Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Studio Update: January 21

The two projects are plugging along.



On the tack side of the table, the surcingle set now has most of a surcingle (complete with tiny girth), and the beginnings of the bridle's crownpiece. I hardly ever get to work with gold hardware, so this is a real treat!


And of course the props workshop is in full swing. The hand jump is so, SO much fun to fiddle with (as are the twenty or so little riders/people strewn around my desk).


I usually mix my paints on the back of my left hand (an old habit that I'll never kick at this point), which proved helpful while I was trying to find the right tones for The Hand. Just keep mixing until the paint blends in with your skin!

The "paint brush" poles were a total blast!


Today I fiddled with itty bitty flags, and starting brainstorming greenery options. This jump has made an appearance in more than one venue, and has a slightly different greenery design at each one, so I have some options. 

Here's where I left it for tonight, with some greenery just thrown in to try and get an idea of what it could look like:

Obnoxious flash to show the shading on the poles- I love how they turned out!
There's still lots to do: I think I'm going to "permanently" fix it down to a base like the one above, for ease of setting up at shows and to have a hole drilled for the horse's rod so I don't have to worry about a stand messing up the overall entry. It also needs a proper jump number, actual coordinated and full greenery, and possibly...

One aspect of this jump that I actually initially planned on leaving off for simplicity is an extra little set-up to the left of the left standard:


See the little dummy painting away at his easel? 

I have a little sitting doll that wouldn't be terribly hard to make into that dummy... but of course my real life size paint tubes are slightly too large to use for those adorable giant ones. Looks like I'd be sculpting or otherwise crafting them from scratch. 

I originally planned on leaving it off because when I first saw the pictures of this jump I didn't think the painting dummy and paint tubes looked like they were actually a part of it (they're also kind of distracting). You can kind of see in the very edge of this picture from WEG that the greenery around the base of the standard extends to include him, which is what I would probably do to make the whole thing look more put-together:


What do you think? Add in the dummy and the paint tubes (connected to the standard with leafiness), or leave them off and keep the jump more simple?


In other news, the rider rides! I'm still fussing with her colors (the pants' current tone is just ick, and I'm not crazy about the blue hair. Pink was more fitting, methinks). 

She's not ready to make her Breyerfest debut, but she is starring in my very MEPSA photo show debut! I've been intermittently braving the cold this week to create my very fancy professional photo studio:


...and get some pictures of my minis. I'm especially excited to see how my attempts at performance photos do. Photo show performance is definitely "easier" than live show performance in how you only need to worry about one side of your horse, tack, rider, etc; is the rider's other foot in the stirrup? Is the other side of the bit popped out of the mouth? If you can't see it, doesn't matter!

However, I did find it trickier than live showing in how you need to capture your whole entry in one shot, while keeping the horse as the main focus. I think this would be a much easier task if my background fence was longer than 12"... I was constantly struggling to fit all my props and the entire horse into the frame without showing the ends of the fence. 

So much learning to do!






2 comments:

  1. Wooooow that jump looks amazing! I'm so impressed at how fast you work too. So much progress! Makes me a little jealous ;)

    The rider and surcingle look great too, really nice work. Personally I think the extra guy on the jump is unnecessary and distracting- your jump is awesome and speaks for itself.

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  2. This is the first time I've ever seen the hand jump. Knock-out idea! I agree that the painting-guy is unneeded. Ask yourself if all parts of your piece are at the same level of detail (finish). Maybe he works in full scale, but I don't think he'd work in mini.

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