Chinook Studios Chatter

In Progress

2012-02-04T13:29:00.000-08:00

Hey, they have heads now! :-D The pics are all clickable for larger versions if you want to see more detail. Some of the necks aren't attached quite right yet, so they'll be going under the knife again. It's just the nature of such a bendy, stretchy-squishy body part!

What's New: Progress and Studio!

2012-02-02T00:19:00.000-08:00

I spent the day beheading a bunch of bodies. Tomorrow they all get re-headed, or at least that's the plan. It is certainly quicker to demolish than to build!

I thought you might also like to see the view from my workstation. You see, I'm not the only person in the family who likes horses! Our living room is a little art gallery of sorts for some non-model equestrian art. The wall to my back has a fireplace with Richard Stone Reeves' Secretariat on the mantle:

The wall to my right has three more of his paintings. From left to right: Northern Dancer, Seabiscuit, and War Admiral - who seems to be a little catawompus right now, whoops!

And lastly, the wall I face is the entry plus this hunt scene:

There are more objets d'horse ;-) scattered about, but these are the prominent ones. I have to admit, it does lend a nice ambiance to the working space!

Another Studio Move

2012-01-30T23:45:00.000-08:00

I've had to move to my mom's house temporarily to take care of her and where I go, my studio goes! Such as it is right now... I still have some unpacking to do and I'm really not sure where I'm going to put those boxes of horses, but it's a start. I'll be working on a bunch of sculpting projects while I'm here. There are loads of manes and tails to do, and a few necks and other body parts as well. Deseoso's oils are done and he's drying back in the studio proper; more pics of him later when he's all done!

Dese Progress

2012-01-22T11:49:00.000-08:00

Well, it's been a busy busy two weeks here with finishing horses and a big snow storm! The grey minis are all done and were delivered on time to have a great show last weekend. Their galleries will be posted once I get a couple more horses done. Speaking of, here is the grey Deseoso now! One if his sides doesn't quite match the other so that's next on the agenda. Then it's finishing off his legs in oils, and then his mane, tail and other details in acrylics. All of the pics are clickable for large versions:

In Progress

2011-12-27T17:13:00.000-08:00

Happy Holidays everyone and early best wishes for the new year! Here's a quick update on the horses in progress. All are clickable for bigger pics.

Dese's head is nearly done; there are a few touchups and "oomphs" to do there, but it's getting close. The rest is just a dapple basecoat laying out basically where stuff goes and needs a lot of work yet.

Fenwick is pretty much done with his body color. He needs a couple touchups and then he gets his mane and tail and pretty red bow!

This Working Girl also just has her first dapple coat, but it went on so nice I probably only have one or two coats to go to finish her body. :-D

And last but not least, Mini Nahar is going to be a grey sabino with lots of nice roaned out edges to his markings. Lots of work to do there!

In Progress

2011-12-14T00:18:00.000-08:00

Well hi there! It seems like hardly any time at all has passed since the last blog post, but the date stamp proves otherwise... Much of that time was spent finishing up Deseoso, so there hasn't been much to share anyway! A couple new minis worked their way into the schedule and they haven't been seen here yet. So without any further ado, the finished horses (pictures are clickable for full galleries):

Deseoso in semi-leopard appy

"Denny", portrait of the horse from "The Man From Snowy River" on Valor

"Tator Tot", chestnut Imp

Portrait of Amy Widman's horse, "Traveller" on G1 SM Arab Mare:

There are some new things to share as well. These horses are all going to be some flavor of dapple grey. Some will be rosier than others and their shades vary from mostly dark to completely greyed out:

And last but not least, these are all quick mockups of medallions I am working on as time allows. They're very rough at the moment, but they're fleshed out enough to give you an idea of what they will look like. The theme for the round shapes is "horses at play" and the theme for the rectangles is "horses interacting with stable elements."

Denny

2011-09-04T02:20:00.000-07:00

Well, I was going to wait until I was done with Dese and do one batch of photos with both him and Denny. But I just couldn't resist getting some outdoors shots with Denny this evening! You can click on the pic for a much larger (and not grossly compressed) version.

In Progress

2011-08-25T16:05:00.000-07:00

Hey, I thought of a view you haven't seen yet! (It's clickable for a large version.)

This is his first coat of oils on the underside of his barrel. He'll need another coat to brighten up the whites and fill the spots, but this is the last thing to do before I can move on to his lower legs. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, woo-hoo!

In Progress

2011-08-22T19:32:00.000-07:00

Denny has eyeballs! Dese has had more work done too, but I won't bore you all with more pictures since he still looks pretty much the same to a camera. But as of today Denny (Valor) here is ready for his hair. I wish I could start right away, but I can't risk getting the hair out and having it float into Dese's paint job, so it will have to wait until that is done. D'oh!

In Progress

2011-08-19T23:49:00.000-07:00

The hardest paint job ever! (Pic is clickable for a large version.) I am still slowly progressing on Deseoso. The front half of his left side now just needs some tweaks but it's getting there. I just started on the oil coat for his blanket half tonight. Right now there is white roany paint over his spots; the next coat will bring his real spots as well as some additional roaning and softening of things like the rib barring. I wish I had some pictures of other horses to show you, but he has been my life so far this month!

In Progress

2011-08-14T15:08:00.000-07:00

So, over the winter I got all of my color reference binders done as well as a bunch of other things like hair patterns and braids and such. But material just keeps pouring in here, and now I'm left with this all over again. I feel a bit like Sisyphus! Some of the new stuff came from books I got on sale at Borders which is sadly closing up shop. If you've been holding off on picking up that coffee table book now might be a good time to go for it.

And it doesn't look like much has changed with Deseoso, but he has had a lot of work done lately. His pencil roaning is all done, and his busted ear is fixed. I can see now that I forgot to put on the basecoat for his mottling, so that's next and then he can move on to his (hopefully!) final coats of oils. His pic is clickable for a larger version.

BOYCC

2011-08-06T03:03:00.000-07:00

Rosenthal Prancing Horse I think? I dunno, I just thought he was super cool.

I finally had a chance to finish up my BOYCC photos! There are a ton to view - you can see them all here. I tried to get pictures of most everything for a couple of reasons: 1) Not knowing anything about what's collectible I didn't want to miss anything that people would find interesting and 2) I wanted to give an accurate sample of what was on the tables. Have fun! :-D

Things Were Going So Well!

2011-08-05T00:39:00.001-07:00

And then...

Ugh!

So Many Hairs!

2011-08-01T16:08:00.000-07:00

Since the last post with Deseoso I've been doing loads of pencil work for more texture and precision. One side is just about done with this stage of work so I thought I'd show the progression. You can click on each picture to bring up the full size sharper version.

This first image is a detail shot of his neck with just oils on the surface. It looks pretty soft, but the roaned areas are well defined.

This shot shows the same area after the bulk of pencil roaning was done. The area has some added specks and has been broken up and roaned out a little more.

The process to achieve this is as follows:

Prismacolor French Grey 20%

All over the light areas, lightly over the darker roan areas

Prismacolor French Grey 30%

Lightly over some light areas, mostly on darker roan areas

Derwent Aquatone Venetian Red

All roaning, lightly in light areas

Prismacolor Sienna Brown

Pick out spots and some darker roan areas

Blend spots in with colorless blender
Derwent Watercolor Venetian Red

Roaning in darker areas, around spots, knees, specks on barrel, rib barring, blanket spots

Sealed with DullCote

And lastly the lighter specks have been popped out some. This part is starting to look pretty grainy due to his slight texture and it sticks out rather badly in some spots. It will all meld back together once the oils go back on.

This step went as follows:

Prismacolor French Grey 10%

Light all over roaning, heavier in light areas, picking out white around some spots

Derwent Drawing Chinese White

Pick out whitest spots, some roaning

"Call Me Trouble"

2011-08-01T11:49:00.000-07:00

He's finally up for auction! "Call Me Trouble" will be on My Auction Barn until Friday afternoon. I'm happy to take time payments - just email me to work out a schedule. :-)

New Horse and In Progress

2011-07-27T23:32:00.000-07:00

Well, now that I'm all set up again I've really been blasting through projects in the studio! :-D First up is "Call Me Trouble", the newly finished Call Me Ringo custom. He'll be headed for My Auction Barn this coming Monday (August 1). Click here to see the full gallery.

Next up is this Deseoso II resin. He has appeared in the blog before at various stages, very slowly progressing. It is my mission to finish both him and the haired Valor this August. They have both been lingering half finished for entirely too long! Today I started in on Dese's oil layers. I spent about 7 1/2 solid hours doing this side today:

Much like Curly's paint job I started with one method, found it to not be working to my liking, and switched tactics. Again, matching color was the real culprit and I knew I could get the shade I wanted in oils. The other thing about oils is I can now get an even more refined hair texture than I can using other media. It is quite difficult to achieve the look without getting uniform "mud" and getting the right direction of hair growth is exceedingly tricky, but it's worth the work if the desired end result is a softer roan.

Up next for him (after his other side is oil painted) is some more pencil work to pick out some of the specks and sharper roany areas. More pics to come then!

Set Backs and Set Ups

2011-07-11T21:17:00.000-07:00

So hey, I had planned to start blogging a lot more, didn't I? Well, the theme for this year seems to be catastrophic failures of plans. My mom had to go in for another biopsy and, as it is brain surgery coupled with chemo, needed me to be around the house during her recovery process for a rather significant amount of time. During all this my dad also had to go back to the hospital for an additional foot surgery. Incidentally, fate decided that it would be HILARIOUS to have them both in surgery on the same day in different hospitals. (And I'm writing this blog post from a waiting room during yet another surgery...) So anyway, I tried to make the best of the situation and set up a temporary studio in my mom's kitchen:

As you can see the lighting was pretty dismal (and that's after I packed in two of my studio lights), but it was good enough to get the bulk of the work done. At least one plan is coming to a successful end though. Sir Sproing! is done now and is rushing to Erin so she can show him at BF this year. She has some really fun things planned so if you're going to be there take a look at his performance entries! He'll come back after she's done for some last little details and touchups so pictures will come after all that.

One of the nice things about being away for so long was getting to take pictures of my mom's garden several times a week. I have quite the collection of photos from that now and I am looking forward to editing them. I'll probably just put them on my Facebook but I may put up a small selection of them here too. I also got to hang out with "my" dog a lot (she thinks she's "mine" anyway!). Now that I'm home I miss my wake-up nosing! Is there any better alarm clock? I don't think so.

I also saw two deer wandering through the neighborhood! We don't exactly live in the country there so deer aren't a common sight, but it's rural enough that they feel fairly at home. They went to our neighbor's yard (thankfully bypassing my mom's rose bushes) which is more more of an, er, natural habitat.

And last but not least, I was able to take off one day and I went to the beach with my sisters. We had a blast searching for sea glass and rummaging around in tide pools. I also have tons of pictures to share from that little trip, but for now I will leave you with this sea star.

And We're Back!

2011-06-08T13:11:00.000-07:00

Woo-hoo! BOYCC (am amazing experience) is behind me and things are chugging along in the studio now. What a relief to get back to normal. :-D And another huge relief - Sir Sproing!'s sculpting is done!

He'll be moving on to prepping now and I'm going to have to work very diligently to get him done in time for BreyerFest. But the light is showing through at the end of the tunnel and the deadline is doable. Whew! My other three top priority projects are:

Valor aka Denny needs his hair.

Deseoso is moving on to oils to finish his coat off.

And the Call Me Ringo CM needs his markings and details finished off. He'll be headed to My Auction Barn when he's done!

And here are a couple new things I tore apart in between projects. I don't know when I'll be able to start these back up but I just wanted to share what they look like for now:

And last but certainly not least... As you may have already read in Jennifer Buxton's blog, a sneaky plot was afoot to get measurements for Sproing!'s head. Obviously with all of his hair, measurements would have been a little different. I'm sure Jennifer would have been able to work without him, but when the opportunity to send a head in the mail comes up, one does not pass it by. I only wish Erin and I could have been there to see the look on Jennifer's face when she got this:

I used some really old rubber so the casting turned out terrible. But it was kind of humorous (in a sick, sick way) that it looked like he got a shotgun blast to the face. For a brief moment I debated on whether to paint all the "holes" too, but decided to stick with the more lighthearted cliche of bloody neck stump:

So there you have it. Don't mess with the model horse mafia!

A Little Late But Better Than Never!

2011-05-09T14:44:00.000-07:00

Firstly, I finished and listed this beautiful Weather Girl, Al-Shama, to My Auction Barn last Tuesday. Her auction ends tomorrow (Tuesday, May 10), so you've still got a little time to go check her out!

Second, I will be going to BOYCC in a couple weeks so I don't expect to be doing any blogging before then, but my hope is to resume afterwards with regular updates once again. I certainly have content, it's just the time that is lacking! So until then, feast your eyes on some of the things that are in progress at the moment:

Valor is a custom order and just needs his feet, eyes and chestnuts painted, and a haired mane and tail. He, along with the Ringo below are the first on the block to be finished as soon as I get back.

And this is Sir Sproing! a Wintersong custom. Yes, his name includes the exclamation point. ;-) He's just about ready for his hair, finally! He'll be done in a silver dapple tobiano sabino, the quintessential Gypsy Vanner color.

And lastly, these are the most recently finished horses. You can click on their names to go to the full size galleries.

Brioso has a custom tail and mane with tassels. I also made him a swishy mosquero!

This Rebecca Turner medallion is also sooty buckskin, and has some fun duochrome paint for the background, a mixture of blue and silver. I can't wait to paint more medallions so I can use the other paints I got!

Stormy in grulla with massive amounts of dun barring.

Salinero in heavily dappled sooty palomino.

This Indy I don't think was ever in the blog. He is now a she, and was painted as a portrait for her owner.

Here's one more that didn't make it to the blog while he was in progress, a chestnut Dozen Roses.

And a pinto to round out the group on Strawberry Jam.

Jennifer Buxton Checking In!

2010-12-30T11:54:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone! Despite best intentions, life has a way of making things difficult sometimes. As some of you already know, since the last post I've been spending a lot of time driving my mom to the hospital every day. I haven't even had a chance to pick up a paint brush let alone blog about progress. I expect to be back to work by the end of January though, so hopefully there will be beautiful new horses to report soon!

So instead of a brand spankin' new post, here is a post that made my day when Jennifer Buxton originally posted it to her blog here. And if it inspires you to try performance with a Jasmine resin, keep in mind that she is on sale until Monday! And now without any further ado:

RMR performance
As it turned out, Teresa and I were the only people showing performance at the Rocky Mountain Rendezvous live show. This might lead you to believe that we enjoyed a leisurely stroll through the classlist. Nothing could be further from the truth. Instead, this became an exercise in speed tacking. There were seventeen classes in the division and I competed in all but one of them. In twelve of those classes, I showed two models. Somehow, we managed to finish the division before lunch time. It was tack one, tack the other, put both on the table, take them off the table and start all over. I barely had time to breathe let alone think!

Harness was first and White Trash Girl was the only entrant. Not surprisingly, she won the blue!

I skipped the Arabian/Native American Costume class so Parade was next. I really liked the way Trashy's Street Parade entry turned out...

but judge Sandy Lyles liked Emma's costume just a bit better.

Trashy earned another second place with this Other Performance entry.

Emma won the Other Performance class with her Endurance entry.

Two blues were good enough to earn Emma the title of Other Performance Reserve Champion.

Trashy won the Scene class with this school horse set-up and went on to be named Other Performance Champion.

The first class in the English Performance division was Eventing/Racing/Steeplechase. Trashy's start box entry looked great and won first place.

Poor Emma was plagued with boot issues. The show hall was cold and nothing wanted to stick. Bits fell out of mouths, reins fell out of hands and the closures on Emma's boots wouldn't stay closed. Oh well. Live and learn. Next year I will bring only buckle boots to RMR.

The next class was Hunter/Jumper, and once again Trashy claimed the top spot.

Emma was third out of three, but don't feel sorry for her.

She came back strong to win three of the next four classes including the Other English...

and English Trail.

The division ended with Dressage. Trashy's Intro Level test was third...

And Emma was the class winner.

Trashy and her ribbons on the callback table. It's a pretty nice haul, but not quite nice enough!

Teresa's iApp was the English Reserve Champion...

and Emma was the English Champion.

I was really tired by the time the Western division rolled around, and I all but stopped taking pictures. You can see both my trail entries here. I'm not positive, but I think Emma's pole entry placed second and Trashy's cowboy curtain was third.

Trashy tried, but it just wasn't her day as far as Western performance goes. Fortunately, that one red ribbon was all she needed. She's now qualified to show in all three performance divisions at NAN 2011.

Emma, on the other hand, is a performance machine. This mold looks great under saddle and is so easy to set up in a variety of events. If you're looking for an all around performance contender, you can't go wrong with a Jasmine resin. Emma won another rosette in the Western division and was named Overall Performance Champion.

Although I look a bit dazed and confused in the picture, I was really happy to win a glossy trophy model.

Stay tuned for still more RMR photos!
*****************
Thanks Jennifer! If you don't follow Jennifer's blog, I highly recommend it for great photos, tips, and general awesomeness.
And in a recent follow up post Emma made a reappearance, and this time with all of her stash:

In Progress

2010-11-05T13:48:00.000-07:00

Well, it looks like it's been quite a while since I've updated! There actually has been a lot going on, and I hope to have a ton of new gallery pages up soon. In the meantime, here's a custom order that is in progress. I just finished the sculpting on him, and he's getting ready for a nice dappled buckskin coat now. :-D

In Memory 1976 - 2010

2010-09-15T14:22:00.000-07:00

Chinook, my studio namesake and old friend of 20 years has passed away. He was 34 years old and living the good life, happy and exuberant until an episode of colic combined with some problems due to his advanced age necessitated he be humanely euthanized.

He was a very small horse with a very big heart, and a jokester attitude to match. He taught me to ride with care and patience and tested me as my skills improved. I've never known a more trustworthy or capable horse and he certainly got me out of many a situation, from finding the way home after I got thoroughly lost to calmly extricating both of us from places of great tightness and even a little peril.

Chinook in his "youth". I always thought of his teenage years as his youth because that's when I got him and he started his career anew. I am told that before I got him, he was a "champion" barrel racer. I don't know about that, but he definitely was an athletic little guy. We would go on eight hour trail rides full of galloping and fooling around, and the next day he would be fresh and ready to go again. We did a little gaming. I started teaching him to jump when he was about 16. He didn't much care for his dressage days, but when he was pointed at a jump he was in heaven despite my getting left behind and jumping ahead. :-P This is us before lessons (and me in rubber boots!!).

I do actually have a lovely picture of us jumping after I got a trainer but thus far I do not have permission from the photographer to use it. Hopefully I can include it soon.

During his retirement, I taught him tricks to keep his crafty Mustang mind occupied. The towel trick unfortunately enabled him to figure out how to unhook the wire fence leading to his pasture. He was always an escape artist, but at least that was something he hadn't figured out! A new method of hooking the wire up and things were Chinook-proof once more.

Any trick that involved holding or waving something he thought was great fun, and he would happily retrieve his feed bowl. But most of all he loved giving kisses and he especially loved pushing. Once he trotted up behind me and gave me such a push! I wound up running on the air for over 6 feet! Even when he was feeling so crummy on his last day, he was still pushing me here and there with an impish little glint in his eye.

He was silly, and I also did many silly things to him. For a few years I clipped extremely nerdy patterns onto his hindquarters. Top, pi. Middle, h-bar/Planck's Constant. Bottom, the companion cube and slice of cake from Portal.

I also dyed him black and used him as my Ringwraith horse for Halloween. I made the tack myself, and the long-suffering Chinny had to put up with me tracing patterns with giant pieces of paper on his face. (The treats had him convinced it was quite alright though.)

In addition to silly things, I also did incredibly stupid things with him. Things I would not recommend anyone do no matter what. Do as I say, not as I do! I took this photo myself while he was loose on the trail and I ran back and forth between him and the tripod. Speaking of loose on the trail...

Chinook gained my trust enough that I allowed him to roam a little. Every day while I prepared his food he would wander the barns and the grassy driveway area, exploring and looking for tasty tidbits. This was very exciting for him because he was confined to a paddock for half of the year due to being at risk for founder. He was so enthusiastic that he frequently cantered out of his stall in short frantic steps (what became known as "busting"), and sometimes even squealed and kicked up his heels a bit as soon as he was clear of the barn. He had a favorite grass spot on the Sammamish Slough, and I would take him out there and let him eat to his heart's content. He had a lot of fans on the trail who would stop and pet him on his days out.

Eating as much as possible was pretty much his primary goal in life. It took a while to devise an escape proof paddock. His hay cube treat dispenser was a great diversion, and it teamed up very well with his aforementioned love of pushing things.

He enjoyed napping in the sun and sticking his tongue out...

...and playing with his girlfriend, Lucy.

He also had great fun at a nearby arena snorting and trotting...

...and rolling...

...and generally being a goofball.

As he got older his sooty coat got darker and darker, until he was nearly black during the spring and summer (even darker than the top photo shows). Over the past year he started getting Pergolide and I had hoped that he would regain some of his pretty dappled coat, but I never expected this! This photo was taken just a month ago, and I'll always be thankful I have it.

RIP Chinny, you were a rare treasure.

In Progress

2010-08-26T16:34:00.000-07:00

Well, I've been such a bad girl about posting lately! Mostly it's because I've been doing detail work on the horses in the previous post and it's a pretty slow process so there wasn't much to photograph. But they are done now and their galleries should be up soon. In the meantime, this little customized Strawberry Jam is nearing completion. She was offered up unpainted with the buyer's choice of color, which was a neat way of finishing and selling a horse. She still needs to have her mapping done (and there will be a lot more little spots in her big shoulder spot) and other miscellaneous details finished up, but she's getting there!

In Progress

2010-07-01T17:20:00.000-07:00

Progress is being made slowly but surely on these two custom orders. They're both at fairly intensive work stages, with Stormy being near completion and Salinero almost halfway there.

Stormy got more guard hairs since his last post and is now looking more like the finished product. He's looking so Cruella DeVille with those bold streaks in his mane pre-blending!

Salinero has all of his dapples mapped in, and will get them set in with lots of hair texturing next.

Rein Or Shine

2010-06-25T16:32:00.000-07:00

He's finally done and listed to eBay! Woo-hoo! I had a bit of a scare this morning when I went to do his auction listing and found that my template was gone! So, I had to spend the day making a new one, but the deed is done. :-D His full gallery has been posted here, and you can get to his auction (which ends on Wednesday) here.

Next up for finishing is the custom order Stormwatch. Here he is with some guard hairs blocked in on his mane and tail. Hopefully he'll be finished in another 3 days or so!