entirely in sections, rather than working round and round in many, many stages. This method developed when I made models out of Aves Apoxie, instead of the plastalina, Chavant P-40.

In epoxy putty, I condense it to just three main steps: sculpting, sanding, veining. This is not how I was trained, and I do not recommend it to anyone. I can't explain why I can do it, other than my brain does organize/identify/process things differently. This method will only lead to frustration and mismatched body parts, if you are a beginning sculptor.

The real horse had a very large shoulder and neck, so when he matured, his deepened waist balanced him out nicely. I loved his diamond-shaped nostril flare in his older photos, so I went with that look.

In his retirement photo, he stands proudly with his forelegs under him, sort of like the Hagen-Renaker 6" Style Two Amir (whose real identity is the subject of a future blog post). 

His natural tail reached to his ergots, in the old photo. I sculpted a light breeze blowing his tail, mane, and forelock. 

This angle shows the soft undulations of his crest skin and muscle, and his handsome face.

The unpainted resin edition is only a single mold run. This means after about 30, the mold is aged. Sometimes, the rubber holds up for more. However long it lasts, we will not make another mold to make more resins. Thirty-odd resins of a natural TWH can't come close to outweighing the model horse world's Big Lick mold majority, but it will take lots of efforts like this to slowly change attitudes. Orders are open for this unpainted resin model. While I normally allow customization of my resins, I do not allow Big Lick conversions on this resin. I purposefully chose leg poses and pastern angles that would make such a conversion an enormous headache, if attempted.

The big question is, "Will he be ceramic?" Yes, I have scaled him to shrink down to Roan Lady's size in ceramic, so they can be displayed together. Happily, the original survived the resin molding process, so I cleaned the mold release off, and I will make his plaster directly on the original. The first plaster mold is the waste mold. This will be used to pour a rubber master. The rubber is what the future production plaster molds will be poured against. As the plaster dries, there is a degree of shrinkage. The rubber has so little shrinkage as to be inconsequential. But, the next generation of plaster, off that rubber, will reduce. Then, when the clay casting dries out, it shrinks more... and even more, in the bisque firing. The final product should stand just a hair taller than the average Roan Lady model. 

The ceramics will be announced as they are finished and available. A Walk in the mud never felt more freeing and purposeful.

On the subject of the breed and its use, it feels good to replace a small bit of the hate, frustration, and aggression with beauty. Despite what the formal art schools tell us, Art that makes the viewer consider issues, and where we are going as human beings, doesn't have to be ugly or unrealistic to give topics some abrasive therapy. On that note, I have some sanding to do...

Muddy Monday: Sands of Time

June 3 Muddy Monday

Last week, I completed a new sculpture that has swept me along, like a petal on a sandstorm.

A local friend suggested we create a historical chariot display for fun. She would supply the accurate chariot scale model, and I volunteered to sculpt the horses. Why? Sometimes, you just have to do something that is not the norm. Also, I was a little punch-drunk from prepping for my all-ceramic show, Clinky Classic 4. Yeah, that was it.

"Antiquity", the resulting traditional 1:9 scale model, is an ancient Hyksos-bred chariot horse. Egypt's first horses were from the invading Hyksos, and were eagerly embraced as engines for their war machines. They were most often depicted in Egyptian tomb art, pulling chariots for war and the hunt, and less frequently shown ridden. They did not look like today's Egyptian Arabian. The Hyksos did some reverent burials of their horses, and this was very helpful for my project. I saw this photo, and told my friend, 

"This must be a mare, she died young, she was not a chariot horse, but she must have been important to be buried in this way."

Photo © Österreichisches Archäologisches Institut (ÖAI) Kairo

The original press release web site is down, so this is the best I can do for you.

A couple weeks later, I found an article which said exactly that. 

"The second important discovery was the burial of a horse, which is situated and stratigraphically well connected within the palace. It was a mare between 5 and 10 years. It was obviously not a chariot horse but more likely used for breeding. It was the Hyksos who introduced the horse to Egypt and it is the oldest undisputed horse burial found in this country. Its position in the palace suggests that this mare was a pet of the Hyksos, most likely king Khayan."

How could I guess all that from just a small skeleton photo? It is from years of reconstructing dinosaurs and studying live and fossil horses. Thanks, paleoart!

More useful for my sculpture prep, I noticed the skull had a straight profile, not dished, as we often associate with any horse in Egypt. Now I had a type set: straight skull, slightly wedge-shaped, small desert body. I then had to add secondary sexual characteristics and mass for it to be the preferred chariot horse gender, a stallion. I did the initial chariot-sizing drawings on cardstock, with all this physical data blended into one shape. The cardstock horses could then be double-checked for pose and scale with the chariot (which is top-secret, for now).

I used the "glamour-side" drawing to make a tracing on regular paper, so I could lay the armature against it, as I was constructing the model.

Right about here is a good time to explain the pose. The tomb paintings and sculptures show the horses in this pose, with legs perfectly parallel. My friend let me pour over her big books of tomb art, and we sat down together and analyzed the tack and resulting biomechanics. The rather sad side of this ancient form of transportation is that the tack did not innovate from its initial use on early domesticated asses. Onagers and horses are not built the same way. The chariot horses were used in neck collars, high up above the withers. The collar set so high, a big section of mane was kept trimmed off. Most modern cultures, around the world, use a shoulder collar as the main connection to the horse's pulling power. The shoulder collar allows the horse to line up his spine and hindquarters (the horse's own engine) and move efficiently. In other words, the ancient chariot horse had all the weight pulling on its neck, not its body frame, and had to work extra-hard.  

As if that was not tough enough, the chariot harness used a bearing rein to create an artificial, proud headset. You can clearly see the bearing reins, and trace them along on several tomb art examples. The bearing rein, in its infamous extreme form, is virtually extinct in modern horsemanship, and for good reason. The bearing rein, used in this capacity, forces the horse to hold his head unnaturally arched and high. It was done because it looks powerful (and intimidating in battle) and adds an element of stylish swagger. In combination with the neck collar harness, this forces the horse to hyperextend or "hollow" his back. The result is inefficient movement and poor muscular development of both dorsal and ventral muscles. It actually made me sad to realize that, to be accurate, I had to capture this pose and body condition. I hope this reminds people to be on the alert for horsemanship fads that do not serve the best interests of the animal. At the time, the horses were trained this way, carefully groomed and maintained, and never knew anything different. One can guess that teams were frequently replaced, and had few years of individual usefulness. An aged chariot horse would be inaccurate.

I suppose when one considers the human rights and public health in context of the time and place, it gives one a more complete picture. Life was hard for everyone.

Knowing this, I went ahead with the pose. When his professional critique came in, I changed all the requests but two: thicken the loins and modernize/correct the spine pose. Parasites, bearing rein, and neck collar all clamored for my attention, and I chose to stay true to the old paintings and carvings of history. Inner conflicts of tomb imagery, ancient and modern horsemanship, art styles, biology... even the artist who did the critique acknowledged that one could go either way, keep or change the pose. It was a tough call.

I wasn't sure how the model horse collectors would feel about this leap into the depths of time. I offered to sell the first ten castings for a very short period, at a discount, just to raise the funds to cover the cost of the silicone mold and the resin raw materials. All I wanted was a mold so I could play: paint a team for my friend's chariot, and customize a couple castings for myself.

From the minute I posted the sales information, it was all a stormy blur for the next eight hours. I had set a long-range goal of capping the edition size at 30 resin castings. They all were claimed in those hours, and there is a waiting list, should anyone drop out. The most frequent note that I received was how glad people were that I stayed true to the culture and showed history, even with its imperfections. Consider me blown away.

I have learned a valuable lesson with the creation and release of "Antiquity". Some art subjects may challenge my personal ethics about horses, but the art itself can serve as a lesson in three dimensions about why and how things were done, in that time and place. We absolutely should know horsemanship history, so we don't repeat it. The next time you see tomb art on a documentary, or in the background of a film, consider how much time and improvement, for humans and animals, has passed between then and now.

These were the only tools used to make this sculpture. 

Not shown is the super-fine armature wire wrap and the spray primer.

As the dust settles, I am finishing up the custom-sculpted base for the resin edition. I am looking at it, thinking about how to alter it so that it would safely support and embellish a ceramic version of this sculpture. So many people have asked if he is going to be released in ceramic, but balancing that body is going to be tricky. It will require a well-engineered, hollow ceramic base. The only thing holding me back is literally the dust beneath his hooves. Maybe it will someday become... muddy hoof prints?

If you would like to see the entire sculpture develop from armature to finished model, there is an Antiquity photo album on my Facebook page, Animal Art of Kristina Lucas Francis.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Animal-Art-of-Kristina-Lucas-Francis/487995765121

References

Bolen, Todd. "Hyksos Palace Excavated at Tell el-Dab'a". Blog post. May 31, 2009. bhttp://blog.bibleplaces.com/2009/05/hyksos-palace-excavated-at-tell-el-dab.html

Further reading I glanced at, that you may enjoy:

http://filebox.vt.edu/users/bhollenb/EDCI5314/portfoliobkh/html/History_of_Chariot_Warfare.html

Journey to Mud

After much resculpting and brain sweats, I am pleased to share the final versions of my two classic scale stock horse meditations. I don't write many posts about my own ceramics here, but everything flows together, between old and new, when one is working (and thereby, living) in this pottery tradition. It's going to keep coming up.

In the last update on this sculpture, I shared the many versions of heads this sculpture has sported. When the body "tried on" a resin casting off of the new brown clay original Mustang head, it looked too big. I made a plaster pottery mold off the brown clay to generate a smaller bisque copy of the head. This worked beautifully! Every detail is sharp and the size is nice without sacrificing his Mustang "log head" look.

Shrunken head.

Because I didn't want a size difference between the two full body versions, I cut off the sculpey Ratrod's head and put the Mustang face in its place. When the bisque head replaced the resin, the mane and tail work began. Confession: I despise manes and tails, in life and in art. My favorite real breed is the Fjord, which is a delight both practically and aesthetically: one keeps the mane hogged (cut so short as to stand upright). I spent many happy hours trimming my Fjords' manes in both Norwegian cultural and non-traditional styles (shark teeth!). The breed also has a thick tail that can do that beautiful "cording" or "dredlock" effect. In short, I like hair to look architectural and orderly, and not wispy and flying everywhere... which is the kind of hair I have, of course. On a Mustang in action, I am challenged with not only depicting lots of hair, going every-which-way, but it also has to be relatively easy to mold for ceramic production and be mostly up off the neck, for replicable  production paintwork.

First try.

Second try.

Third try, pieces missing yet.

As with the heads, fourth try is the charm!

This is "Silverheels".

How I love a little chunkster of a feral horse. The chunkier, the better!

Hair is blown off the neck clean on this side, making decoration or masking of the ware simple for production color.

I love the expression here: pursed lip, kind eyes, and ears trying to scope all sounds, all around.

A little bit challenging to glaze on this side, but makes for gorgeous color contrast, too.

'Cause, I already see him glazed in my head.

The Appaloosa "Ratrod" and the Mustang, "Silverheels", were sculpted for a client. She has already made the first ceramic test for a proposed OF (production) run. This is glazed and produced by Marge Para, a ceramist who constantly pushes and improves her techniques. The hoof glaze detail work alone is ambitious for OF. I'm so proud to see her current glazing on this fellow. Look at that snowflake!

Glazed test Ratrod and photos by Marge Para.

This is the scoop direct from Marge:

"...OF very similar to the above photos, a tribute to my husbands first horse, lots of fond memories of that little buckskin Appaloosa. I am not sure if I will have any OF's at Breyerfest, I'll be at the Artisan Gallery at the C/HIN with some, they may be OOAK colors. But he'll be there for sure!"

For those attending BreyerFest, and planning on visiting the Artisans' Gallery, Marge's table is right next to mine, at the counter-tops on the left, as you enter the ballroom at the Clarion (HIN).

What a journey these two sculptures have been! They certainly left their hoofprints on me, testing and pushing me to grow.

Four Heads Are Better Than One

If at first you don't succeed, try, try, try again.

Oddly, necessities of moldmaking first steered me in this direction, that eventually led to sculpture improvement. It would be helpful if this occurred more frequently, but that would make my job easier. We certainly can't have that. Another factor, the choice to offer two breed versions of this stock horse, clinched the decision which led to better results. Usually, the opposite is the case, because a sculptor can generalize too much! There has been a trend, nay, a tradition, among model horse exhibitors (and producers) to use one mold for multiple breed designations. For some molds, this works fine, as some breeds have the same foundations. In other cases, it doesn't work. The more I researched for the the two versions of this horse, the more it became clear that one head was not going to work for two breeds. The client desired the changes in grooming and overall hair volume between the two versions. We agreed that to better capture each individual breed, it had to go beyond the hair-do. We also agreed that the second head, the one he was wearing at the end of this blog post, didn't fit and seemed too general.

Under the client's direction, I sculpted a third head, before their very eyes. The Mustang head is on the right. A little later, the Applaoosa head on the left was sculpted. The coarseness of the Mustang really stands out when side-by-side with the pedigree Appaloosa. They are shown here in the original Chavant clay.



We're both much happier with this solution. The previous Mustang heads look stylized, like "artist's conceptions", compared to these revisions. Remember?



The new Mustang head could have some draft in the woodpile, and he sports a beard and fully-fuzzed ears (sculpted separately).

Where did I get my idea of an Appaloosa head? My client searched the web for photos of Appaloosas of the 1960's and earlier. I pulled two books from my shelves, Appaloosa (1972) and Champion Horses of the Americas (1971). Like a Mustang, there was a range of overall face types, with a few features in common. The eye, shaped like an almond, seemed to show up the most frequently. Just one photograph, of "High Thunderbird", looked strikingly like Carol Williams' QH-1 (the Stone QH mold) in the head and large, round eye. Another old Appy looked like a spotted Thoroughbred (and was, virtually, by descent). I certainly don't want to get too close to what others have done before, so I chose to go with the alternate, the look I saw most frequently among those '60's Apps. This Appalooosa head is refined without being overly wedged or Arab-y; it has the eye shape I saw on so many of the old photographs. Very different, but both new heads have stock horse substance, honesty, work ethic.

Then, it was time to recapitate him. My husband molded the heads and their respective ear sets (fuzzy and clean-shaven), and poured resin castings for me to work with. I played with the ear positioning on the Appy head, after attaching it to the body. Somehow, it needed to be less like the designated position for the Mustang, and more like the Appies in the old photos. Forward, pointing slightly outwards, not airplaning, but not with the tips touching, either. Pleased with the progress, I went to bed.



The next morning, I walked in, looked at his head set, and immediately decapitated him a third time. I mean, I didn't even sit down yet. Wrong wrong wrong. Let's try that again. Much better. Oh, and I was curious to see if my Cowgirl Poetry (classic scale) custom tack set would fit him. I couldn't find my matching saddle pad, and looks like I need a new girth to slide that saddle back.



Then, it was ON. I was sending pix before even completing mane sections! The client asked for a rattier tail than previously sculpted, and since it no longer needed to be a plug for the pourhole, I was free to reduce it and get really ratty. Next, the client wanted a sparse, flipping-on-both-sides mane. Even though the old show photos had completely roached (or with just a tuft of forelock) manes, the client wanted that little bit of outline break-up, that "umph" of a sparse App mane.



The tail needed another edit, because it STILL had too much hair. I kept going back to the photos, which showed shaved or very short hairs on the upper tail, which fanned out farther down into sparse, longer hair. Underneath, his tail bone is visible.



Have I toyed with you enough? Here is my rat-tail Appaloosa, as he stands tonight. The few tasks yet to be done may not even be noticeable in later photos (a tail key, a signature, etc.), so these are a fair representation of the final Appaloosa sculpt. The Mustang will follow, of course.





Many more photos, brighter images, will be in galleries at my yahoogroup and Facebook art page.

I hope this sculpt serves a niche that was not well addressed in the hobby. There are so few specific Appaloosa resin molds, and I can count the existing Appaloosa ceramic molds on one hand (one is the same as a resin). It's a shame there are so few, because so many artists love painting and glazing Appaloosas! This guy, my little "ratrod", was made for exhibitors and collectors who dearly love the differences in breed morphology.