Lynda Sappington on Writing and Art

Marketing Your Art/Creating a "Brand"

2011-11-16T14:48:00.000-05:00

Most artists are unaware that it takes about 50% of your time to market your art properly. No agent, no gallery is going to market your art with passion and knowledge like yours (remember, they aren't working only for you!), so do it yourself and put that money you'd give an agent into your own advertising!

As an artist, your name is your "brand name" unless you prefer promoting your studio's name. Either way, it's a "brand" and that's a good way to think of it as you promote it.

Building a "brand name" is a multi-pronged task. You need a business card with an image of your work preferably on both sides (with some clear space left to write notes on if you need to - and all your contact info on one side). ALWAYS carry a good supply of your cards with you. I recently gave cards to a couple of people I was introduced to in church, when my friend included "She's a sculptor" in his introduction and then asked me to show his friend some pictures of my work. Carrying cards is the first, simplest and one of the most important steps in marketing. And try to always have at least some pictures with you, even if they're on your cell phone, as mine are (gotta love smart phones!).

You need brochures or fliers with pictures of your work - color, if possible (if I can afford it, I'm doing color next year!). Don't do cheap-looking brochures (those printed on regular computer paper, for instance) or people won't consider your art to be worth much. Use heavyweight, glossy or matte paper, but GOOD paper to make the best and most memorable impression.

You need a Website - not just a Facebook page. People looking for artists don't look on Facebook, they search the Web. Google won't find your art on Facebook, just your posts, but it will find your Website if you build the meta tags right!

All your promotional materials - cards, brochures, website, etc. - need to be similar in style. Perhaps you'll use your business logo on everything, or a picture of the same piece on the cover of each thing, so every piece of advertising, each hand-out, tells people this is YOUR work, without them even having to read your name. If your work is elegant and refined, your Website and other materials should be elegant and refined. If your work is more eclectic or funky or whatever, then your website and everything else should have the same feel. You want to create a "presence" that's recognizable.

Think of Nike and their "swoosh" - all you have to see is that "swoosh" and you know it's a Nike product, which tells you something about its quality, style and price without you even looking for that information because you know the brand. Find a way to make your work that recognizable. I can recognize a Kimberly Kelly Santini painting the instant I see it - her style is that unique (to my eye, anyway). Same with Elin Pendleton, Debbie Flood , Shary Akers and many other artists.

Create a unified presence with a real similarity in style or palette among your works. My bronzes are COLORFUL because I want them to look like real horses. I rarely use the French brown patina people think of as "bronze" color - it's good for outdoor art because it's durable, but there are many more interesting choices for indoor sculptures. I have my bronzes finished with translucent patinas so the metal glitters through just as a real horse's clean summer coat glitters metallically in the sun. I haven't seen anyone else use such patinas on horses the way I do, and that's fine with me! The few paintings I've done are bold-colored and look more like stained glass than realistic horses, and I like them that way. If I ever produce paintings I think are worth selling, they will be bold and probably a bit stylized since I can't draw as well as I'd like to. But they will fit in my "colorful" style. (That's my "Frolic" show above.)

Stand back and look at your work. There is a uniformity or a thread of continuity to it somehow - that's your style. Find ways to emphasize that in all your advertising and in your booth setup. For instance, I don't use black drapes for my table covers. Mine are a slate blue and my carpet is light beige - it's a light, bright, elegant but cheerful booth. Early in my career, I followed someone else's advice on how to make my booth elegant and used to use black drapes, but all the Friesians I do faded into the black when it was behind them, and I found that much black to be kind of overwhelming, so I went for contrast with the art, and lighter, pretty colors to keep me happy.

There are tons of books out on marketing your art. Go buy at least one of them - preferably two or three so you can compare methods between them - and then do what they say!! Do your own research and figure out what will work for you. Nobody but NOBODY can sell your art like you can! Believe it!

Finished and Mounted Maquette!

2011-10-19T17:47:00.001-04:00

He's done and he's GORGEOUS!! "Nanning 374: Spirit of the Friesian" comes mounted on a walnut base with a built-in turntable so you can turn him to any angle you wish without having to lift him up. He's 15 1/2" long x 13 1/2" high at the top of the neck x 3 1/2" wide, not counting the base. (I have those measurements here somewhere, but I've already shipped the finished ones out, so I'll have to remeasure if I can't find my note! Argh, I'm so blond sometimes!! LOL)

ANYway . . . he sells for $2250, 5% of which is a donation to the Fenway Foundation for Friesian Horses. I do take payments at no interest, and it takes about 4 months for each one to be cast, so you have at least that long to pay for it. I've taken payments as long as 3 years for some pieces, so let me know what will work for you.

Here he is in all his glory!

Maquette in metal!

2011-09-22T20:12:00.000-04:00

The maquette (small version) of the life-size is in metal now! It will be patinaed (black, of course!) on Monday and I'll have the first two in my hands sometime next week! I have all the bases and name plates - the bronzes just need to be mounted.

I'm really excited about how GORGEOUS they are! Wow! It's SOOoooo cool when a piece comes out looking even better than you'd hoped!

Here are some pics the foundry sent me to approve the metal work. Please don't drool on your keyboards! LOL

BTW, you can order one of these for yourself - $2250, and a donation will be made to the Fenway Farm Friesian Foundation from each sale. I take payments at no interest. Email me at Abraxan@yahoo.com if you're interested.

Can't wait to see them in person!!

Digitally Enlarging the Maquette to Life-Size

2011-08-25T13:40:00.000-04:00

My life-size piece is being cast in bronze now.  I can't wait to see it!!



My husband and I went to Oregon for 9 days for me to work on the enlargement to make sure it was exactly the way I wanted it.  My

customer came out in the middle of the week to see it and make sure it was how he wanted it too.  It passed both of our inspections by

the end of the week!



The digital enlarging method ROCKS!  First, the piece is scanned by a computer, then it's cut out by a 12' long 7-axis robotic arm (like

the kind used in the auto industry), then clay is applied and ART

happens!  



The scanner doesn't get into tight spots, so there was a curve that

attached the testicles to the gaskins, instead of the line of separation

that should've been there, but it was EASY to carve out the

Styrofoam and touch up the area with additional clay.  The horse's

buttocks and tail created such a shadow, the scanner missed

scanning the rectum completely, so I had to add that to the life-size, which again was no big deal.  



The enlarging place has a whole staff of people with degrees with

sculpting working on the piece along with me, my husband and even my customer (who said I was like Tom Sawyer, getting everyone to work on it, LOL!)  



When you go from maquette to life-size, any tiny errors in the

maquette will show up as large errors (the life-size in this case is 700 times bigger than the maquette).  Thankfully, no errors showed up

once it was enlarged except for one ear not being set quite as

straight as I wanted it to be (on the maquette, it looked fine, so it

really was a small error).  With help from the crew (since I didn't

know how to do it), I cut the Styrofoam ear off, put it at the angle I wanted, secured it with a pointed dowel rod, then squirted glue

under the gap.  It's a foaming kind of glue from a caulking gun, so it expands and fills gaps.  It's also easy to carve or rasp off if it's in the way.  The dowel was hammered farther into the foam so it would be easy to pull out, then removed. Voila!  Perfect ears!!



The scanner made the edges of the ears and nostrils too thick

because of its inability to "see" sharp edges like that.  No biggie.  I

carved them off with a bread knife, then built up the clay to what I wanted.  



Once the piece was fully assembled and all the finishing work done, it was cut into pieces to be sent to the foundry for casting.  I worked from 8-5 for a week (and my shoulder didn't hurt much at all thanks to a cortisone shot the previous week!)  It was hard work but I learned SO much!!!!  And the piece is GORGEOUS!  (Not just my humble opinion, either!  LOL)  The 12' long 7-axis robotic arm that's shown in the pictures can do a two day job in two hours!  That's pretty darned amazing!



You might notice in the following pictures that the edges of the

hooves weren't as "crisp" as the edges of real hooves are.  That

was due to the way the machine cut them out. My customer fixed the hoof edges for me - I asked him to add that clay and he got it in really good shape himself before I came along and did the fine tuning. He sure enjoyed himself, and he'll be able to point to certain parts on the bronze and be able to tell his friends that he did that! I think that's great. :) This was a FABULOUS experience for me! I hope I get more

life-size commissions so I can go through this process again!

Below you can see the robotic arm cutting out the head and neck - the horse's face is to the left and the back edge of his neck to the right. This is the same kind of Styrofoam used to insulate office buildings. It comes in 8" thick blocks.

The computer split the scan of the legs and tail in half lengthwise.  These parts are being cut out on this router table and will be glued together later.

Below is one of the master sculptors who works at the enlarging shop, working on the detailing of the mane. In the life-size, the details I put in the maquette's mane and tail weren't dynamic enough, so clay was added to make them a better size for the life-size. The sculptors there can do all the work for the original sculptor, either at their direction or without them even being there. Apparently I was unusual because I jumped right in and worked alongside them, which made sense to me - it's MY piece! My hands needed to be in every aspect of creating it!

Yeah, I'm happy with it! Awed by it, actually. It's amazing - and HUGE! Eight feet tall by 9 feet long without the cart it's mounted on at the moment.

I wish my parents were alive. It would be such a kick to be able to send this photo to them and say, "Look what I did!" :) I know they'd hang the picture on their fridge.

Taking Credit Cards

2011-06-29T09:53:00.004-04:00

Changes to the rules of how credit card transactions are processed necessitated a change in the system I was using last fall. The software I was using (PC Charge Pro from www.verifone.com) had been made obsolete by the new compliance rules. PC Charge Pro is a very good system (and what they're selling now is compliant with the new rules) and I liked it a lot, but before I spent the money on new software, I decided to see what was new in the market since I'd last looked. My husband suggested I look for merchant services apps for my smart phone (a Droid), which is what I went with. First I'll tell you about a popular system we looked at and didn't choose, then I'll tell you about the one I signed up with (and am very happy with).

Of the merchant services that work with smart phones, Square (www.squareup.com) is one of the more popular ones. Their fees are low and the card reader is cool, but there are problems with the way they do business that turned us off. Any company that has no "real" office or phone number where you can talk to live people about problems is not a company I want to deal with, for one thing, and that's the case with Square. Also, their reputation for customer service and complaint resolution is bad
(http://www.cardpaymentoptions.com/credit-card-processors/square-review/). The Ripoff Report website has an interesting complaint
(http://www.ripoffreport.com/internet-fraud/square-up/square-up-squareup-sqaure-\up-346db.htm) against Square too - it's always good to check these things when you're researching something that involves your money. (Notice in the Ripoff Report the problem with taking sales over $1000 - many of my sales are over $1000 since I sell bronze, so that was a real turn-off for me.)

A better solution, IMO, is www.MerchantWarehouse.com. They have free apps for Iphones, Androids, Blackberry and I believe Window phones too, and their rates are guaranteed to be the lowest (they will work with you on what the best rate is for your business). You can get a Bluetooth swipe machine to go with your
phone for $129, IIRC, which works great. However, if you're in a place like Equine Affaire where one company has the WiFi contract for the premises, you may have problems. At Equine Affaire in Ohio this April when I tried to use my Droid to do charges (it works great at home!) I couldn't get online with the
phone because of the WiFi service for the fairgrounds blocking my signal. I finally had to pay for the internet access and use my computer to use the free Merchant Gateway on MerchantWarehouse.com. So a really good aspect of the Merchant Warehouse system is that you're not locked into just using your phone - you have another option. BTW, when you input the customer's email address, a very professional-looking receipt is emailed to them, which is a really nice feature.

Periodically, Merchant Warehouse will go over your account and make sure you're still getting the best available rate, which is the first time that's been offered to me in the 16+ years I've been taking credit cards.

Merchant Warehouse has an A+ reputation with the BBB (Better Business Bureau). Whatever system you go with, be sure to check them out with the BBB and possibly Dunn & Bradstreet as well to make sure you're going with a reputable company and equipment. It's also a good idea to do searches for complaints against whatever company you're interested in, and whatever terminal you're interested in as well. I once was leased a terminal that the company KNEW would be obsolete in a year when AT&T changed their system!!!! There was no way for me to know that when I got it (because when I signed with them, I wasn't given the name and
model number of the swipe machine I'd be getting, so I couldn't research it - and honestly, it never occurred to me that it could become obsolete like that), but in researching our complaint against them, we discovered AT&T let those companies know that certain terminals wouldn't work anymore BEFORE this company leased this machine to me. What a pain.

Another good thing is that Merchant Warehouse gives its customers who refer people to them $100 if that person signs up. So if you do check them out and decide to go with them, please give them my name! :D I've already gotten paid for referring others to them, and they pay very quickly! You can also get a standard swipe machine type of system or software for your PC (although with the Merchant Gateway, I don't know why you'd need the software) with Merchant Warehouse if you prefer to work that way rather than with a smart phone.

I've been with 4 or 5 different merchant services companies since I've been in business. This Merchant Warehouse system is easy to use, easy to explain to others who might be working in your booth, inexpensive, secure and the people there are nice to do business with. I'm very happy with them, which is a very pleasant change from some of the ones I've had before!

Nanning and "Tolt" updates

2011-06-28T18:37:00.001-04:00

Nanning is at the enlarger's in Oregon. The maquette has been scanned and is already at the foundry where the mold and castings will be made for the maquette edition as well as the life-size. You can order a maquette now and it should be delivered hopefully by the end of October. The maquette will be mounted on a shaped walnut base (not a rectangular one but one that follows the movement of the horse) and numbered sequentially.

These pictures were taken just before the piece was shipped. For more information on this piece, please see its webpage, Nanning 374: Spirit of the Friesian.

Now that the piece has been scanned, the next step is to cut it out of Styrofoam at life-size. To do this, the enlarging company uses a seven axis robotic arm. The piece will be cut out in all three dimensions and will be 1/4" smaller all over than the finished size (17 hands at the withers). A coating of the same kind of clay I use will be put on it and then I'll go out there to do the surface detailing. I can't wait to see the enlargement! I guarantee I'll get all misty-eyed. This project is a dream come true for me! I'm so excited about it!

"Tolt" is finished and gorgeous and now installed in its owner's home. Here are the final pics of it.

Now I'm starting on a bust of Nanning that will be a bronze wall-hanging. I'm eager to get started on it, and I'm REALLY eager to go to Oregon soon to do the final work on the Nanning life-size! YIPPEE!!!!

Nanning nearing the end - WHEW!!

2011-05-13T14:34:00.001-04:00

I'm busy detailing the mane, tail and feathers on Nanning, and I had to repair an ear today after I bumped it and messed it up, oh well.

Don't look at the feathers on the left hind - I've redone them many, many times and am still not settled on how I want to do those vertical feathers. (He'd just stomped that food down in the photo, so they really are flying straight up.) Those feathers, cleaning him up and smoothing out any remaining lumps are pretty much all that's left to do!! YAY!

The piece is 15 1/2" long x 13 1/2" high at the top of the neck x 3 1/2" wide (just over 1/6 life-size).

Since this piece will be a life-size bronze and displayed outdoors, there are things to consider I don't normally have to think about. For instance, I need to design him with as few "cupped" places as possible so they won't trap rainwater and create green spots on him. Yes, the foundry will drill seep holes to drain any serious depressions, but still, if I can sculpt it so there are very few of them, that's best.

"Tolt" has patina now and will be shipped to me soon! I'll post pics of it as soon as it's mounted.

Updates on "Tolt" and "Nanning"

2011-05-02T12:00:00.000-04:00

"Tolt" is in metal! I got some "approval pics" from the foundry last week. There are a couple of things I want them to fix (the reins should not be looped up above the rider's hands, and the stirrups are too far back on the feet), but overall, it's beautiful!!

The maquette of Nanning is coming along well. I've added hair to the tail and have started putting clay on for the mane, but the clay for the mane isn't "installed" yet. It's just lying there on the surface in strands much too thick for the finished version because right now, I'm just working out the movement of the mane. Once I've figured out how I want it to be, I'll thin those strands and make sure they're well-attached to the sculpture, as well as having mane on both sides of the neck..

I enjoy working on the "hairy" parts of horse sculptures. That's where I can get more creative with it. I think he's going to be gorgeous!!

The beginning of the end

2011-04-21T17:20:00.000-04:00

The sculpture is coming along well, with the muscles defined and the body probably finished except for a bit of smoothing here and there. I still have a little detailing to do on the legs, but with Friesians, their skin and coats are thicker than that of the average horse (I may have said that here already - sorry if I'm repeating myself!) plus they have all those feathers, which actually start all the way up at the chestnuts (which are above the knees, just under the hocks in case you don't know). For those reasons, the detail isn't as crisp in a Friesian's legs as it would be in an Arabian's, for instance, so I add detail and rub it out a bit to soften it so it's appropriate for a Friesian.

The "beginning of the end" for a Friesian piece is where I start doing all that hair. You'll see in these photos that the feathers have been added and are pretty much finished on three legs. The weird stuff sticking up on the left hind leg shows me exploring various ways to depict feathers that are literally vertical at this moment in the stride. It would be so easy to do in paint, but in sculpture, there are mechanical issues to consider, such as how a mold will pull off the piece without destroying the detail. I've applied and ripped off the feathers from this foot probably five times now. It isn't a problem - it's an educational journey as I try to find the very best way to portray them that's also going to work for the mold.

Anyway - here are today's photos:

I've also done a good bit of work on the head, ears, shoulders and on smoothing out the bumps in the body. The shoulder on the right side still needs a bit of work, but I'm lucky enough to have a good side-lit picture of him with his weight on his front leg so I'm seeing all kinds of detail I want to build in to the piece. When you see me working on the mane and forelock, you'll know the head is finished. I'll probably do the tail last. It will be fluffed out and moving, not hanging in a lump the way it is right now. Trust me, I'll get it there! LOL.

Progress, progress, progress!

2011-02-27T17:32:00.000-05:00

I wish I'd taken a picture of Nanning's head when I finished work today - I spent most of today on it and there are a lot of changes. I'll just have to post the pic another day!

In the meantime . . . I've done a lot of work on his back legs and rump, and now he has four legs, which I'm sure will make him very happy! LOL Normally I work with the horse's feet on the ground and build up "grass" around his feet, so I don't have to pay attention to how "level" they are - it all works out fine when they're on the ground. But this one's in mid-air for several reasons. For one thing, the owner wants the piece to be of just the horse, no ground under him, and for a life-sized piece, that's a good design. It saves money (less bronze to cast, less weight to support, less expense in shipping, etc.) and looks more natural than it would with a "pad" of grass under it as a life-size horse. To balance, three feet have to touch the ground, so I've had to lower the right hind leg to have the toe touch the ground, which isn't the way it is in the photo, but it's only off by a few inches. I also had to straighten his front leg, which is bent in the photo, so he would have two feet completely flat on the ground, which will make him stronger.

Here's how I'm checking how level his feet are:

That's a piece of cardboard (from a calendar) that I've cut a slot in so it will fit around the post. The level is way off right now, but the right front hoof still has a wire sticking out of the bottom, so it won't be level front to back until I cut that off. I was mostly checking to see how the back feet were doing. They're not too far off, so I'm happy about that.

Here's how he looked yesterday before I did all that work on his head. I'll post the revised (and much prettier) head soon.

I'm still not happy with his hind legs, but he's in such an extreme posture (he was playing - horses can get into all kind of extreme positions when they play!), it's hard to get it exactly right early on. My way of working is to build the horse too big and with everything in place as well as possible to start with, then carve away what isn't the horse I'm working on, making adjustments, either tiny or large ones, as needed. He'll be gorgeous and his pose will make sense once I'm done with it! I think I have at least a month's more work to do before he's finished.

The jumper is painted and finished, ready to be mounted on the walnut plaque. Here's how it looks finished. It's name is "Rolltop."

It's on a paper towel that has black paint and gold Rub 'n' Buff on it from me finishing a bunch of medallions as well as this relief. I'm happy with how this turned out! I think it will make a beautiful trophy.

Update on Jumper Commmission and Frieisian Maquette

2011-02-21T21:51:00.000-05:00

The jumper commission ("Rolltop") is sculpted, the mold has been made and I've been making castings. The first casting is usually one that has to be thrown away, because that's the one where I find the places where the mold catches on the resin. When it "catches," that usually means the mold material has gotten stuck in the resin and torn off the mold. These are usually TINY places, so they don't usually damage the detail of the mold. The first casting also removes any clay that may have remained in the mold. So the first one is tossed. I've gotten a good casting now, so it just needs to be cleaned up (washed with Dawn dishwashing detergent to remove any oils from its surface), painted with a prime coat and then finished to look like bronze. Here's are pics of it in the mold and right after I unmolded it.

The Friesian maquette for a life-size bronze is coming along well. It's still rough, but the proportions are getting there, and some of the details are starting to show. Remember, this is a work in progress - it will be in "the uglies" for a while yet.

His body is curved, as if he's turning to the left. Hopefully it looks like that! I know his hooves that are flat to the ground aren't quite on the same plane yet - that will come with a bit more work. Ignore the position of the tail - it's just a "placeholder" for now.

I try to work all over the sculpture at the same time, without focusing too much on any one spot. So while the head looks almost finished, it isn't. While the left hind hip and leg look nearly finished, they aren't. Everything's being developed a little at a time. I can see the beautiful horse starting to emerge, although most people will probably not see beyond his current not-yet-beautiful state.

I'm finding the hard clay difficult to work with. My shoulders are sore all the time despite using a hair dryer on the sculpture to soften the clay before I try to blend it or add more or carve some off. Some of my ribbon tools are being damaged from trying to carve this clay. I sure hope the results are going to be worth the effort of using this kind of clay! It's good to learn how to use a different kind of sculpting medium, but I'll be happy to go back to the soft clay I normally use.

Jumper commission is finished!

2011-02-09T18:20:00.000-05:00

This was a fun break from the big pieces I've been working on. I really needed to take a step back from the Friesian maquette and try to see where it wasn't working, so I worked on this little jumper relief on the tiny bit of space beside "Tolt" on my crank up sculpting table. Nanning (the Friesian) is on the worktable across the room with his big reference photo right behind him. A couple of days of work on the jumper gave me fresh eyes for Nanning, so that was really good! And I got this pretty relief finished just today. The customer and I are both happy with it, YAY!

The first picture shows it at an early stage. I worked from the rear end of the horse to the front once I had all the basic shapes in place.

Below, you see me trying a different jump than the one in the photo (which was a simple jump with standards, although a pretty one). The original jump was awkward to make into a relief. One standard needed to go across the rider's boot and the other looked as if it were stabbing the horse in the throat. So I decided "no standards!" I tried a coop jump first, but wasn't that happy with it. That's below.

Then I did a rolltop jump and that's the right one for this piece. Now all I have to do ("all" - LOL!) is make the mold box, pour a mold, clean up the mold, cast resin in it, clean up the resin, paint and finish the resin, mount the resin and the brass plates to the walnut plaque (my basemaker will actually do that - I'm not that good with power tools!) and voila! It's a trophy!

I put the little bush at the end of the rolltop to show she's at a show - the rider also has a number card tied around her waist that shows on her back (which is why her back is a bit flatter than it might normally be).

I hope you like my little jumper relief! It will be available as a trophy on my Trophy Gallery page once I get it finished.

Sculpting with Gloves On and Other Adventures

2011-01-29T15:54:00.000-05:00

I'll bet you read that title and said, "Huh???" LOL. Read and learn!

I got a "rush job" yesterday, a trophy job that involves me sculpting a relief of a jumper. After I sculpt it, I'll make a mold and cast a resin of it, then finish the resin to look like bronze. The problem is, the trophy has to be finished and in their hands by the end of March. That isn't much time to get such work done, but fortunately for me and the customer, the big piece I'm working on requires a lot of "down time" while the clay is softening in the crock pot, so while the clay is becoming soft enough for me to use, I have time to work on other projects.

I'll back up and explain a bit here. I'm using a crock pot as a double boiler to soften the Classic Clay Hard that I'm using on maquette for the life-size bronze I'm working on (I'll call it "Nanning," the real horse's name, to keep things simple). It takes a while for the clay to soften even with the crock set on "high," so while it's warming, I have time to work on other things.

I don't want to leave the crock plugged in and turned on while I'm not in the studio, so I don't turn the corck on and leave the studio while it warms the clay. I've got the rider for "Tolt" nearly perfected and need to give that piece a couple of days of not being looked at so I can see it with fresh eyes before I do whatever touchups seem necessary. Then I'll photograph it and send the pics to my client for approval. I don't want to start working on the wings for the Pegasus I'm doing using "Feather" http://www.thesculptedhorse.com/feather.html as the horse's body because working on the wings takes both hands and my left shoulder is still sore and weak. I don't have enough working room to get "Horseplay" out to work on while Tolt and Nanning are out. With all my other current projects on "hold" for various reasons, I have time to work on this trophy relief while waiting for the clay to soften for Nanning.

My trophy customer sent me an excellent reference photo of a college-age rider jumping a nice hunter fence. The background was very busy, with white vinyl fence behind the mostly white jump and people and a building there as well. To make it easier to see what I was doing, I cut the horse and fence out after printing the photo on my computer printer at the size I wanted to sculpt it. To get it centered on the foamcore board I'm using as a working surface, I marked the outline of it on the foamcore. This way, when I sculpt the piece, it won't be too far to one side or the other, and the mold will be much better as a result, with no possibly weak sides from being too narrow.

Hopefully you can see the pencil outline on the foamcore above. The cut-out reference picture that's been made the size I want it to be for the trophy is to the right.

Once I have the board marked, I start putting clay on the board to fill out the silhouette of the horse. I will finish the horse first, then add the saddle, bridle, reins and rider (not necessarily in that order), and will build the jump and the bushes on either side of it last.

The trick to doing good reliefs is to remember that the parts closest to the viewer need to be the highest. That seems like something that should be simple to do, but it isn't as easy to do as you might think. Consider this horse's back legs. The left hind leg is nearest the viewer. That one has to be the highest. You'd think the right leg would be the next highest thing, but this is a gelding and his sheath is showing, so the sheath has to be the second highest level and look as if it actually belongs between the back legs. The right hind leg will be the least high. The "least high" part still has to have a decent amount of depth top to bottom (as you look at the clay, not top to bottom of the leg) so the resin will pour well and the resulting piece won't be too thin and warp. I have to be sure even the thinnest parts of the relief will pour well and be thick enough to be strong, but not so thick the piece loses its graceful appearance. That's a trick in itself.

In the picture below, I've done about 45 minutes of work on the piece (with a couple of breaks to check on the clay in the crock). You should be able to see the definition and different levels of the two back legs and the sheath. The back legs, rump, top of the tail and the back part of the belly are all in pretty good shape now, although I need to detail the legs, of course. I'm making this using the Classic Clay Soft I normally use. I like it because I can push the clay around to get the various shapes needed without a lot of work, so my hands don't tire so easily.

The photo shown on the left above is the full photo. It's about 1/3 bigger than the one I'm using for the sculpture. You can see how the white vinyl fence behind the jump is distracting to the eye. Having it cut out makes my job go faster - it's a nice shortcut.

This is a *great* reference photo. Having a straight-on, crisply focused profile shot where the camera is level with the center of the horse's body mass makes life a lot simpler for me, especially when I need to do a rush job.

While I worked on the jumper, the clay in the crock turned to mush - I should've checked it more often. As a result, I wound up "frosting" Nanning as if I were frosting a cake! That was interesting! I used a putty knife to apply the clay to bulk him up and tried to press the clay in place with my fingers. It didn't take me long to realize I needed to get smarter about working with that hot clay. First I took the lid off the crock so the clay would cool a bit. That helped, but not enough. Then I took the glass bowl the clay was in out of the crock and set it on the table beside me. Within a few minutes, it had cooled enough to be easier to work with, but it was still hot on my hands.

Above you can see the crockpot on the left, a plastic box behind it with a red lid - that's where the sliced clay is stored - the plastic cup I used to bring more water to the crock today (there's no water in the machine shed where my studio is). On the right of the sculpture are the tools I'm using on this one so far: the putty knife I'm using to put clay on (sometimes frosting the sculpture, LOL), a large wooden tool that I use to both press the clay tightly to the existing clay and to carve the piece a bit, and some smaller tools I haven't needed yet. The Friesian on the bulletin board to the left in the background is not Nanning - it's just one I liked when I first started sculpting. I never have sculpted that horse. This is my second sculpture of Nanning (he's the horse pulling the carriage in my bronze, "Friesian Elegance" http://www.thesculptedhorse.com/Elegance.html). The Friesian mounted on the blue Styrofoam directly behind the sculpture is Nanning 374. In this photo, you can see the clay was laid on in rough "swooshes" - this is when the clay was too soft and I was actually "frosting" the sculpture. It all worked out okay, don't worry!

I got the bright idea to use vinyl gloves to apply the hot clay. The glove you can see in the pic below is a "chemical barrier glove" I use when making molds and doing other stuff with chemicals that might irritate my skin. It's leaving interesting alligator-skin-like impressions on the clay, but that won't last. I'll be carving this clay down with sharp tools, either heated or after having used a hair dryer on the clay to soften it (hard clay really requires a different working method than usual!) and you'll never know Nanning looked this rough or had alligator skin at any point in his construction, LOL!

As you can see in the photo above, I put a piece of clay on and smooth it out, filling in depressions and gaps with it as much as possible. Eventually, the sculpture will be smooth and elegant and will look like the well-muscled horse it represents - it's still in the "uglies" stage for now.

This is the best way to measure with calipers - you don't put the curved tips toward each other but AWAY from each other so your eye won't be fooled by the curve in the legs of the caliper. Here I'm measuring the length of Nanning's body.

This reference photo isn't as easy to use as the jumper's because the horse isn't in straight profile to the camera. His body is actually bent, so his shoulder is fairly straight to the camera, but his rump is in 3/4 view. There are reasons for him being in this position, but the simplest explanation is that he was playing and horses do unexpected things while playing.

This is what the far side looks like when you've been adding clay from one side without turning the piece often. The clay is still very soft, so the slabs are going on well and are smoothed out on the horse's left side, but they look pretty weird on this side, don't they? Don't worry, I fixed it.

Note the toothpicks sticking out of his point of shoulder and point of buttocks above. They are there to show me how much he needs to be bulked up. The clay should be built up until the top of those toothpicks are even with the clay. I have a way to go, don't I? :)

After adding more clay and blending it in, pressing it so it will be hard and strong and there won't be any "surprises" (depressions where there shouldn't be depressions) in the future, and adjusting the armature a bit (I moved his tail and two of his legs - in pressing the clay on, they got out of place a bit), this is the result. His neck is too thick and his body not thick or long enough, but my hands and shoulders aren't as strong as they were prior to surgery, so I have to stop here for now. Thankfully, I'm getting stronger and gaining stamina every day - it's just taking longer than I want it to!

I'm happy with where Nanning is now. I could see the "portriat" emerging from the beginning, but I'll bet you can start to see it now. If you noticed the working board is up on something else, I have a 2x6 under it at the moment that has a turntable on the bottom, so it's easier for me to turn the piece to work on it. When I get "Tolt" off my big sculpting table and no longer need to use the crock pot to soften my clay, I'll move Nanning to the sculpting table.

That's it for now! Hope you learned something interesting from me today!

Finally making real progress!

2011-01-25T16:18:00.000-05:00

And it's about time! There was a setback when I started working and realized the armature wasn't as tight inside the plumbing T as it needed to be, so I had to remove the clay that I'd put on already and add more toothpicks until it was nice and tight. It felt tight when I finished making it, but in moving it around some to get it mounted on the pipes, I guess some toothpicks shifted and it loosened. There's also the fact that my arms and hands are just not strong like they were pre-surgery, so it was as strong as I thought I could make it before. Now it's fine. I stripped some clay away and shoved in more toothpicks and made sure it's secure, then covered the armature with clay and added a bunch more, so now it's starting to look like something! It still has a serious case of the uglies, but it's making big strides forward now. I can see the horse developing and the beauty of his form in all this mess. It WILL turn out all right, I promise!!

Some pictures to help you see what's going on:

Above is the armature I'm using - heavy wire wrapped with thinner wire running through a 1/2" plumbing T. Yes, one set of legs is done with copper wire, the other with aluminum - I ran out of aluminum wire the right size and copper's all I had to substitute with that was the same size.

This is how the armature looked yesterday before I realized it was too loose in the plumbing T. I had to cust off a lot of clay from the pipe area - the mid-part of the horse was totally clay-free when I got done cleaning clay off (it peels right off, being a hard clay, once you cut into it enough to give you a hand-hold.)

If you've followed my work before, you'll notice the horse is floating in mid-air rather than having the wires attached to the working surface, which is my normal way of working. This piece is the maquette for a life-size bronze of Nanning 374, a 17 hand Friesian stallion. There will be no bronze "grass" under the life-size to save weight and expense, so the maquette has to be made the same way. By floating it in mid-air on a pipe with a coupling in the middle, I can take the piece off the support pipe, attach a plumbing T to the bottom of the pipe, slide a chain suspended from the ceiling through that plumbing T and hang the piece upside down so I can do the detailing on the belly and so on without having to turn myself in to a pretzel to do so. Yay!

This is today's work after I strengthened the armature. This is Classic Clay Hard and I normally use Classic's soft clay. Yes, it looks exactly like the clay I normally use - it's the same brand, but two hardnesses harder (how do I say that more sensibly?? And I call myself a writer! Argh . . .). Classic offers two colors, this tan and a milk chocolate color. I have trouble seeing details and defects in the dark color, so I stick with this light color.

See the red crockpot at the left? I have a glass bowl inside the crock and water in the crock itself so the bowl acts like a double-boiler. I put the clay my hubby sliced for me (using a blow-torch-warmed machete and a lot of upper body strength, bless him!) into the bowl (the sliced clay is in the red-topped box behind the crockpot), then set the crockpot on "high" and keep the lid on tightly. Within a short time, the slices of clay are either nicely malleable, or so soft they're mush, depending on how thick they are! This is the only way I can work with clay this hard since I have carpal tunnel. Once all the clay needed is on the armature, I'll use sharp tools to carve it, and if I need it to be soft, I can aim a light at it for a little while or use a hair dryer on it for a few seconds to warm and soften the clay, or I can heat my tools, whichever seems the best at the time.

Car manufacturers use hard clay in their originals of new cars so they can carve the clay with a sharp tool and get a mirror-like finish on the clay. That's how hard "hard" clay can be!

I have to press it on and smooth the edges and beat it with the flat side of a big wooden tool or a wooden paddle to make sure it's applied as densely as possible. Once I've built the clay up to approximately the size of the horse's profile, I'll start bulking out the body more until it's as big as it needs to be. Then the fun begins - I start carving away what isn't a horse!

More later! As always, I welcome questions. If you're confused or just want more information about something, please let me know.

Armature Angst

2011-01-12T20:46:00.000-05:00

I had this great idea (well, I thought it was a good one anyway) to build the maquette for the life-size on an armature that wouldn't need plumbing to hold it up. Hopefully, it might even stand on its own three feet (one foot's in the air in the pose the owner's chosen). I built the armature out of twisted aluminum wire as I normally do, but put the wires through a galvanized connector rather than a plumbing T since I planned on this one not being mounted to a working board. I thought the way I was making it would make it possible for me to lay it in my lap and work on the belly without any pipes in the way, so I could get the detail better.

I built the armature and shoved toothpicks in the connector (shown above) to keep the wires from wiggling, as I normally do with a plumbing T in my usual armature. Then I wrapped it all in black duct tape, which is not something I normally do, but I thought it might be a good thing to do this time (this keeps my fingers from being poked by the toothpicks while laying on the clay). After that, the wire was coated with Bondo so the legs wouldn't be as likely to bend as they usually are. I started adding clay that had been warmed in a crock pot used as a double boiler (clay inside a glass bowl sitting in water in the crock). That was all fine. (First photo below shows the Bondo-covered armature in the seat of my chair for contrast - and yeah, those are my legs and feet at the bottom of the picture, LOL.)

After covering the armature with clay (but nowhere near as much clay as it would be when it's finished), I tried standing the horse on its feet to see how sturdy the legs were. They weren't! Argh. I was hoping the Bondo would be a big help but it just didn't make them as strong as I thought it would.

Luckily, this is a Friesian and as such, he has thicker legs than something like an Arabian or Quarter Horse, for instance. So I built another armature with heavier wire which would be difficult to use on a horse with finer legs. I haven't put Bondo on it yet, but now I'm thinking it just won't work the way I want it to, so I may not Bondo it at all.

Shown at right is the horse I'm sculpting and the pose he'll be in. I printed the picture out at the size the bronze will be and arranged the wires on the picture to get the size and shape adjusted. From there, I put a wire between the front legs and between the hind legs to spread them the width they should be, keeping the wires high enough that they stayed inside the body. You can see those cross wires in the picture above (where the armature is covered in Bondo).

With only about 1/3 of the clay on it that it will have in total, I realized the weakness in my shoulders, arms and hands due to my shoulder surgery and long idleness while recovering is going to be a serious problem. The piece is so big (1/6.5 life-size of a 17 hand horse) and already so heavy, working with it in my lap or on a table is just not feasible at my current strength level. I probably wouldn't injure myself, but I'd certainly wear myself out a lot faster trying to move around a piece that heavy. So, this armature method won't be the one I use - this time. Perhaps in the future when I'm stronger, I'll try it again.

I've decided to try an armature method another friend told me about. It incorporates plumbing the way I normally use it, but also has a way of unscrewing the horse from the support post, then screwing a plumbing T on the bottom so I can hang it upside down and work on the bottom side of the belly without twisting myself like a pretzel to see under the piece. In this method, the horse is suspended in air - his feet aren't attached to the working surface the way they are in my normal armatures. I now have all the plumbing parts I need and a chain to hang from the ceiling. I just have to get my husband to hang the chain for me before I actually need to use it (probably next week).

I'm not looking forward to redoing the second armature I built yesterday (the one with the heavier wire) but I think it's in my own best interests due to the atrophy of my muscles while recovering from surgery to use an armature method that's self-supporting. I'm less likely to injure myself and more likely to be able to work longer hours if I don't have to lift that clay every time I want to move it. My sculpture stand spins around so I can sit in my chair and turn it to get to all sides. It's also the kind that cranks up and down rather than having to be lifted up like my old stand, so I don't have to worry about lifting the piece until I want it to hang from that chain upside-down. I should be able to lay it on its side to get it attached to the chain - at least until I get the detail on the horse's sides nearly finished, but by that time, the underside of the belly should be finished.

I think this method has a lot of promise. Keeping my fingers crossed that it works well for me! I'll post pics of the new armature - or perhaps the piece in progress - once I get it going (Friday, most likely).

The Rest of the UPS story

2011-01-07T22:08:00.000-05:00

Got an e from my shipper tonight. He found out that there is no actual UPS "lost and found" site. It's an internal setup for USP investigators only. He still can't understand why they couldn't match the information about my claim with the piece sitting on their shelf. Oh well. All's well that ends well - and do get Google Alerts on your name! It's a real help!

Lost Bronze Found On Ebay Thanks to Google Alerts!!

2011-01-07T18:27:00.000-05:00

Last summer, I needed to return a bronze to my foundry because the bits on the horse weren't done correctly. I shipped it August 31. By September 1 it was lost. It left Centerville OH and was checked into West Carrollton OH (about 10 miles away), then into Sharonville OH(about 30 miles away) and then disappeared.

It was a high-value package traveling via UPS. Their practice for such packages, so I'm told, is that the manager of each stop has to walk high value packages from the truck into the building and lock it in a cage, then walk it from the cage to the next truck when it's ready to go on and tracking paperwork has to be signed each step of the way. This type of handling should be a great safeguard, yet my bronze was lost its first day in the transit.

UPS paid the insurance to the foundry, since I was shipping on their account (because I was returning it for repair). The foundry, at my request, cast me another piece in that edition with the money UPS gave them. I recently got that casting - it's still in the box waiting to be mounted.

Now the story gets exciting. Yesterday, the Google alert I have on my name (to track where I'm mentioned online - a way of tracking advertising, word of mouth, etc.) arrived in my inbox with a listing for Ebay: "Lynda Sappington Bronze Horse & Carriage Elegance" and the edition number of the piece and the copyright year. When I saw it, my hands literally started shaking! The store selling it was in the Central Time Zone (I'm in the Eastern Time Zone), so calling and talking to a live person wasn't going to happen for a while, and I needed to leave for an appointment soon.

I researched the company and found out it has an A+ Better Business Bureau rating and a 99.4% positive rating on Ebay. Those highly positive ratings made me decide to trust that they were a legitimate business and not somebody who'd stolen my bronze to make a killing on it. I called the company and left a message: "This is Lynda Sappington. You have my bronze, "Elegance," listed on Ebay. Please stop the auction. It was lost by UPS in shipping. I want it back." (Yeah, I was a bit tense when I called . . .)

I called my shipper in Centerville and told them about finding the piece on Ebay, then forwarded them the link to share with UPS. By afternoon, I'd heard from a Centerville police officer investigating it as a theft and gotten a call from UPS as well. And bless them, the company had stopped the auction. By the end of the day, after a LOT of phone calls, the police were out of the picture (since it wasn't stolen) and UPS was making arrangements for it to be shipped to my foundry for repair. I had to pay the insurance back to UPS before they would ship it to the foundry, but that was the right thing to do.

After some investigation into how it wound up at a lost freight merchant, UPS told me there was no label on my package, so it was sent to their lost and found, which is on the Ohio/Indiana border somewhere. They then put a listing for it online for three months. When it wasn't claimed, they sold it to a company that buys lost freight to resell it - the company who'd listed it on Ebay.

There are several weird things about this whole situation. I shipped it with a waybill (sp?) on it, the kind of thing that goes in one of those plastic envelopes that stick on the top of the box REALLY WELL. So where did the label go??? They didn't say a plastic envelope was stuck to the box - they said there was no label at all. My shippers know their business. I've used them for probably 15 years now. There's no way a box without a label would ever leave their shop. Since it was marked "high value" for the insurance, my shippers think someone may have stolen it, ripped off the label, then changed their minds or something and put it back in the system. That's the most logical explanation, anyway. A description of the piece was sent to UPS when the insurance claim was made, yet they were apparently unaware they had that very piece in their lost and found. Neither my shippers or I have ever heard of that lost and found website before, so we didn't know to look for it there. We're going to find out more about that site for future reference.

Anyway - long story short - put a Google Alert on your name, your studio name and any variation of those names that might appear anywhere (on message boards, in the newspaper, in magazine ads, etc.). Google Alerts are free - you just have to create a Gmail account to be able to get a Google Alert for as many names as you want. Sculptors, be sure to sign your work in an obvious place in the clay, not in some obscure spot or just on a brass plate on the base. Painters, it would probably be a good idea to make a permanent signature, not one in pencil or hidden on the back of the piece. That may be the only identifying mark on your art if it gets lost in shipping, and it should be easy to find.

I'm so glad "Elegance" is back where it belongs (somewhere between me and the foundry at the moment, but in my control!) and appears to be undamaged. If it's damaged, UPS and I are gonna have words . . . . I wish that bronze could talk and tell me what happened! At least it's not lost anymore!

My One-Handed Sculpting Projects

2010-12-29T12:16:00.000-05:00

Before I knew I was going to need rotator cuff surgery in September, I agreed to be the "featured artist" in a gallery in Kettering, Ohio. I like to do demos and meet the public, so when it was time for the show, I came up with a "one-handed sculpting" project I could do to entertain the public, keep me from going bonkers from inactivity, and make some nice Christmas presents all at the same time.

I started with 3" medallions of wood I got at Michael's. If you decide to use these, make sure they're not warped! I had to search through several packages before I found one where all the medallions were flat. These wooden medallions (my term - I don't remember what they're called on the packaging) don't have a loop at the top - they're just plain wood disks. I wanted to keep my medallions the same size and keep my Super Sculpey thin but have the actual piece thick enough to make good resin castings. The wood medallions did the trick.

I conditioned my Super Sculpey at home with my polymer clay only pasta machine (I have one for plastilene too - none for actual pasta, LOL), then took the strips of clay in a sealed plastic bag to the gallery along with my tools. I looked like Red Riding Hood with my basket over my arm with my clay, tools and reference photos, LOL!

I sat at a table in the entrance to the gallery to work. My left hand, which couldn't do any real work due to recovering from shoulder surgery, just lay on the table to hold the medallion still, while I sculpted only with my right hand. I used a cone-shaped "clay shaper" tool with a black rubber tip to do most of the work on the raised relief of the black horse. You use this tool on its side to roll the pieces of clay together and leave no "seams" between pieces - that's the best way to work polymer clays. I contoured the horse with this same technique. Using ribbon tools doesn't work as well with Super Sculpey as it does with plastilene - cutting the clay away doesn't leave as smooth a surface, so if you can roll the clay with one of these rubber-tipped tools, you'll get a much cleaner, smoother surface.

The logo medallion (for my daughter's farm Dancing Horse Farm) was created by both adding and subtracting clay with a very narrow ribbon tool. I didn't do this original design and it is totally different from my style, so I found it more difficult to do than the black horse.

I baked the medallions (that's what you do with Sculpey products - polymer clays are baked in a kitchen oven to make them hard), then made a silicon rubber mold for both of them (one mold for two medallions). Unfortunately, it's been REALLY COLD here in Ohio, and all three of the molds I made wound up with bubbles because I couldn't get my studio above the 70 degrees required by both the mold rubber and the resin casting material. My wall heaters don't have thermostats like home furnaces do. The resin castings also had bubbles on their backs for the same reason.

I cleaned up the castings on the belt sander to remove rough edges, used small metal tools to clean up the convex bubbles on the face of the castings, washed the castings with Dawn dishwashing detergent to degrease them, then sprayed them with white acrylic paint made for plastic to be a "primer" coat (so other paints would stick well). I painted the black horse with black (Licorice) Folk Art paint and the gold on both pieces is Antique Gold Rub 'n' Buff. The Rub 'n' Buff is thick enough that the bubbles in the back of the castings aren't nearly as obvious as they were in the raw resins. I put ribbons on in the farm colors for the DHF medallion, red for the black horse medallion, and they were done!

I gave the black horse medallion (which is a portrait of Nanning 374, who I will be doing as a life-size bronze) to my client who hired me to do that job, to thank him for asking me to sculpt his horse again. I painted Nanning's name on the back of that medallion. The DHF medallions were gifts to the barn staff at Dancing Horse Farm, to thank them for taking good care of my horses while I'm recovering from this surgery and can't take care of them myself.

Anyway - I'm happy with my projects. Here they are (Nanning's is hung from a red ribbon with a bow on it in a similar style to the DHF one).

Best-laid Plans . . .

2010-12-09T22:47:00.000-05:00

Well, I THOUGHT "Tolt" was ready to go, but my customer wants me to work on her face a bit more. But before I could do that, my rotator cuff tore completely off the bone - yes, it was painful! I had surgery on September 15 and am just now beginning to be able to do a little bit of work again between naps - seriously. My left arm won't be back to normal until maybe March, maybe later, so I'm told, but I'm also told I'm doing really well with my therapy. I just can't type long, can't carry much in my left hand, can't do any serious work with it, can't ride on my own (although I've started back riding, taking lunge-line lessons at a walk while my daughter, who's my trainer, works on my foot and leg position to avoid stressing my shoulder, bless her. She has a four step mounting block made to help riders get on 18 hand horses, so getting on my 15.2 guy is EASY from that block!)

Anyway - Tolt is on hold while my customer gets new pictures to me as well as a list of what she wants touched up, but I'm working on other things in the meantime. I was the featured artist at the Town & Country Fine Art Gallery in Kettering, Ohio, for the month of November. I did a demo there every Saturday and on "Black Friday" of what I call "one handed sculpting" - making small medallions that will be Christmas ornaments or trophy medals. Sorry, I can't show them to you - some of them will be Christmas presents from me to certain people! After Christmas, I'll be happy to share them and then they'll be for sale, too.

Today I made a mold for the medallions and tomorrow I hope to start casting them in resin. I'm excited! Making the mold was a lot harder on my shoulder than I thought it would be, but DUH! I can't scrape leftovers out of a pot into a storage container without hurting my shoulder. Making a mold is very much a similar motion! I didn't HURT myself, but I'm sore. Luckily, resin is easier to mix and pour than mold material!

My BIG news is that I have a LIFE-SIZE COMMISSION of a Friesian stallion at play! I'll be making the maquette (the small version, like my normal sculptures) and the foundry will have it digitally enlarged since it may be a year before I'm strong enough to do that kind of work. They will have clay applied all over it and will get it close to what I'd sculpted, and then my customer and I will visit there (in Oregon) and he'll make sure I have the details right in the life-size (he will have already done this for the Maquette) and I'll do the finishing touches on the life-size, then the molds will be made, the piece cut up and it will be hauled to the foundry, where it will be cast. It will take 3-4 months for me to sculpt the original, then a mold will be made on the original Maquette and a wax sent to the place where it will be enlarged. While the enlargement is being done, the Maquette will be cast as a bronze edition, which will take 3-4 months. The life-size will be finished 3-4 months after the Maquette is finished. I'll post progress photos as I work on it.

Did I mention that my second novel, "Star Sons Book 2: The Gathering Alliance" is now on Amazon and other outlets? Just do a search on my name and you'll find it. You can also order it from your local bookstore by giving them the ISBN number. I hope y'all will enjoy it! It was great fun to write!

As I said, I've had shoulder surgery recently and can't sculpt normally with both hands. Because of that, my dear non-artist hubby has volunteered to build the armature and lay on the clay for me. I should be able to sculpt the horse one-handed for the most part once those things are done. My customer is a kind and patient man who understands I'm recovering from serious surgery, so the timetable isn't as strict as it might be - a lot depends on how long I can work each day. Right now, I can work a couple of hours and then I need to nap a couple of hours - seriously. But I'm getting stronger every day! And I'm REALLY excited at this opportunity! I hope you'll enjoy watching this sculpture being created!

All but the Signature . . . I hope!

2010-08-30T20:26:00.001-04:00

I think "Tolt" is nearly finished. I just have to clean up the clay, make the pads under the horse's feet more uniform in shape and sign the title, my name and copyright along the sides of those pads. Then I have to clean all that up too. (Signing sculptures is a pain - nowhere near as easy to do as signing a painting!)

I've spent literally two to three weeks pondering and picking at and trying to sculpt the rider's hands until today when I finally got everything to work the way I wanted. It's very hard to sculpt the part of the fingers and palm that are near the horse, so I finally turned the forearms and hands out away from the horse so I could see the inside shapes better. There are suggestions of fingernails there and even my customer's gorgeous sapphire ring is shown as a general shape on her left hand. Her arms and hands were hard for me to do - getting the muscling and the shapes of the parts right is quite a challenge, but I think everything's good now.

I like the way the wrinkles turned out in her shirt and breeches. I textured her clothing to make it look different from her skin when it's bronze. I think it will be a nice look to have that slight texture on the cloth.

The clay stirrups you see on the working surface won't be the ones used. I made Super Sculpey ones so they'll be sturdier to ship (Super Sculpey is a polymer clay you can bake in the oven so it's hard, unlike plastilene which is always soft.) The stirrups, stirrup leathers and reins will all be hand-made at the foundry for each piece, although they MAY be able to cast the stirrups. I'm not sure if they're thick enough to cast well unless they use jewelry-type casting (centrifugal casting).

Without further ado, here are the pictures!

The shape behind the hoof is supposed to be a splash of dirt. I may change it a bit before declaring a victory on this piece.


When I saw this pic, I realized I need to add a browband. I'll do that tomorrow.

I'll be glad to get this one finished! I've been working on it a long time, but I'm happy with how it's turned out.

Beginning of the end - I hope!

2010-07-27T12:49:00.000-04:00

I'm getting close to finishing this piece, HUZZAH! I just need to add a bridle on the horse and do the wrists and hands of the rider, thicken the tail a bit and make the rider's eyes match better - they're a tiny bit off. Then I have to sign it and I'm finished!!

The horse's tail is nice and thick-looking from the back, but from the side, it isn't quite bushy enough. Like most Icelandics, this mare has a really thick mane and tail. I think the mane looks pretty good, but the tail needs to be thicker and needs more movement as seen from each side. I'll work on that today.

The "splash" you see behind that right hind foot is necessary for support and strength for the piece. In real life, that foot would be flying through the air like both left feet, but the horse needs more than one point of contact with the base in order to be strong enough to stand without bending the supporting leg. The "splash" of dirt may be modified a bit, I don't know yet. It's easy to sculpt them in relief, but doing them 3-D, it's a lot harder to get the look I want.

The stirrups are on the working surface (the board) in front of the piece in the photo above. They won't be attached until the piece is in bronze because they are too delicate to cast properly. They will be hand made for each sculpture, just as the bit rings, stirrup leathers and reins will be. I think I'm going to remake the stirrups out of Super Sculpey so they'll ship more safely.

See how nice and thick her tail looks from behind? I need to get that feeling from each side too. Her ears barely show from all the flying forelock in real life. I'm still trying to decide if I want to put more forelock on her to hide more of her ears or not. What do you think? I'm open to suggestions!

The rider's neck looks a bit rough because I haven't cleaned this sculpture up with chemicals yet. When I finish, I'll use a small filbert paint brush and some orange cleaning liquid straight from the bottle (I'll squirt it into a small bowl I can dip the brush in) and paint the whole thing with the cleaning liquid. That chemical will melt the surface of the clay just a tiny bit, smoothing out some places and getting rid of the crumbs as well. I may still need to do some clean-up with tools after I use the chemical, but the chemical will show me where I need to do that.

She looks like my customer, which pleases me a lot since I haven't done a sculpture of someone with an open smile before. Every picture I have of her, she's got a happy smile on her face, so that's what I used.

I have stirrup leathers on the inside of the rider's legs, cut off at the point where they would not be against hte leg in real life as they stretch to support the stirrups. The foundry will add flattened copper wire the width of the leathers I've started when they put the stirrups on.

If you have questions or comments, feel free to write me! Thanks for your interest.

Ahhh, that's better . . . "Tolt" and "Star Sons 2" news!!

2010-07-06T20:40:00.000-04:00

I finally saw what was bothering me about the rider's face. I knew something was a bit off, but I couldn't quite figure out how to fix it. Then I saw it. The eyes were set too high (by about 1/16th of an inch), and the place where the nose dips in toward the eyes was set in the wrong place (by an even smaller margin). So today I put dabs of clay in the places where the eyes were, smoothed that out and started over - not my favorite thing to do, especially on something as delicate and difficult to create as the eyes on this rider. But I did it, and revised the shape of her cheekbones somewhat, her temples and browbone, the nose, and even brought the brim of the helmet lower and trimmed some off the top of the helmet. I like it a lot better now. I think I need to broaden the lower cheeks and jaw just a tiny bit on each side, and then it just might look like my customer! YAY! Here are some pictures to show what I accomplished today.

I know her helmet still needs straps, but I'm not going to add them until I'm satisfied with her face.

As you may be able to see from the pictures above, and will certainly see in the picture below, I also started working on the mane, getting the masses of the flying mane and forelock somewhat defined on one side, as well as filling in holes and undercuts so it will cast well.

I think this will be a beautiful piece! I'm excited to see it coming together so well!

In other news, I've finished the revisions on my second "Star Sons" novel (titled "The Gathering Alliance") and am printing it out right now for a final read-through to make sure I haven't missed anything in proofreading. The cover art is finished and there are only a few details to complete before it will be ready for publication. HUZZAH!!! I'll post ordering info here and on Facebook and my Yahoo groups when it's ready to go. It will be available from me as well as from Amazon.com, BN.com and various other outlets. You will also be able to order it in your local bookstore with its ISBN number. I'm excited to have this finished! YAAAY!!

Evolution of a Face

2010-07-05T15:50:00.000-04:00

As I posted on my fan page on Facebook, I had to cut the face off of my rider and redo it. I thought you might enjoy seeing how a face evolves - at least, the way I do it.

My rider started out with just a piece of clay shaped vaguely like a head, with eyes, nose and mouth just roughed in to give me a place to start. I left her like that while I worked on her body and clothes, the horse and saddle. Now I'm back to working on the rider's face.

The face I first put on any figurative sculpture will look odd because I make the bone structure very prominent, particularly the cheekbones. It's also my habit to start with more clay than I need and carve down to where the portrait is. Above you can see I've started refining the features on the left side of the rider's face.

Here you can see the roughed in features and the basic shape of the head from the side. It isn't too big yet, but it's heading that way.

At this point (a week later than the previous pics), I've added and subtracted and pushed and pulled the clay trying to get the features placed where I want them. Some of it's coming together, but the cheekbones are, as usual for me early in a figurative piece, too prominent and too high. As you can see, the head is now too big, although I haven't enlarged the helmet enough yet for it to look like a real helmet fitted properly to her head. It's mostly a brim on the skull I'd made before at this point. The nose is too long too. This is a petite lady with nice cheekbones, but hers aren't this extreme. This is just the way I do it as I try to find my way to the portrait.

This is a couple of days later, more refined and looking more human, but the head is still too big. I just haven't noticed it's too big because I'm focusing on it too much. The lumpy clay in front of the rider is the beginning of the flying mane on the horse.

Side view from the same day. I like the ear but it's a little big for her. I'm not happy with her nose, it just isn't right yet. The head is still too big, and this is the day I realized that fact. To say I was unhappy is a bit of an understatement. *sigh*

After I realized the head was too big, I spent some of that time away from it trying to figure out what to do about it. I finally realized I was going to have to cut off the entire face. Argh.

Yes, it WAS painful to cut off her face! And then I had to cut off both sides of her head (two nice ears! WAAH!) and trim the back of it too! But it certainly improved the piece. After several hours of work, I was pretty well pleased with how she looks. I used minerettes (tiny tools - see picture below) and a small, firm cone-shaped rubber clay shaper to do most of the work. The tools near the top of the picture (below) are normal-sized tools. There's a pop can to the left of the minerettes to give you an idea of their size. The metal one has a squared off loop at one end and a pear-shaped loop at the other. The two wooden ones are about half-again the thickness of round toothpicks. The top wooden one has a curved blade shape carved in each end. One of them has gotten rough from use (plastilene can grind down even metal tools over time). The bottom tool has wire tips that end in flattened spoon shapes. The wire isn't much bigger than straight pin wire. I got these in Loveland, Colorado - I haven't seen them in catalogs, but if you search for them, you might find them. I don't often need them, but sometimes they are exactly the right thing to use.

And so I made a new face on my rider. Here's where she is today:

She still needs some work, but she looks a lot more like my customer now! You may notice she has an open-mouthed smile now. In every photo I have of my customer, she has an open-lipped smile which is very pretty but darned hard to sculpt. I tried giving her a closed-mouth smile so it would sculpt more easily but gave up on it. The horse is flying and she should look like she's having fun, so an open smile it is!

I don't have the right lighting in the studio to show the detail of her eyes, but they look better than they do in these photos. I'm going to re-measure to make sure I have them at the right height. From the side they look fine but from the front, they look too high-set. Argh . . .

The mare has ears, a forelock and complete mane now, and I've started detailing it. That's a lot more fun than fighting with tiny details in the face, but boy, fighting with those details is worth it.

Hope you've enjoyed watching "the evolution of a face"! I'll post new pics as she continues to evolve.

Boots, breeches and stirrups

2010-06-09T23:59:00.000-04:00

Today I made stirrups for my rider. That's a lot harder than you'd think. It took me a while to find the right size wire to be the top of the stirrup (to look the right size while covered with clay) and to make the tread of the stirrup strong and straight. I used scraps from the perforated aluminum sheet I'm using as the armature for Feather's wings to make the tread strong and straight and aluminum armature wire for the top. The bottom loop where the stirrup leather goes through was added by just putting a roll of clay there and carving it down. You may be able to see that on the pic of the rider with the stirrup in place.

That pic is a bit crooked, sorry. The leather goes up inside the rider's leg and is adhered to her leg and the horse, in the appropriate places. I'll cut the stirrup off the piece just above where the leather goes through the stirrup when I get ready to send it to the foundry. It would just drop off if the piece was dropped or shaken as it will be in shipping. They can weld it in place in bronze.

The boots and breeches are done, and I think you can see the bottom of her shirt. She was wearing a blouse that wasn't tucked in, and for now, I'm sculpting what she was wearing. I'm going to send her pics soon so she can decide if she wants her shirt tucked in, sleeves on the shirt (her shirt was sleeveless), etc.

This shot's a bit closer, but also crooked - hard to get great shots with a phone. I'll straighten these pics and re-upload them when I have more time. I'm kinda rushing to get this online right now.

BTW, this hind foot will soon be cut free of the wire holding it to the ground. This foot in reality wouldn't have any dirt splashing up to support it, so I have to make it free. I talked to my foundry about it to make sure having only two legs on one side would be strong enough to support a piece this big without it bending. Bronze is soft, after all - it's mostly made out of copper. Anyway, they said it should be fine, and they'll put bronze rods inside the legs touching the ground to strengthen them if they think that support will be needed.

When I cut this foot free, I will cut the wire up inside the hoof (thus ruining that nice hoof, so I'll have to sculpt it again) and then I'll put a wall, sole and frog in the bottom of the foot.

This is how the whole piece looks right now. I haven't done any work above the waist - it's all just "placeholders" for now, measured pretty well, but not sculpted anywhere near what those parts will be like when it's finished. I need to raise the shoulders a bit - they're too low.

Anyway, that's progress to date! Comments and questions are welcome.

Progress!

2010-06-03T16:35:00.001-04:00

It finally looks like I'm getting somewhere on this piece! A lot of the previous work has been painstaking and tedious, trying to get the horse built properly, making sure there are no dips or bumps where there shouldn't be, and making the horse a functional being with all the joints in the proper places, etc. Now I've added a saddle and the rider. The rider will be removed for shipping - she's only attached by a couple of wires sticking out below her seat bones into the horse. She'll be welded or soldered in place by the foundry when this piece is cast in bronze.

The saddle is supposed to be an Icelandic saddle. In addition to looking at the photos I took of my client's two saddles, I researched them online and found quite a wide variation in how they look. I'm going with the English show saddle look rather than the quilted seat I found on several Icelandic saddles simply because it's less distracting visually to have a smooth seat rather than a quilted one. I will probably cut the flaps a little shorter - they look too long in comparison with the rider's leg.

I've had to redo the cantle of the saddle about five times now, trying to get it placed right and to make it fit the horse and rider both as well as possible. I think I'm about there with the cantle. Now I'm working on the length of the rider's legs and the shape of her boots. I realized I had cut the wire too short on one leg and had to add some wire to have a good support for her foot. That's why I'm posting these pics today, to show you how I did that repair.

I've cut off the clay at the bottom of her leg, exposing the wire. I then attached a lighter wire, wrapping it securely around the existing wire of the leg, using pliers to help me get it as tight as possible. After wrapping it several times around the larger wire to make it as secure as possible, I started twisting the wire to both strengthen the wire and to give the clay something to bite into so it won't slide around. (Aluminum wire is slippery to clay if it isn't either twisted itself or isn't wrapped around another wire.) I doubled the twisted wire (shown above) back on itself and twisted it some more to make it stronger (not shown), then added clay over that to make the new foot.

Here's a closeup of the wire before I folded it back on itself and twisted it again.

Here's the other side of the piece. This leg is actually a bit too short too, but there's plenty of wire there. I'll pull the clay off the foot, straighten the wire for a short distance to lengthen the leg, then bend the end up to support the foot and add clay to make the boot again.

I'm having to fight my dressage training in positioning the rider. She doesn't ride dressage nor do other Icelandic riders (with a few exceptions I know of), so putting her in a dressage position would be wrong. I haven't had this much trouble positioning a rider in a long time - I guess that shows my dressage training is becoming ingrained! But I need to be careful about that with my art. Not all riders ride dressage.

That gorgeous picture behind the sculpture is the International Andalusian & Luisitano Horse Association (IALHA) poster from a couple of years ago featuring the gorgeous stallion, Santiago. His mane really does reach down past his knees and he seems to have a lovely disposition. I was fortunate enough to see him at the Midwest Fiesta in 2008 and was given one of these posters then (I had my art booth there marketing my art while I was working on the original of "Feather," which is an Andy stallion now available in bronze). I had no idea at the time that within a few months of that show, I'd have my very own half-Andalusian (El Paso Aricos, my dressage horse). Surprise surprise!

This is a picture of my handsome Ricos with my daughter, trainer Jennifer Truett of Dancing Horse Farm, Lebanon OH (www.dhf-oh.com) riding him. Since I mentioned him in reference to that IALHA poster, I thought I'd include his picture here. I like this picture so much, I use it as my desktop.

Back to the sculpture: Don't worry about the rider's face - right now her facial features are more "markers" than anything else. She doesn't look like herself at all yet! Her face is even a bit mashed because I grabbed her head and changed the angle of her neck and head from the side (they were too far back). Her arms and hands haven't been worked on at all yet. I'll get to them, don't worry!

A lot of sculpting (the way I do it, anyway!) seems to be "take two steps forward, three steps back" at times. As I work around the piece, I may find that something that looked and measured right before is now too long or too short in relation to some other part and the reference material. Just by bending one leg of the rider down so it laid properly along the horse's side changed the way it looked lengthwise, so I had to make some adjustments. That kind of thing happens frequently. Just one of the many challenges of 3-D work!

The little lump of clay on the horse's neck is a sign of my eagerness to get to the mane and tail. They're some of the last things I do on a sculpture, but they're also FUN so I'm eager to get to them. But it's too soon, so I was just messing around and left it there.

I'm pleased with the progress so far. Yay!

Details, details, details . . .

2010-05-22T23:29:00.001-04:00

Now I'm at the point of building the saddle on the horse and making sure it fits the rider. The rider is nowhere near perfect yet, but she's about as thick as she's going to be front to back (this is a petite middle-aged rider). I may need to adjust the length of her legs once I get back to work on her, but for now, I'm just getting the saddle assembled and placed where it should be. I know I need to get her body more proportionate and to get her sitting on her seat bones. I'll get there eventually.

At first, I had the saddle a bit long for this rider - If you look carefully, you should be able to see I've just cut the clay at the back of the cantle so it fits the rider better. I've just turned a bit of clay over to fill in some of the seat behind her, actually, and then put a cut behind the cantle as a marker for when I get back to work on it.

You can also see I've put feathers on three of the legs now, and those legs have also developed muscles, bones and tendons. I've put a bit of clay on the neck as well, starting to plan out the movement of the mane. The strips of clay ahead of where the saddle's knee rolls should be in the picture below are just extra pieces I haven't trimmed off yet. I've only developed the saddle on the left side and a bit on top. The right side will be done tomorrow.

Here are some detail shots of the horse and rider.

Don't worry, her ankles and feet will be straight with no wire sticking out of them when I get finished. For now, this is very much a work in progress. The knee rolls are just being developed and will be shaped better before I declare a victory over them.

I'm pretty pleased with how it's coming along. Hope you enjoy seeing its progress!

Resetting the leg and repairing the shoulder

2010-05-12T11:19:00.001-04:00

Continuing my saga of "Tolt's" leg repositioning. I removed the wax from the shoulder area (a lot harder to do than it sounds - I'd put it in there REALLY well!) and broke the wax off the wire for the shoulder part of the leg.(The wax you can see here is on part of the armature. It will anchor the wax I'm going to use for the shoulder.)

Then I cleaned all the clay off that wax that I could and dropped it into the pan to be softened so I could reapply it.

WARNING!!! Working with melted wax is DANGEROUS! You can be severely burned if you're not careful! Don't say I didn't warn you!

I didn't need the wax to be melted, just softened, so I watched it carefully as it "cooked." I had the electric griddle set to about 200 degrees so it would soften quickly (I'm not the most patient person in the world). I turned it over every so often so it would soften on both sides. When it was as soft as I wanted it, I scooped up a portion and put it in the shoulder cavity, which I had dug deeper so the leg would be set in a bit more than it had been before. Then I pressed the wire in place, made sure it was straight to the horse's body and packed more softened wax on top of the wire. I pressed wax around the wire until the wax cooled too much to maneuver anymore to make sure the wire was strongly set.

The little knob of clay at the bottom of that leg isn't the basis of the hoof - it's actually part of the ground. Its function is to give the wire a strong anchor to the working surface. It will be surrounded and covered by clay as I build up the ground and the hoof for that leg (as shown below).

I added clay over the wax, rebuilt the shoulder and reattached the clay from the leg to the horse's body. I haven't done any muscle detail yet, and it probably needs a little more clay to be added, but here's the finished repair.

If you noticed the thin band of clay around each coronary band, those are there so I can put hair on the coronary band. They will be textured and the clay blended in to the pastern so you'd never know I had a "worm" of clay around each hoof once upon a time. :)

The repair went well and didn't take too long because I thought it all out before I started (always a good plan!) Moving the leg forward that small amount (about 1/8-1/4 inch) made a huge difference. I'm happy with it now. Onward!

Just when you think you're making great progress . . .

2010-05-11T14:16:00.000-04:00

*sigh* I was going like gangbusters on "Tolt" (not "Tolte" as I've been spelling it - my customer corrected me. :)) and thought I was getting close to where I can start making it look more finished when something that had been niggling at the back of my mind reached up and slapped me in the face. Well, figuratively speaking, anyway. I didn't like the way the right front leg was set for some reason, and today I figured out why. It's too far back. *sigh* I'll have to rip it out and re-insert it and rebuild all the muscles again. Argh . . .

Other progress on it: The head is nearly finished except for the ears and the bones behind and the eye sockets, so I added the beard today. Icelandics, like many cold-country horses, have beards and feathers, and the customer wants the beard included on the piece. I've done lots of horses with feathers before (mostly Friesians), but never one with a beard like this. It took me a while to get it to look the way I wanted it to. It still needs a bit of work, but I'm fairly well satisfied with it.

The back legs need more detailing in the tendons and so on, but the hooves, pasterns and fetlocks look good, so I put the feathers in place to see how I liked them (sometimes I put them in and then take them off or revise them a LOT before I get them the way I want them). These aren't too bad.

I realized the heartgirth (depth of the body) was too deep, so I trimmed down the neck, withers and the part of the back where the saddle sits, and then it was right. Then I worked on the muscling in the neck. The problem I'm having with the muscling on this horse is that she's not built like the breeds I do most often (warmblood, Quarter Horse, Thoroughbred). Her coat and skin are thicker than any of those breeds and the muscling isn't as distinct. (Thicker skin means the tendons don't show as much and the few blood vessels that show aren't prominent.) I've been sculpting what muscling I know must be there, since it doesn't show in any of the reference pics I have of this horse or others of her breed, and then smoothing them down so they aren't as distinct. I think that's going to work well for this piece.

One thing sculptors do fairly often but painters rarely do (to my knowledge) is to work from lots of reference photos of other horses of the same breed in order put the subject in a different pose than we were able to photograph. In this case, I saw the mare trot but not tolt. I revise poses fairly often, but it's easier to do with breeds I'm familiar with. None of the reference photos I have of Icelandics tolting are well-lit enough for me to see any detail in their legs, which is frustrating to me. I'll get it, it's just a lot harder than I'd like it to be to get it right.

Painters are dependent on the light on their subject, so they will usually paint from a photo that has the pose and lighting the way they want their painting to be. They may do something different with the background, or may add or subtract foreground or background subjects, but whatever is included in the painting has to be lit the same way. That isn't the case with sculpture. We sculptors need to see the subject from all sides in the same position, which often means using reference pics of other horses to be able to see the muscling properly on all sides. None of the pics I have of the horses in that gait are high def or well-lit or crisp enough for my satisfaction, but I'll figure something out. If all else fails, I'll go visit the Icelandic farm in our area and take my own pictures - or at least run my hands over the horses' legs. My hands "see" the sculpture in ways my eyes can't, so running my hands over a horse like the one I'm sculpting is often quite useful.

As for this leg that's set too far back, I've dug it most of the way out now and will have to soften some wax in the morning so I can put it back in the right place. It will be a pain to bring it up to the level of completion it was, but it's better to fix it now than to see it in the bronze with that leg set too far back! Argh . . . Yeah, it's progress - three steps forward, four steps back - but still, it IS progress . . .

Shipping Two-Dimensional Art

2010-04-19T20:55:00.001-04:00

One of the biggest headaches (and heartaches) I have when I put on the Dancing Horse Farm Art Show is dealing with art that arrives poorly packed. Today I spent the afternoon at DHF staring at some damaged paintings that probably wouldn't have been damaged if they'd been packed properly. I've written articles and blog posts about the proper packing of art before, but it seems the message still hasn't gotten across to everyone, so here I go again.

Many shows won't allow glass on artworks. I've been told that pastel artists prefer glass to Plexiglas because Plexi can develop static and pull pastel dust from the painting onto the inside surface of the Plexi. If you can ship your art without glass, please do so! If you must use glass (and if the art show allows it), many artists put a masking tape "X" on the glass to try to protect it from shattering. (With the tape in place, if it does shatter, it may not break in as many pieces and may not damage the painting.) If you use Plexi, leave the blue plastic film on the face of it to avoid scratches in shipping.

Sandwich (one piece in front, one piece in back) your frame in either thick cardboard or Styrofoam board. You can connect the two pieces of board with masking tape to make it easier for the art show personnel to take it apart and reassemble it.

If you use cardboard to protect your work, wrap the entire "sandwich" in bubble wrap. The bubble wrap MUST be wrapped thickly enough that you can no longer feel any corners or sharp edges! If you can feel an edge or a corner, that edge or corner is not well enough protected. Even if you use cardboard corners to protect your frame, it is not protected enough unless the face of the painting (or its glass), the back of the frame, the corners and all sides of the frame are protected by thick enough wrapping that you can't feel any edges at all. That usually means at least six layers of bubble. If you use small bubble, it will take more layers, if you use large bubbles, you may get away with less, but more cushioning is better than less.

Once you have the glass protected and your painting well-wrapped, slide it into a box made of heavy enough cardboard that the sides can't be pushed in by hand pressure. You may want to line the box with more layers of cardboard or Styrofoam board.

If you think I'm being overprotective, you should be aware that UPS standards say if a package isn't cushioned well enough to survive a 4-foot drop to concrete, they won't pay the insurance claim. That's a good standard to use for all shipping.

You may think your painting is well-packed now. Nope! Now it's time to get a larger box and line it with Styrofoam boards - NOT PEANUTS! Many shows, including mine, will not accept work shipped in peanuts unless the peanuts are confined to plastic bags. The box you just packed will be slid into the larger box lined with Styrofoam or BAGGED peanuts, and THEN, dear friends, your art is well packed - well, it will be when you close the box. Be sure and mark "Open Here" if it matters which end should be opened first.

There is a much better and easier way to ship two-dimensional art than what I described above. Art Float boxes (http://www.airfloatsys.com/shop/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=1) are as strong as plywood boxes, but lighter weight, and have sponge foam fitted inside it which you can adjust to fit different paintings. These boxes are well worth their cost and can be used over and over and over. They can't be easily punctured like most cardboard boxes and they really are lightweight especially considering the amount of protection they give your work. Trust me, art show workers LOVE to see this kind of packaging! It's easy to unpack and easy to pack - wonderful!

I have received shipped work with one thin, limp strip of bubble wrap just loosely wrapped around the painting in a single box with no other packing. Guess what happened to the painting? Yup, serious damage. I have received shipped work wrapped in blankets, in a box stuffed with chunks of sponge foam. Those paintings were fine but it was heck trying to repack them to return it after the show. I have received paintings where the artist trusted UPS to pack them right. Yes, the art arrived intact, but when I opened the box, loose peanuts exploded all over the room. It was a nightmare to clean up and a nightmare to repack it and it frustrated me and took way more time than it should have.

PLEASE be kind to those who have to unpack and repack your art. And please, be kind to the art you spent hours and hours planning and creating. Protect it like you would your children -send it off safely in packaging that will be easy for the folks at the other end to use to return it if it doesn't sell. They and and your art will all be better off for it.

Trying Something New

2010-03-13T13:14:00.000-05:00

I'm an equine artist, but I sometimes want a change of pace and do something different. ("Tolte" isn't finished, but will be worked on at Equine Affaire - I'm saving some of the work for then. More pictures after that!)

A friend of mine (Holly McCullough, www.momandmereborns.com) makes those baby dolls that look like real babies. The process of doing this - painting the delicate skin tones, the veins beneath the skin's surface, rooting mohair for the baby's hair, etc. - is what Holly does. She buys the sculpts to "reborn." She asked me if I'd ever considered sculpting dolls. Well, no, but I am interested in figurative sculpting, so I decided to give it a try.

There are various ways to make the doll heads. You can buy a sculpting form from www.secristdolls.com to which you add full round eyes (as opposed to flat-back eyes) and polymer clay like Super Sculpy (which is what I used for this one). They have an instructional DVD which I found very helpful, but as I worked, I decided they must have left out some information. They say to put two layers of clay on the form and just push that around to get the features you want. But their form isn't shaped like a baby's head, IMO. The back is too flat and the forehead slopes too much. I had to add four layers of clay to bring the forehead up to the rounded look I love in babies. I also had to put four layers of clay on the cheeks to get them pudgy at all.

I think the chin is too far forward too - a baby's face, as I recall and as my research so far shows me, kind of falls away there, with the chin being farther back than the nose more than my doll's is here. The ear looks big, but it fits the size of what they had on the sculpt as the ear locator.

I'm not that happy with his face. Sculpting squinchy eyes is hard for me - I'm used to doing big, open, soft eyes but little babies eyes aren't like that. I may have too much depth in his eye sockets, I'm not sure. He's CLOSE to done, but even if he is and I bake him this way (well, after I finish smoothing him), I'm not satisfied with him. I think the sculpting form restricted me too much. The next doll I do will be done on a styrofoam form that has no details, just a kind of shelf where the eyes go and then a pudgy place below that. It's small enough that I'll have to add a lot of clay to it, I think, before it will be big enough. But in those layers of clay, I will have the freedom to build the face and head the way I see them. Hopefully then I'll like the resulting baby better. When that kind of sculpting form is baked, it shrinks to a nugget inside the head. I got those from www.hunnybunsrebornsupply.com owned by Stephanie Sullivan. She has everything you need to make doll sculpts or do reborning, and she's local, so I had a lovely time talking to her! If you get the Secrist DVD, you'll see one of her sculpts near the very end. I'll post pics of the new baby when I get it done.

I know these babies will look a LOT different after Holly "reborns" them - I'm looking forward to seeing how they turn out!

The best thing is - this has been quite a challenge for me and has tested my sculpting skills in ways they haven't been in years. That's FUN for me!!

The Blood-Red Pencil: Ask the Editor: Strong Female Characters

2010-02-16T12:41:00.000-05:00

The Blood-Red Pencil: Ask the Editor: Strong Female Characters

This is a great article by my friend, Helen Ginger, a strong female character herself! Enjoy!

Percy Jackson vs. Harry Potter

2010-02-15T10:46:00.004-05:00

We went to see "The Lightning Thief" last week (http://www.percyjacksonthemovie.com/), the first of the Percy Jackson books to make it to film. I haven't read the books, so this post is going to be comparing the Percy Jackson film to the Harry Potter films (http://harrypotter.warnerbros.com especially the first two HP films which were directed by the "Percy Jackson" director, Chris Columbus). I won't be comparing films to books or books to books.

My husband hasn't read any Harry Potter books nor has he read the Percy Jackson books. He's not much of a fan of fantasy, honestly. But on our way home from the film, we were struck by the differences between Harry and Percy, their strengths and weaknesses and other characteristics. Percy came up short in every way.

The hero in a film, novel or story has to capture your imagination, be sympathetic, charming and likable in various ways even if he's not a totally nice guy. The depth of his character development will depend on if the story or film is character-driven or story-driven. In Harry's case, although his stories are adventures and full of action, the center of interest for the story is Harry himself, his character, his goodness of heart (even if he does break the rules every so often, he's a good kid), the serious way he looks at his life, his "saving people thing." In Percy's case, the adventure is the thing, and not much is done to develop his character.

While both boys have adventures (well, in Harry's case, it's more of a mystery than an adventure at first) starting at the beginning of their films, the emphasis isn't the same and the results are hugely different. Do we care about Harry? Absolutely. Do we care about Percy? Not that much. Why the difference?

In Harry's case, he's a genuinely nice boy who's kind, generous and protective of his friends. Percy seems like a nice enough kid, and he's kind and generous too, but he also has no qualms at all about killing someone, and when he loses someone close to him, his pain is so brief, you wonder how much pain he actually felt.

Harry has a melancholy nature because he lost his parents when he was a baby and grew up with horrible relatives. Percy isn't melancholy, but he is somewhat rebellious. Of course, we meet him when he's a teenager, not a young boy like Harry, and Percy has his mom, who he loves, and a horrible stepfather. One of the things I noticed about Percy early on was that his rages, rebellion and everything else are mild compared to those of many teenagers. He doesn't seem to feel anything to any extreme, certainly not as much as Harry does.

Percy hasn't been beaten down throughout his childhood the way Harry was. Harry's a survivor with a strong moral compass. He got through his childhood on his own, with no outside help, and he has a good sense of right and wrong despite the way he was treated by his relatives. He has depths to his personality that just doesn't show in Percy.

Percy's had plenty to eat, a relatively normal childhood (he takes the usual classes, although he does have a learning disability, and seems to have friends at school, unlike pre-Hogwarts Harry; he has clothes that fit him; there's no "Dudley" to make his home and school life hellish). Percy's had a protector all his life (his best friend) as well as his mom. The only real hardship he's had to deal with is his stepfather. Yet of the Percy's the one with the "I'll do whatever it takes" attitude from the beginning of his adventure that includes breaking all kinds of laws, no remorse about damaging property, stealing things, or injuring other people. You might expect Harry, who's been abused all his life, to have that kind of attitude, but the only "I'll do whatever it takes" attitude we see out of Harry is when his "saving people thing" kicks in. He will do whatever it takes to rescue someone, even at the cost of his own life, and it doesn't take Harry long at all to decide to jump into such situations.

Harry will do the very best he can in adversity, but he will also hope for help since he feels inadequately prepared to deal with the dangers facing him. Despite his lack of training, he always rises to the occasion. He succeeds with the help of his friends, but also because of his own courage and good character. Percy has a demi-goddess as a sidekick and another "super-friend" helping him, but there's more of an "I did this" feeling to Percy than there is to Harry, who always credits his friends for their help, even if what they did seems minimal to the rest of us in comparison to Harry's efforts.

Harry's modest about what he can do and embarrassed when someone praises him. Percy seems to take such things in stride, and not just because he's a teenager. When Harry's Percy's age (in the later films), he's still modest about his accomplishments and still says he had "a lot of help" while in truth, it was nearly all Harry's great courage, power and sheer luck that got him through the crisis.

These films are fantasy, yup, but Harry's films show him learning how to do what he needs to do, while Percy, who's a demi-god (half-human son of Poseidon) picks up a sword and immediately knows how to beat other more experienced people his age in training. Harry has to learn how to use his powers and how to analyze situations so he can deal with them. Percy just goes from high school kid with learning disabilities to demi-god hero without having to learn any skills to speak of and with no real mishaps on the way to becoming skilled. He gets some weapons and is instantly the master of them.

Perhaps the difference between them is that Harry is human and Percy is a demi-god but I prefer Harry's humanity. It's obvious that he cares when his friends are hurt. Harry's scared to death yet faces danger bravely despite the full knowledge that he's very likely to die from the danger he's about to deal with. Percy sort of stumbles through things but never seems to be scared, and he laughs when he survives a battle, unlike Harry who suffers through his recovery both emotionally and physically. Harry gets hurt in battle, Percy doesn't.

Being a demi-god doesn't mean Percy can't be killed, yet he never seems that afraid of what he's getting into. Nor do we see him plucking up his courage the way we do Harry. Percy just jumps headlong in to whatever he's about to do. Harry dreads what he has to do, but faces the worst with grim determination despite his fear. Harry is human. Harry's much more heroic and a far more complex character than Percy.

The Percy Jackson film and the first two Potter films were all directed by Chris Columbus. I don't think Columbus slacked off in his direction of an experienced teenage actor (Logan Lerman, who plays Percy) versus his direction of Daniel Radcliffe as Harry, who was many years younger than Logan and a much less experienced actor at the time. I think it must be the writing of the characters themselves that's the difference.

Even in the first HP film, Harry has a depth of character that Percy just doesn't exhibit. He's horrified to have killed Professor Quirrell, despite the fact that he was fighting for his life. Percy gives his most serious opponent a moment to decide if he's going to surrender or not, but when he doesn't, Percy does away with him with no apparent remorse but more of a "good riddance" attitude. Yes, Harry was a young boy when he killed Quirrell, but even in the later films when he's around Percy's age, while Harry is determined to kill his enemies, you can tell that it costs him something to even contemplate it.

Remember, I'm not talking about the books here, since I haven't read any of the Percy Jackson books. But based on the films, Harry at any age we've seen so far is more sensitive and has a wider emotional range than Percy. Harry's rages are harsher than Percy's and his joy is more palpable as well.

Harry normally doesn't kill without remorse, although when he kills Voldemort, he won't be sorry he killed them. There will be a cost to his spirit and we will see that. And remember, Harry doesn't use the Unforgivable Curses properly because he isn't a cruel enough person to manage it. Harry tries to disarm his opponents rather than kill them. He uses "Expelliarmus" instead of "Avada Kedavra."

Percy deliberately uses lethal force, knowing exactly what the consequences will be. Percy also doesn't seem to be that bothered by killing someone he thought was a friend at first. It's his lack of remorse, his lack of moral depth that bothers me and led to this blog post. It's also what prompted my husband, who cares very little about fantasy, to talk about it on the way home from the film.

Could the difference between Harry and Percy be in the skills of the actors portraying them? Possibly, but Logan is a very experienced actor, one who's been nominated for a lot of awards and won three (I checked www.imdb.com). Daniel is a gifted actor (nominated for a lot of awards and won 19 so far) who was so well-cast as Harry that he didn't need a lot of experience to play him well as he honed his acting skills. Dan's growing skills have added layers of complexity to his portrayal of Harry, but still, I think the basic morality of the characters is based in the writing, not in the acting or directing.

When you're creating characters in your writing, I try to give them depth as well as a lot of action. When I read, watch TV or films, or write my own fiction, I want to see complex characters who are torn by the things they have to do to deal with the adventures facing them. Some people prefer to write action with very little character development, but to me, a more entertaining story is where I see how the action reveals and develops the character of those involved.

Will I see more Percy Jackson films? I don't honestly know - perhaps I will. But I will definitely see the last two HP films. I'm looking forward to seeing how Dan will play the darkest scenes in Harry's life. I'm sure it will be a rich and layered portrait of a good man who has more required of him than anyone should ask. I think Logan is probably capable of greater things but he needs better material to work with. It will be intersting to see both of these young actors mature and develop their craft.

I wish them both lots of excellent scripts and talented directors and co-stars. And I'll continue to work hard to create richly layered characters with great moral depths in my writing, as well as great adventures.

"Feather"

2010-02-03T10:12:00.000-05:00

It's always fun when I get a new bronze from the foundry for the first time! I've just received "Feather" and it's wonderful to see how he turned out. He's 9" long x 8" high x 3 3/4" wide including the turned head and flying mane.

As you can see, he's available in both bay and silver. He was intended to be a Pegasus, but after cutting him apart four times to try various armatures for the wings, I decided any wings I put on him would vibrate too much in shipping and damage the horse. I had one bronze sent to me with no patina on it so I can make wings to fit it and mark where they go on the bronze. Hopefully doing it that way will work!

If you'd like to see pictures of "Feather" as a work in progress as well as pictures of him with his first set of wings, click here: "Feather"

Adding a Rider to the Icelandic Sculpture

2010-01-29T18:32:00.000-05:00

While it is possible to build an armature for a horse and rider as one piece, I chose to do the rider separately so I can work on her detailing up close without the horse in the way.

As you can see, the horse has progressed a good bit since the last time I posted about her. Her right hind leg is close to finished as is her right shoulder. The bulk of her body is pretty much there, I just have to make sure all the depressions are tightly filled so the surface won't collapse if touched, carve away what isn't the horse I'm making and smooth everything out. Easy, right? Not when you're working this big! I'm used to being able to put my hands around the horse's barrel, warming the clay with my hands and smoothing it with my thumbs. This piece is simply too big to do that. I'm having to use a lamp and a hairdryer to warm the clay enough that I can smooth it with my hands. I can carve it down with the tools, but sculpting is in my hands, so I have to run both my fingers and palms over it to see if it feels right to me.

The horse has no saddle at the moment, but will by the time I've finished it. The rider's right leg isn't quite long enough yet and the foot isn't formed at all, but I'm just seeing how the horse and rider fit together here.

I need to build up the thickness of the rider's legs and arms so she'll be proportionate. She will have short hair and be wearing a helmet and Kentucky jods (breeches that are boot-cut so she can wear short boots) unless my customer decides she wants to be in different clothes. I can always add long sleeves if need be and change the style of her pants and boots.

As you can see, the horse's right side is more developed and the rider's left side is more developed. I have pictures of the rider's armature somewhere - maybe in my laptop. I'll post them when I figure out where I filed them!

The rider's eyeballs are made of harder clay in a different color so I can see what I'm doing when I shape the eyelids, browbone, etc. around them. The horse's dark eyes are either beads or earrings - I've forgotten now what I used. I like to use a hard spherical thing as the eyeball so I can build the eye socket properly and not get the eye out of round. That isn't possible for humans, since the pupil is cut out to make the eyes look alive. Horses have horizontal, sort of rectangular pupils, not round ones like we have, so their eyes are usually shown as just round, no pupils cut out.

The direction the horse is looking is shown by the angle of the upper eyelid and the position of the head, neck and ears. The direction a person is looking is shown by the location of the pupil and iris of the eye, with the pupil cut out (like a bowl, a rounded cut) and the iris either cut out more shallowly for dark eyes, or just scribed on the eyeball for light eyes (like blue eyes, such as my rider has). The direction a human's eyes are looking is also indicated by the highest arch of the eyelids, since the lens of the eyeball pushes the lid out a little bit. I haven't carved out my rider's pupils yet.

This face isn't really a likeness to my customer yet - it's more of a place holder while I get her proportions right. Once I'm happy with the rest of her, I'll detail the face so it looks like her, then add the hair and helmet. The line carved down the center of the horse's face is there to help me compare sides to make sure she's symmetrical.

Here I'm seeing if she's sitting straight, if her shoulders and knees match (not yet, although the shoulders are close), etc. I haven't worried about doing a likeness of the horse yet either. As you can see, her right eye is a bit low. I've already repositioned both eyes twice to get them at the right height for the size of this horse's head. Once I move the eye that's in the wrong position (I think that may be the horse's right eye, the one that we see on the left side of the photo), her face will be straight. Then I can detail her head, finish detailing her neck and the rest of her, and add her saddle. Her bridle will be added after I add the ears and before I add the massive amount of flying mane this mare's going to have. Getting things "straight" with each other is one of the hardest things about sculpting, in my opinion.

The rider has two prongs that come out where her seat bones would be located on a real person (dressage riders may chuckle at the idea of how easy it would be to "plug in" if you had such prongs coming out of your seat bones, LOL!). These prongs are inserted in the horse's back to hold her in place. When I've finished sculpting the rider and her saddle, I will mark the saddle to show where the rider should sit and will cut off the prongs. The rider will be sent as a separate piece, not as part of the horse. Since her armature isn't built as part of the main armature, she would come off the horse in transport if I shipped her mounted on the horse.

Can you tell that the rider's shoulders and head are just a wee bit off? The head is leaning a little bit to the left and the left shoulder is a little bit high. By "a little bit" I mean perhaps as little as 1/32nd of a difference. You'd be amazed how much of a change can be made by carving off a tiny bit of clay or moving something like an eyeball just a tiny bit. I use a mirror and photos I post on my computer to help me see where the errors are. Sometimes it's hard to see them when I'm looking at the real sculpture. The artist's eye at some point tends to see what they hope is there, not what's really there. I've heard this lots of times, mostly about painters, but it's true of sculptors too. Looking at it backwards (in a mirror), in a photo or even upside down is quite useful in helping you see with fresh eyes.

You can see the mare's frog, heel and hock on the right hind leg. That shows this leg is nearly done. A lot of the detail I put in the rear end of the horse will be hidden by the tail, just as a lot of the detail in the neck will be hidden by the mane, but I put it in there so I know it's correct before I add all that hair. I also need to add feathers to the legs and a beard to the horse's head and throatlatch. All of that comes much later.

That's where we are for now! These are "pose approval" photos which I send to my customer for them to approve. If they like it, they'll send the second payment on the job. If they want something changed, this is the time for them to tell me or I'll have to charge them extra for the time it takes me to make the change. All of this is spelled out in my commission contracts.

I hope you're enjoying watching "Tolte" evolve from wires and pipes to a finished bronze!

Changing Writing Instruments Can Freshen Your Writing

2010-01-08T16:58:00.001-05:00

In this month's meeting of the writing group I attend, the leader told us to get out our notebooks and pens and said we had to write for 20 minutes with no prompt at all. (For those who may not know, a "writing prompt" is a first line for a story, or a subject, or an idea to help you get started. For instance, a writing prompt might be, "I hate it when . . ." or "When I opened the door. . ." - something like that.)

It can be very hard to come up with something to write about in a short time like that. Some in the group worked on articles or stories they were already working on while others made up either fiction or non-fiction.

I had no idea what to write, but as soon as he told us to start, three words popped into my head: Ping. Ping. Ping. It was a sound - like a fingernail tapping on glass or the beeping signal from a machine that's it's finished making coffee, or the sound of metal cooling off. I had no idea what was pinging, but those three pings were my start. So I wrote "Ping. Ping. Ping." and then started describing what I see most mornings. In the story, I'm sitting at my kitchen counter working on my laptop while one cat snoozes and the other is rolling around and smiling (my hubby's cat does that a lot) when I hear the pings. I can't figure out where the sound's coming from. It's only three pings, so I go back to what I was doing. A while later, I hear the three pings again.

As I wrote, I kept describing what I was seeing, all very ordinary things. I mentioned in the story that I was working on my sales tax, a very dreary job. When "story me" found out what was making the pings, it was a life-changing event!

In 20 minutes in LONGHAND I wrote nearly 1000 words!! And it's an entertaining read (so far!) and was great fun to write! I transcribed it into the computer last night, cleaning up some messy phrases and changing a word here or there, but really, I didn't do much editing at all. I was amazed that it was so clearly written the first time through.

The lesson we were supposed to learn from this was that sometimes the freshest writing comes from changing the instruments you use to write. If you're writing longhand, you don't sit and edit yourself as much as you do if writing on a computer. Stopping to edit your work stops the forward motion of the story. The first draft should be written straight through, beginning to end, with no stops for corrections if you can manage it. I know this is true, but lately, I've been spending a lot of time "fixing" the first part of a novel I'm working on. I think it's going to be a good story, but it isn't just flying out of my fingers like others have. This one's more like (*gasp!*) work! Of course, I'm inventing a new world, which makes things more complicated, but I think it's a good read and writing it is interesting to me. My hand cramps if I write by hand very long, and my handwriting is terrible, but perhaps my story would move along faster if I tried handwriting the section I'm stuck on. I just may try it. I'll let you know how it works!

Doing Research for Your Art

2010-01-08T16:13:00.000-05:00

I love the forums at http://www.wetcanvas.com. Artists of all experience and skill levels hang out there and discuss media, techniques, critique each other's work, etc. in a friendly, supportive atmosphere. I highly recommend WetCanvas to artists of all levels, both amateur and professionals.

A few days ago, I was writing a second critique (at the artist's request) on a colored pencil piece and started getting philosophical about how you should look at horses (or whatever your subject is) in order to portray them in art. At one point, I said, "Sounds like I'm starting a blog post," so here I am, writing that blog post.

When you paint, draw or sculpt something that's alive and you want it to LOOK alive, you need to represent it as accurately as possible. I'm not saying all art has to be realistic, but if you do something that looks at least somewhat realistic, then the joints and muscles should be in the right placement and position for whatever movement is going on.

"Reflection" (cold-cast porcelain, shown above) certainly isn't built realistically. The structures in the head and neck are exaggerated or stretched to make the piece an impression of this horse. Those who know this horse (Reg. name, "Rusted Spruce," show name when my daughter had him, "Imagine A Legacy," barn name "Stretch") recognize him despite his being stylized. That was my goal, to do a recognizable portrait yet make it unique in its style. And yes, I realize there are errors in this piece, but it was also one of my earliest sculptures, so I was still learning my craft. Yet despite its flaws, it's a lovely piece, has won awards and sells well.

Too many artists depend only on pictures for reference. That's fine, but you also need to learn about the subject, whether it's a horse or a human or a cat or a raccoon - whatever it is, it has a particular way its eyes are set (for instance). Horses, being prey animals (dinner for other animals, in other words), have their eyes on the sides of their heads so they can see behind them as well as in front. When a horse is grazing, he can see 350 degrees around him. A predator has his eyes on the front of his face, like a human, a dog, cat, lion, raccoon. These are species who chase down other animals to be their dinner. Their range of vision is much smaller than a horse's - 150 degrees for dogs and cats, and a smaller range for humans since our eyes are set more to the front of our heads than they are on dogs and cats. (Ref: http://www.mini-horse.org/vision_range.html)

My husband was standing just a bit to the right of center (as he faced my horse Ricos) when he took this photo, which is why the right eye looks bigger than the left. You need to pay attention to these distinctions when using photos for reference.

You may not be able to see the chipmunk in this sculpture since the photo's small, but this cougar, a predator, has his eyes on the front of his head. The chipmunk, a prey animal, has them on the sides. (The chipmunk's on the rock near the bottom and just left of center in case you haven't found him yet.) This piece is "In the Wind" and is a bronze. All the art shown here is mine, BTW.

Each species has a particular way of moving. Horses have four legs, but they don't move the same way cats, dogs or armadillos do. You need to understand the pattern of footfalls for each species you portray, and in the case of many animals like horses and dogs, you need to know how the breed you're portraying moves. A dressage horse moves much differently than a Paso Fino, for instance. A Chinese Crested moves much differently than a German Shepherd. If you don't have a clear understanding of such things, you may make a bronze or a painting that will last for years and years but is portraying an inaccurate movement, inaccurate tail carriage, the wrong shape and attitude of the animal's ears, etc. People who know that kind of animal will look at the artwork and shake their heads, wondering why you didn't do enough research to know how much weight that leg should bear at that point in the stride, why you have a Quarter Horse doing a pace instead of a trot, why your Chinese Crested isn't doing a prancing trot, why the German Shepherd isn't built with his haunches lower than his shoulders, etc.

One way to learn about the structure of animals is to go see them in person. It's even better if you can run your hands over the animal's legs or muscles with your eyes closed as well as with them open, so you can get a real understanding of their structure. What works for me, and what I recommended to the artist on WetCanvas today, is to find a horse (in this case) that has been bodyclipped (since they're in winter coats now) so the muscles, tendons and bones are as easy to see and feel as possible. If you can't find a bodyclipped horse, then one with smooth hair over their legs will do. A horse with feathered legs like "Masestoso" above, isn't what you want to look at for this exercise. Point of interest about horses with feathered legs: When examining a Friesian for one of my Friesian sculptures (an earlier piece than this one), I discovered the feathers start at the chestnut - halfway up the forearm, and just below the hock. I had no idea they started that high until I did my research on a live horse.

"Presence" (Bronze, above) has lovely clean legs. It would be easy to run your hands over them to learn their structures. Before you start working around the back legs of a horse you aren't familiar with, ask the horse's handler to hold the horse's front leg up to keep the horse still and protect you from being kicked. Then gently run your hands down his legs, learning the feel of the muscles, tendons and bones and how they work together. Be sure to cup your palm over the hock bone itself - that point isn't sharp nor is it small. It's a big, wide bone that will fill your hand. Remember that when you're portraying it.

Once you've run your hands over his legs, if you're a 2-D artist, sit at eye-level to the horse's hocks, but far enough away that he can't kick you, and draw his leg, paying close attention to the joints, muscles and how everything's tied together. Have someone lift a back leg and run your hands over that hock joint and the pastern when they're bent, then sit down and draw them. Do the same for the front legs. If you're a sculptor, do a quick sketch in clay of the leg you're studying. You'll be amazed at how much this exercise improves how you portray legs.

Mounting "Just Tryin' to Help" and "Tolte" progress

2009-12-29T16:32:00.000-05:00

"Just Tryin' to Help" is a bronze comprised of two related sculptures, a filly and a man. Both are 1/4 lifesized. The man is looking directly at the filly when they're arranged correctly, but after seeing how other folks move them around, I decided they needed to be on a base to relate to each other properly. So my basemaker, Diane Soper of Sistermaide Woodworking in Lewisburg OH, made beautiful bases for me (as usual!) and today we mounted the bronzes. It took a lot more doing than you might expect - I hold the horse upside down in my lap while she makes a template for the bottom of the bronze, marking where the drilled and tapped holes are inside the bronze's base. Then she marks the wood and drills the holes and we spend a lot of time trying to line up the hole in the bronze with the hole in the wood from the bottom of the wooden base. It's a lot more trouble than it sounds like, believe me! And because it's so much physical labor and hard on both of us, I think I may have the foundry (which is full of big, burly men!) put the base on "Tolte" since it will weigh between 60 and 80 lbs! Anyway, here are pictures of my beautiful Bitsy baby when she was a little one, and my hubby John, in a scene from real life here on our farm.

And now more progress on "Tolte." These pics show progress made as of 12/27/09.

The toothpicks sticking out of her are markers for joints (knee, hock, fetlock) and her eyes, to help me keep things measured correctly. The small lump of clay at the top of her right shoulder is a note to myself to build that shoulder up more, since her weight is on it (this after a visit from my daughter, Jennifer Truett of Dancing Horse Farm, Lebanon OH - she's a dressage trainer and FEI level rider with a great eye for conformation). I wasn't really at the point of building that shoulder up yet, but since Jennifer pointed it out, I put a bit of clay there to make sure I wouldn't forget to build it up. I try to get her to look at my sculptures at least before they go to the foundry so someone who knows what to look for can make sure I haven't missed anything!

Yesterday when I went out to the studio, suddenly that right foreleg (the one that's on the ground) looked too far back. I messed around with the muscle a bit to make sure my eye wasn't being fooled. It wasn't! So I had to rip that leg off - yes, that's what I said! I had to remove the clay that was over the wax, then soften the wax by warming it with a hair dryer. Once it was warm enough, I could remove the leg and the pad of wax that was holding it in. Here's the hole after I removed the leg.

I cleaned out the hole, cleaned off the armature wax I would need the next batch of wax to adhere to, and moved the hole in the shoulder forward so the leg would be about 1/4 inch farther forward than it was before. Here's the horse with her leg replaced.

I still h ave a lot of repair work to do. I had to cover the shoulder with clay and build it up again (and add the height to it that indicates it's bearing weight, as my daughter pointed out) and repair the sculpting in the leg itself as well as making it stick to the board with some clay.

The problem with working with wax is that wax chips (bits that get broken off while working with it or while removing clay that's touched it) get into everything, so I spent quite a while picking chips of wax out of the clay. If I'd left them there, the bronze would have strange-looking bumps and flat spots here and there because of them, which wouldn't be good at all!

Here's the mare with her shoulder repaired and her leg in better shape.

I'm still not happy with her shoulder, but her foreleg is in a better position. I will double-check the position of her hind legs now that there's enough clay on them for me to have a better idea how all of her parts are going to relate to each other.

I don't know if I've shown you how I melt the wax. I use metal cake pans on electric griddles. I have to be careful to not get it too hot. The lump you see here is the wax I removed from her shoulder, which I used in her shoulder again once it had softened enough to work with.

And that's where I am now. Her barrel needs to be filled out a bit on the bottom so it's evenly round and I have to check those back legs, but overall, she's getting into decent shape. Before I get too detailed on her, I'll have to start her rider. That's another blog for another day . . .

"Tolte" work in progress

2009-12-07T16:11:00.001-05:00

This is the piece I wrote about before, when I was showing how I was doing a different kind of armature than I normally do. She's a lot farther along now than these pictures show, but I haven't had time to take newer pics of her yet.

After working on her for a while, I realized that pushing on her to add clay was making her armature twist on its post. I should've glued the post into the floor flange as well as the plumbing T. Normally, wax should hold the T in place with no problem, but I'm pushing the piece pretty hard, so cold wax could crack and loosen. Super Glue to the rescue!

I cut her belly open (not such a huge job since she's still mostly a silhouette, not filled out much at all) to expose the bottom of the plumbing T and cleaned the wax off the metal at the bottom and up inside the T a bit so the glue would be attaching metal to metal, not metal to wax. It wouldn't be as strong a seal if the glue attached metal to wax. To get to the bottom of the T so I could put the glue inside the place where the T meets the pipe, I had to lay the horse over on her side.

Once I got the glue in place, using a toothpick to apply it, the piece could be set upright again and I could go back to work. I think you'll see in the following pictures that I added clay to the wax around the bottom of the leg wires to help anchor them to the table. There will be a whole patch of ground under the horse, so once I have that in place, the feet will be secure. With my normal aluminum wire armature, I just staple the wires in place to be secure, but with this heavy copper wire, that's not possible.

I scraped back the clay at the shoulders and hips until I reached the wax so the wax I'm using to hold the leg wires in place will stay put. Wax makes a strong bond to other wax, but its bond to clay is not as strong. The legs are firmly in place now.

The horse is still much thinner than she will be when she's finished, but I made sure I built the wax and clay up so her legs are coming out at the right part of her body. They aren't set too far inside nor too close to the surface. More clay will be added over the wax. Here's how it looks:

I know it looks like the leg bones are too far back in the front leg that's on the ground and too far forward in both back legs, but I promise you, once the muscle's on it, they will prove to be in the right place! And if they aren't, I'll move them until they are!

Here she is after I covered the wax with clay:

She's still skinny, but we're making progress! Here's how she looked a day later:

I've laid on enough clay to thicken her body quite a bit. I know there are some proportions that are wrong for now, and the line of her back/loin/croup isn't the best, but I'm getting there!

I have clay down the length of some of her legs now. I'll take more pictures and show you her progress again soon.

From book to stage or film

2009-12-05T10:58:00.000-05:00

We were in New York City for Thanksgiving (saw the Macy's Parade up close and personal!) and saw "Wicked" while we were there. It was WONDERFUL! Fabulous singers, interesting set design, good acting, great acoustics in the Gershwin Theater. I was familiar with the play only from the soundtrack, which I love, being a singer myself. I highly recommend the show. It's great fun!

What I don't recommend is reading the book "Wicked" before seeing the play. They bear nearly no resemblance to each other. Those of you who know me at all know that I'm a huge Harry Potter fan, so I know that plays/films and the novels they come from often are quite different, but "Wicked" is SO different! Elphaba (the Wicked Witch of the West) is goodhearted in both of them until fate turns her around, but in the book, she's a political activist of sorts, fighting for the rights of Animals (sentient animals) among other things. That isn't the case at all in the play, which is much more about the friendship between Elphaba and Galinda/Glinda. The personalities and motivations of several of the characters is hugely different between the book and the play.

I have read a quote from the book's author, Gregory Maguire, that he's very pleased with how they interpreted his story in the play, and I'm sure it's more profitable as a play the way they wrote it than it would be if they'd stuck closer to the book. I think they did the right thing in how they reinterpreted the story for the play.

Since seeing "Wicked" on stage and reading the story, I am not as critical as I used to be of Steve Kloves, who did the screenplays for all but one of the Harry Potter films. Kloves has kept his screenplays (the ones we've seen so far anyway - all but "Deathly Hallows") much closer to the books, and his characters, except for Hermione in several of the films, have all been very close to what J.K. Rowling wrote to start with. (Kloves uses Hermione as an "information dump" in several pictures, often giving her lines that were the boys' lines in the books, which annoys me greatly. There's no benefit in her saying those lines rather than the boys that I can see, and by doing this, Kloves has made me really dislike Hermione - which is not Emma Watson's or J.K. Rowling's fault. Kloves gets all the blame for this.)

I haven't done close comparisons between books and the plays or films that resulted from them in quite a while, other than my obvious attention to the Potter books and films. Seeing "Wicked" and then reading it really made me wonder if authors who see their work performed on stage or in film think "Why didn't I think of that" or "Why didn't I do it that way?" or "I'm glad they paid me a bundle for this because I can't stand what they've done to it!"

J.K. Rowling has every reason to be pleased both artistically and financially with the results of her collaboration with Kloves, Warner Brothers, David Heyman, et al. Maguire seems pleased with what they did with "Wicked," but the changes are so vast, I just have to wonder how he really felt when he first saw it?

When I write, I see my stories as films in my head. If any of them make it to the stage or film, will they resemble what I wrote at all? And how will I feel about it?

If you want to read about the process of going from book to stage, there's a book called "Wicked, the Grimmerie" which tells how it went from idea to novel to screenplay that didn't work to play that did. It's interesting reading. I bought a used copy of it on Amazon and have greatly enjoyed it.

If and when I have to face one of my stories as a film or play, I'll let you know what I think about the changes they made!

The New Armature, step by step

2009-11-07T14:23:00.005-05:00

I live in Ohio but my bronze foundry is in Oregon, which means I have to make my armatures very strong in order to withstand shipping that far. Remember, UPS doesn't pay any attention when a box is marked "UP" or "Fragile"!! If it won't withstand a drop of four feet onto concrete they won't pay for damages, so my pieces have to be built and packed as well as possible.

Because this piece (working title: "Tolt") is so large (25" high by 28" long, IIRC), I don't think the normal aluminum armature would be strong enough, so I did a slight variation on Karen Kasper's type of armature. I used a galvanized pipe screwed into a floor flange on the bottom and BOLTED, not screwed, to the working surface so it won't break loose in shipping (that happened once - it was a nightmare but the piece was saved anyway!). A galvanized T is put on top of that - I'm using 3/8" pipe here. I used two 45 degree "street elbows" on the T, which is the beginning of Karen's style of armature. I used 1/4" thick copper wire for the basic framework and the brace for the neck. Instead of dipping the armature pieces in wax as Karen does, I put the warmed wax on with a putty knife. The surface is lumpy but that shouldn't be a problem.

I built up softened wax (warmed in a baking pan on top of an electric griddle set to 200 degrees at first, then lowered to "warm" when the was started to get warm) to bulk up the form and strengthen the armature. I'll still be able to move the armature a little bit once I get that done, but it won't be long before it will be locked in place. I'll make adjustments as I add wax and clay.

The bump and dip in front of the tail (to the left) indicate where the horse's buttocks should end. I hope you can see that I stopped short of building the wax that far back. I did that to allow room to install the leg armature (that comes later with this type of armature) and to insert toothpicks for the length and width of the back of the horse. Toothpicks don't insert into wax well.

I use an oil-based clay called plastilene (some brands are marked "plasticene"). This brand is Classic Clay, and this is the soft, tan version. They have a chocolate brown clay as well, but I can't see detail in it as well as I can in the light clay. I have carpal tunnel, so soft clay is much easier on my hands.

Classic comes in 12 lb. slabs. I get my husband to cut it in thin slices with a machete - honestly that's the best tool for the job, we've found after a lot of experimenting. If the slices are too thick for me to manage easily, I run them through a pasta machine (with the noodle cutter removed) to condition, thin and soften the clay.

Shown above is another softening method - a light bulb shining on the clay. I often use a Styrofoam cooler with a light bulb inside it (15 watts - it doesn't have to be high wattage) with the sliced clay in trays stacked in the cooler. This softens the clay so it's malleable and easy to apply to the armature.

Here I've laid clay over the wax and pressed it in hard. If you don't press it in, you'll get soft spots that may sink later on, so if you can't press it with your thumbs or hands, use a wooden tool to press it in well. Unlike water-based clay, it won't damage the clay if you have air pockets, because this clay is never fired. (Water-based clay with air pockets in it usually breaks in the kiln.) I've included the pop can on my sculpture stand so you can get an idea of the scale of this piece.

This is the view from the front. I'm building up the silhouette of the horse and will insert toothpicks to show me how thick I need to make the various parts. Each of my sculptures is made to measure, an actual scale model of the horse, until I get about two-thirds of the way through sculpting. Then I let the art take over and the horse may not be to scale anymore, but he will be more dynamic and lifelike than he would've been if I'd stuck strictly to the measurements. Other people can do scale models that turn out beautifully, but that's just not the way I work. My pieces are more like an impression of reality than tight reality. I don't do a lot of veining because the horse is normally in motion, and you can't see the veins clearly on a moving horse. I figure the veins being detailed stops the motion of the horse, so I don't do them except the big Y-shaped one on the face, and I don't always include that.

Here you can see the layers of clay I've added on teh back and near the bottom of the chest. I will press them together with a wooden tool then blend the edges with my thumbs or a tool. The toothpics are markers showing where I'm going - how thick each part needs to be. There are none on the head and neck because I'll do those later.

Here the little Icelandic mare is built up some more - yes, her back is not shaped right, but I'll get there, don't worry! She will have a saddle and rider, so I don't have to be as careful with the shape of her back as I would for a "nekked horse" :D (a horse at liberty).

She's gotten thicker side to side as well as vertically. I will start building her thickness after I get her silhouette roughed in at about the right size.

Showing the layers of clay I've added to her neck and head. I'm not worrying very much yet about getting their shape right - I'm just laying on clay in an approximation of the way it should be. Once I have the body bulked out to the end of the toothpics, as it is on her back, chest and rump right now (that's why you don't see those toothpicks anymore - they're surrounded by clay), I'll make sure the clay is well pressed-on, then I'll beat it with a small board (a 1" x 1/2" works for me) to compact it (yes, I will!). I'll smooth it out with my thumbs and with tools and then I'll get serious about shaping it the way it should be to be the horse I'm sculpting.

If you have questions, feel free to ask me. Please don't post this anywhere without giving me credit - this page is COPYRIGHT Lynda Sappington 2009 and will be used both on my website (Equine Art by Lynda Sappington) and in the third edition of my how-to-sculpt book, "Sculpting 101: A Primer for the Self-taught Artist" Second Edition (available from me as well as The Compleat Sculptor, NYC, various libraries, Amazon.com and other bookstores).

I will be teaching a sculpting workshop in New York next May (see sidebar for info). I won't be teaching how to make this particular armature, but the lessons will be similar - some demonstration, some explanation and as much personal help as needed. If you'd like to try sculpting or would like to improve your skills, come to my workshop!

The value of a critic or gallery owner as arbiter of the marketplace

2009-10-30T14:07:00.001-04:00

Fellow equine artist Juliet Harrison posted a question on Facebook asking for discussion about the value of a critic/gallery owner as arbiter of the marketplace, which prompted me to write this post.

After many years in the art business, I think critics and gallery owners look for what's new and different rather than what will appeal to people and make them want to live with that piece in their homes. They look for the trendy, hoping they'll be at the forefront of something new that changes how we look at art, perhaps, rather than the classic style that is proven to stand the test of time.

Look at what's stood the test of time in equine art - Herring, Munnings, Remington, etc. They're not "edgy" or "hip" and I don't believe they were in their day. I don't know what critics back then said about their work, but today, they wouldn't get nearly the good press that some idiot doing a painting of Mary, mother of Jesus, covered in elephant dung, will get (and yes, that was a real so-called "artwork" that got lots of critical acclaim a few years ago. Yuck.) Yet Munnings, Herring and Remington's work holds up and holds value all these years later.

IMO, art critics' standards of art don't apply to the kind of art you might want to LIVE with rather than what you'd find in a museum. And IMO, gallery owners know they will get more press by carrying edgy, risk-taking art rather than beautiful traditional art, so that's what I believe a lot of them look for.

We artists have to create what's in our hands, eyes and hearts. Our love of our subjects and our passion for our work will show and those with a grain of sense will buy it long before they'll buy some of that trendy stuff.

My horses aren't tightly detailed because I'm portraying a horse in motion. You're not that likely to notice the vein on the inside of a real horse's forearm while he's working unless he's a race horse and every single vein is standing out on his body, so I don't sculpt a lot of those details. That and various other things about my work makes people tell me my horses look like they can breathe, like they can trot right off their bases, and that's what I'm after in my work. I want to create art people enjoy living with, work that tugs their heartstrings and moves them, work that evokes wonderful memories, and work that looks alive, not frozen in bronze. That's one of the reasons I use patinas that are as close as possible to real horse coat colors rather than the traditional French brown patina.

My work is traditional, not "trendy," so hopefully it won't look dated in twenty years the way the trendy stuff will. Remember some of the artworks or knick-knacks that were popular in the 1960s or 1970s or even the '80's? Today they would look dated unless they were classic in style. So the critics can keep their criticism and the galleries can keep their edgy art - I'll stick to doing the classical style work that makes my heart sing. My passion shows in my work, and that's what appeals to collectors, IMO.

Sculpting Workshop with Lynda Sappington

2009-10-23T15:10:00.001-04:00

May 21-23, 2010, 9AM to 5 PM, $250 for the 3 day workshop at Marienthal Country Inn in Eden NY (near Buffalo), a Bed and Breakfast that's offering a 30% off any room for students. Rooms start at $30/night. The workshop will be held in a converted church that's on the property. For details, see www.MarienthalCountryInn.com

When you get to that site, click on the "workshops" link at the top. The info on my class isn't on there yet, but should be by Monday Oct. 26. However, the application will work with or without my class info being on the page, so feel free to go ahead and sign up! Class size is limited to 15.

In the workshop, we'll cover building armatures, measuring the subject (horses, but the same principal applies to other subjects), how to work with clay and building the sculpture. I will discuss mold-making and casting resin and bronze, but there won't be time in this class to do any mold-making or casting.

If you want to get a head start on the class, order my book, "Sculpting 101: A Primer for the Self-taught Artist" by contacting me at Lynda@TheSculptedHorse.com.

I hope to see you there!

2010 Dancing Horse Farm Art Show

2009-10-23T15:07:00.001-04:00

Entry Deadline: March 19, 2010

All works must feature a horse or horses.
Divisions: Painting, Drawing, Mixed Media, Photography, Sculpture, with separate divisions for Professional and Amateur artists.

Full entry information is at www.TheSculptedHorse.com/prospectus.pdf. You will need the Adobe Reader to read the Prospectus and entry forms.

Venues: May 1-2, 2010, Dancing Horse Farm, Lebanon OH as part of their Spring Fling Horse Show and Festival. NEW THIS YEAR!!! May 3-16, Picture This Gallery, Lebanon OH.

Awards: Ribbons for first to third place in each division. $100 “Best of Show” award.

Questions? Please contact DHFShow@yahoo.com

Lemon Laptop and sloppy filing by Yahoo

2009-10-23T09:27:00.001-04:00

I've written various places about the troubles I've been having with my BRAND NEW (as of May 2009) Toshiba laptop. IIRC, first there was the problem of the screen going black whenever I'd pick it up. It would come back right away when you touched a key, but still, that isn't supposed to happen. Then there was the fact that the cursor would jump all over the screen uncontrollably when I tried to use it in the car (with my hubby driving - I get a lot of writing and editing done on trips). We took it to the certified Toshiba repair place (and none of this is their fault - they've been wonderful about trying to fix it) and the first time it went in, they replaced the touchpad and the hard drive. In a brand-new computer, mind you! The blacking out continued and there was some other problem that escapes me at the moment, so it went in for repair again and they replaced the mother board. When I got it back that time, one USB port wouldn't work and recently, the right mouse key only works intermittently. So we took it in again and found out that ALL Toshiba Satellite laptops of that model have been recalled and Toshiba will repair it at the factor. Excuse me, folks at Toshiba, but there isn't a lot left to repair after you replace the mother board, the hard drive and the touch pad, is there??? *sigh* I'd like to know at what point they plan to send me a new computer - maybe at THIS point.

Oh, as for the cursor problem - we got a different power converter for the car that goes straight from whatever power usually is to that same format (I don't remember if it's DC to DC or AC to AC - I can't keep them straight). The old converter went from AC to DC (or the other way round???) and that worked for my old laptops but not for this new one for some reason. The new one is a Vista machine - I don't know if that makes any difference. My old one was an XP Pro.

We've had several Toshiba laptops - my hubby has one that's about eight years old and is so heavy it's hard to carry around, but it's still running - slowly compared to new ones, but running! I use my laptops hard, carrying them all over the house, to art shows, on trips, etc. They're meant to be mobile and I use them that way. We've been pleased with our Toshiba computers up until this one. And I love this new computer except for all the problems it's been giving me! Hence my griping here.

As for sloppy filing by Yahoo - I keep files on my Yahoo mail account for emails concerning various of my projects (such as the Dancing Horse Farm Equine Art Show or books and stories I'm consulting with my beta readers about), special emails from close friends, emails that I've sent myself to note research I'm doing for stories or sculptures, etc. Every so often, Yahoo will say I have more unread emails than show in the Inbox listing. When I look down the list in the Inbox, I may find a bunch of spams have inserted themselves in the Inbox list. Other times, I'll see one of the files highlighted and the extra "new" emails are there. That happened this morning. When I opened that file, imagine my shock when I saw a LOT of e's I'd DELETED had been stored in that file! These are e's I'd read and didn't need, so I hit the "delete" key and expected them to go to the trash folder. So I went through all my folders and found some of them in pristine condition, but the ones I haven't used very often had up to about 30 trash emails in them! I have no idea how or why this happened, but if you file some of your emails on Yahoo, you'd better check your folders to see what's really there!

I wish I knew an easy way to save what's in those folders to my hard drive and get them off Yahoo. I don't know how to do that except by opening every one and saving it as a Word document or something, and that would take an awfully long time with some of these files. If anyone has suggestions, I'd love to hear them!

Random weirdness, etc.

2009-09-30T09:13:00.002-04:00

Random weirdness - I typed the URL for my blog into the URL box and it redirected me TWICE to a Warner Brothers page! Then when I tried it again, I got a dropdown list showing my blog's address and my blog's address with a redirect to the Warner Bros. "landing page"! What's up with that?!

More random weirdness - Today's one of those days when spam shows up in my Yahoo inbox sprinkled randomly throughout all the e's there, yet they don't always drive up the "unread mail" count. Why is that, and why are there some days, just every so often, when all these spams just dump themselves into my inbox rather than the spam box?

Etc. - I've been getting emails from readers of "Star Sons" wanting to know when the second book will be out. Well . . . I've been stuck in rewrite-land, but the biggest problem is that I still have not come up with a decent title for it! But I'm slugging away at it and hope to have it published by late winter/early spring.

Meanwhile, the HP story is coming along nicely, but once I get to a place where I've caught up with the ideas I had for the first part of that novel, I'm gonna concentrate on Star Sons 2. SS2 began as a Nanowrimo novel ("National Novel Writing Month," which is November each year - writers who take the challenge try to write 50,000 words of a novel during November. I got 90,000 words of SS2 done during Nanowrimo - it's now over 120,000 words, IIRC). Finishing the revisions in November would be poetic or something. :D

Off to do my writing for the day . . .

Entry Information on Dancing Horse Farm Art Show

2009-09-19T14:54:00.001-04:00

What: Fourth Annual Dancing Horse Farm Equine Art Show

Where: May 1-2 2010 @ Dancing Horse Farm, Lebanon OH as part of their Spring Fling annual horse show and festival; May 3-16, 2010 @ Picture This Gallery in the heart of historic Lebanon OH

When: Entry Deadline: March 19, 2010. Other dates are shown in the prospectus.

Who: Professional and amateur artists and photographers. Divisions include Painting, Drawing, Mixed Media, Photography and Sculpture. All work must be ORIGINAL and all must be the work of the entering artist. No works in progress will be accepted. Jurying will be done via .jpgs, so you won't have to ship your work unless it's accepted.

How: Entry information is here: http://www.thesculptedhorse.com/prospectus.pdf

Awards: Ribbons for first to third place in each division. Best in Show Award: $100.

Questions? Please contact DHFShow@yahoo.com

2010 Dancing Horse Farm Art Show News, etc.

2009-09-19T11:56:00.001-04:00

The Dancing Horse Farm art show will run May 1-17, with it opening at the farm as usual, being in a lovely gallery in the heart of historic Lebanon Ohio from May 3-17! The Picture This Gallery is partnering with Dancing Horse Farm to give our equine art show the best possible venue, which will include a lot more foot traffic than it gets at the farm! So THANK YOU Picture This Gallery and owner Becky George Gebhart!

May 14-16, I plan to be in the Cincinnati Dressage Tradition show with Ricos. May 18, I'll start packing up the unsold art at Picture This to return to the artists. May 20, I'll be traveling to New York where I'll be teaching a sculpting workshop May 21-23. Heading home May 24, collapsing May 25 . . . but it should be an exciting month!

I will have the prospectus for the show online ASAP - watch for an announcement that it's available! (It could be online later today - stay tuned!) And get your equine art ready for our show!

Somebody book me the first week in June at some lovely beach in Florida, okay? I'm gonna need it!!!

Lack of sleep

2009-09-18T08:17:00.001-04:00

Why is it that my creative juices always flow the best when I'm asleep? If I'm truly immersed in a story I'm writing, I will dream entire scenes and hear the dialog in each character's voice. I can even rerun the scene in my dreams and edit or revise the dialog. But when I wake up . . . I'm exhausted because I've worked all night! I relish these times when my creative juices get fired up that way because that means I'm going to be very productive creatively during the day, but it sure would be nice if I could get some restful sleep at least part of the night!

Right now, my creative juices are flowing on a new HP story as well as trying to design a costume for my horse and myself for the Halloween show at Dancing Horse Farm (where both horse and rider are required to be in costume - argh!). I've also gotten the go-ahead from my commission customer for the Icelandic Horse portrait she's hired me to do. She's decided to go larger than we originally planned, which means the horse will be 13 1/2 inches tall at the withers, the biggest one I've done so far. With the rider on, I'm wondering if I'll even be able to lift it when it's bronze! Hopefully I will, but the best part is that being that big, the tack and the facial details of the rider will be SO much easier to do! Working at 1/8 to 1/6 lifesized as I normally do, those parts are teensy-tiny!! So I'm excited about working that big and seeing how well I can capture the horse and rider with that much room for good detail! And my Andalusian stallion sculpture is ready to be cleaned up, finally. I've had to fight with the mane and tail to get them where I wanted them, and then when I thought it was finished, I noticed that one hoof was smaller than the others. Unless you sculpt, you have no idea how hard it is to add about one millimeter of clay to a part and get it smooth and shaped right and perfect. I had to resculpt the whole hoof to make it work - it was about an hour's work, just on that one hoof, but now it matches the others! Yay! Now if I could just get a good night's sleep!

Resin casting/mold making

2009-09-14T17:06:00.001-04:00

I get all kinds of questions via my website from those who are just learning to sculpt. Today I got one from a retired dentist who is using his moldmaking and casting skills from dental work for his scuptures. He wanted to know how to make molds for sculptures. Well, gee, that's a wee bit more than I can do in an email - it's a weekend-long class, one I'm not really qualified to teach since I'm only an expert moldmaker for one-part molds (open-face molds for reliefs). I decided long ago that it would take too much of my time to learn how to make 3-D molds properly. I made a few, did some casting and decided I'd rather sculpt and pay someone else to do the casting! (That said, I am looking for a reasonably priced resin caster - please email me if you do such work so we can discuss what I need and whether you're the person I'm looking for!) I told the person who wrote me that I took a moldmaking class at Syn-Air in Chattanooga TN years ago and I highly recommend them - but then I looked for their website so I could see if they're still doing classes and they've been sold!!!! ARGH!

If you use SynAir products for art, you can still buy them through your local distributor or via Puma Polymers who are now producing the Pour-A-Kast and Pour-A-Mold I like to recommend to beginners because they're so easy to use.

While looking for another site offering classes and materials, I found http://www.brickintheyard.com/training.html which includes a link to quite a few instructional YouTube videos as well as information on classes they provide. I learned something new while watching the first video, and that's always fun! So I guess I'll be recommending them to those who ask for such information in the future - I sure found their videos to be well-done and interesting. And now I'm itching to play with some of those new products I saw used in the videos! NO NO! Bad artist! Stick with the current projects until they're FINISHED and THEN you can play. *sigh*

Putting on an art show

2009-09-09T17:10:00.000-04:00

For the fourth year in a row, I'm putting together an equine art show at Dancing Horse Farm in Lebanon, Ohio. The first year, the show was part of the farm's Grand Opening celebration and was a children's art-only show. We had such great entries from kids from three years old thruogh eighteen year olds. We gave fun prizes donated by local merchants and the K-12 Gallery in Dayton OH. The second year, at what has become Dancing Horse Farm's Annual Spring Fling Horse and Equine Art Show, the artists invited to enter the show were all from the Equine Art Guild, one of the groups I belong to. Last year, we opened it up to anyone who wanted to enter, but we didn't advertise it widely. We had entries from the Equine Art Guild and others, including one entry from The Netherlands! We've had Canadians in the previous show, so it's been an international show for a couple of years now.

Next year's show will have an interesting new wrinkle - Jennifer Truett, owner of Dancing Horse Farm (and my daughter) and I have been talking to the owner of a lovely art gallery in the heart of the historic district of Lebanon. We're working out details now, but it looks like once the Spring Fling weekend is over, the art show will be moved to this gallery for a couple of weeks, which will expose it to a lot more traffic! The lady who owns the gallery couldn't be nicer and it's a beautiful gallery in a great area. There should be lots of traffic through the show, which hopefully will lead to good sales!

I don't know why I consider doing all the work involved in putting on an art show to be "fun" but I do - silly me! I'm really excited. This is the first time we've had the prospectus and other things lined up early enough to get good coverage in magazines! I'm hoping to get some editorial coverage as well as listing the show itself. Cross your fingers that I can pull this off!

Writing vs. Rewriting

2009-09-07T12:39:00.002-04:00

My HP story was off to a really good start - great opening, good scenes, good plot, everything moving along well when I realized I needed to explain some stuff. Enter the flashback, which I hoped would be brief! Unfortunately, I needed to share more detail in that flashback than was reasonable, and the flashback became unwieldy. I finally had to stop working on the story. I couldn't get it to move forward the way I wanted it to. I liked it less and less, although I still loved the beginning of it. If not for that beginning, I would've started over days ago! I had even gone to the extent of writing out notes on the plot on note cards, something I've never found necessary or useful other than to keep track of character names and who died when, that kind of thing, but even that didn't help.

Finally, I had to admit there was nothing to do but start over. So yesterday, I didn't even open the old file so my mind wouldn't be distracted by that truly lovely opening! It took a bit of doing to get started, but once I got the story going, it rolled along quite nicely! I wrote ten pages (and that's single-spaced!) yesterday! I usually write much faster than that, but I've been truly stymied for a while. I just couldn't bear to give up the lovely opening I'd written for the other one. I will see if I can use it in this version, but if I can't, that's okay. I'll keep the old version to look at from time to time and perhaps I'll find a way to use those opening paragraphs someplace else someday. I sure hope so - they just SANG!! But they were singing the wrong song for this fic!

When I get to the point of needing to stop writing today, I hope to have enough energy left to get back to polishing my novel, which I really need to finish. I got frustrated with it and put it aside so I wouldn't ruin it by working on it while I was annoyed with it. Sometimes that's the best thing to do for both writing and art. If you're annoyed by what you're working on, that isn't the time to be working on it, IMO.

I got the mane finished on "Feather" today. I need to rename him - "Feather" is his name as a Pegasus. As a stallion, he should have some other name, but I don't know what. Something else to ponder . . . Anyway, I just have to finish detailing his tail and clean him up and I can ship him to the foundry, YAY! I'm eager to see him in bronze. I think he's going to be a really nice piece!

Happy Labor Day, y'all! As a British friend commented today when he wished me a happy "Labour Day," it really is an oxymoron, since most folks spend the day doing anything but labor! As for me, I'm plugging away at my usual work, sculpting and writing, while my husband finishes tearing down an old shed that's needed to be taken down for years. He's nearly done with it. The yard already looks much nicer with that eyesore gone!

Whether you "labor" or play or sleep all day, have a happy day!

Poor neglected blog

2009-09-06T16:06:00.005-04:00

I'm a bad, bad blogger! I've been so busy with my new horse (Ricos, who I got at the end of October - he's the one I'm riding in my new picture here) and learning to ride dressage that EVERYTHING else has been neglected! Now I'm back to sculpting and writing and blogging as well! And I'm still riding!

My second novel is languishing in the land of neglect for the moment. Other inspiration has hit me and I'm pursuing that for the moment. The other inspiration is another original story (novel? Perhaps) and a new HP story I'm writing to keep my fans happy and to help publicize the second novel when it's published. I'm venturing in a new directions with the HP story, which will be a good way for me to polish different ways of doing things before I get very far on the new original story.

I've nearly finished my Andalusian stallion sculpture, which will be offered as both a stallion and as a Pegasus. I'll get one of the bronzes sent to me with no patina and will create wings that will fit him precisely, then mark on the bronze where they go. After that, the foundry will know how to mount them the way I want. I've tried every way I can think of to create an armature for a winged horse that would stand the vibration of shipping (I'm in Ohio, my foundry's in Oregon), but every one I came up with just wasn't stable enough. Doing the wings separately seems to be the better idea. You can see pics of him in progress on this page: http://www.thesculptedhorse.com/feather.html

My sculpting book, "Sculpting 101: A Primer for the Self-taught Artist" Second Edition, ISBN# 978-0-9723805-3-9, is now published. You can order it directly from me or from Amazon or other book sites, and from brick-and-mortar bookstores as well for $19.95 plus s/h. has been completely updated and has new chapters covering how to pack a raw sculpture for shipping, how to safely ship bronzes to customers and how to build a carriage.

I'm now on Facebook and Twitter, if you'd like to follow me there. Just look for "Lynda Sappington." That's me!

Amazon Stomping on POD Publishers

2008-04-03T11:35:00.001-04:00

In case you haven't heard, Amazon is becoming a bully with POD publishers.

(I've provided Tiny URLs for the URLs that break over a line, so if the URL doesn't click properly, use the Tiny URL - it will work!)

In Writer's Weekly.com:
http://www.writersweekly.com/the_latest_from_angelahoycom/004610_04022008.html

And similarly in Publisher's Weekly:
http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6545772.html?industryid=47145

I originally saw these articles on the Hatrack Writers forum. What they're saying is that Amazon is trying to force the POD businesses to use BookSurge, which is Amazon's POD business. I checked into BookSurge when I was researching printers as I worked to upgrade my book business, and as the first article says, BookSurge's deal isn't so good. The publishers mentioned so far are all, as far as I know, "vanity" or "subsidy" presses that will print anything for anybody, and they seem to be Amazon's initial targets. But small independent presses won't be far behind, I suspect.

Whimsy Hill Publishing is a "small independent press" which isn't the same thing as a subsidy press, according to the industry. Should Amazon decide to turn off my "buy" button on Star Sons, there are already resellers listed on the page, AND Barnes and Noble not only has Star Sons but my sculpting book listed (and it's just going through the second proof stage, not really on the market yet!), so those who want to buy my books have options even without the Amazon "Buy" button.

All is not lost even if Amazon decides to get tough with small presses like mine. We can just take our business elsewhere, both selling and buying. BN.com can do the same things as Amazon, so why let Amazon have a monopoly?

Amazon is not only trying to force POD publishers to use BookSurge, but they're also trying to force those of us with books on their site to become "Amazon Associates." That sounds so nice and friendly, but in truth, it costs quite a bit of money per month to belong to it. There was a technical glitch on Amazon when "Star Sons" was available for sale (it was fine in the pre-publication days), and every time I tried to get technical help, I was told I should join the Amazon Associates program. I finally found a techie who could help with the problem, but it took a LOT of doing. So Amazon is being a bully in more ways than one.

Feel free to look at the articles llisted above and below and study all the related materials. Those of us who are serious about becoming successful as writers and publishers need to be well-informed about the publishing business. The interesting thing is, even a lot of the big publishers have some books printed via POD technology, so if Amazon escalates to their level, Amazon's going to be stepping on some very large and powerful toes.

I didn't like the BookSurge business model nor their very very VERY pushy salespeople way back last year - I'm SURE I wouldn't like them now! Lightning Source is taking good care of my business and we can set our own discounts and other fees to suit us, not be forced into a specific discount by Amazon. So I'm not gonna worry about Amazon if they get tough - I'll just slam the door on my way out and never buy anything from them again. If enough of us do so, they'll get the message.

More articles have popped up since the initial ones emerged. Here are links to just a few of them:

http://www.aaronshep.com/publishing/blog.html

http://juneaustin.blogspot.com/2008/04/statement-from-ingrams-and-lightning.html (This one has a response from Ingrams and Lightning Source, the main targets of Amazon's attempted takeover of the Print on Demand business via their BookSurge subsidiary.)

http://www.writersweekly.com/amazon.php And this one has links to TONS of these articles and is kept updated. It would be worthwhile to keep an eye on this site (which belongs to BookLocker.)

Book publicity

2008-03-04T11:07:00.002-05:00

Wow, I've been busy, not that you could tell from my blog posts (maybe the lack thereof was a clue!). I've been busy getting business cards and bookmarks made to publicize "Star Sons" as well as working on other things for promotional purposes. Add to that the complete revision of my book, "Sculpting 101: A Primer for the Self-taught Artist" as well as two sculpture commissions I'm racing to finish, and I'm pretty much busy every minute I'm awake! But it's better than being bored! At least the Hollywood writers picked a good time to go on strike (and I'm glad the strike's over!) - I got a lot done all those evenings when I would've normally been watching TV!

I was interviewed about both "Star Sons" and my sculptures in January by Bill Schmidt of the Dayton Daily News. He did a very nice article on me that you can read here: http://tinyurl.com/2agdu4.

Helen Ginger, who writes and publishes the "DoingItWrite" newsletter and "StraightfromHel" blog (http://straightfromhel.blogspot.com/) has done an interview with me about "Star Sons" that will appear on her blog on March 13 and in her Doing it Write newsletter the same day. I'll post a reminder of the interview's appearance closer to its release date. Many thanks to Helen for giving me this opportunity to promote "Star Sons"!

My book's on Amazon!!

2008-02-06T13:47:00.000-05:00

(sung to the tune, "Ta-Ra-Ra-Boom-De-Ay")

My book's on Amazon! (repeat 3 times then start over LOL!)

"Star Sons" is now available for pre-publication order on Amazon.com. It should be on Amazon.co.uk and BN.com soon as well. I've gotten word from several of my friends and readers that they've already ordered it, yay!

The ordering page is here: http://tinyurl.com/3655g8

I'm supposed to get a case of books today, one of which will go to the Copyright Office, another will go to Amazon for their "search inside" program, and the others are for reviewers and marketing the book to local bookstores (and selling to folks face to face, of course). I'm so excited!

YIPPEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh, and my note in my previous post about the missing serviceman - he's been found! He isn't home yet, but he's safe. Thanks to those of you who prayed for him!

Star Sons Publication Date is Firm!

2008-01-31T14:03:00.000-05:00

I got the proof of Star Sons yesterday and it's GORGEOUS! It will appear on Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk and BN.com by the end of February! If you prefer to shop in a local bookstore and don't find it on the shelves, tell your bookstore it can be ordered via Ingrams, their wholesaler.

In the midst of my excitement, I got word that a cherished friend is missing in a war zone. I'm praying for him to be found, healthy and uninjured, and sent home soon. If you pray, please pray for good news to arrive quickly and for him to be reunited with his family ASAP, safely and happily. Thank you.

While you're at it, please remember all the other friends, husbands, wives, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters who serve in the military. Each one hurt is some family suffering. Pray that they all come home safely and soon, and when you see someone in a military uniform, take a moment to thank them for their service to our country, no matter what your opinion of the war. They're putting their lives on the line for us. They deserve our thanks and more. If you want to help them, go to Anysoldier.com or AnyMarine.com (the two such sites I visit the most) and get the name and address of some service person who's asked for some supplies. They need socks, energy bars, all kinds of things that are easy for us to find, but hard for them to get over there. Adopt a serviceman or woman today, okay? You'll feel a lot better for it. Thanks.

Fanfiction thieves and Star Sons update

2008-01-09T14:07:00.000-05:00

For some reason, I've been the victim of repeated thefts of my story, "The Refiner's Fire." First there was the 13 year old girl who thought it was okay to rewrite my exact plot but with different names for the characters and with Harry working for artists, not as a tile installer. She had his summer job as "cleaning brushes" for these artists. I'm a professional artist. Fine art painters do not allow other people to clean their brushes (or if so, rarely, and then it has to be an apprentice or someone else expert in the artist's methods) because fine art brushes are very expensive and can easily be ruined. I made Harry a mosaic artist because I'm an artist and know how mosaics are done and how the pieces are marketed. I also believe Harry is good at seeing patterns in events and coming to conclusions, so why not put his pattern-seeing ability to artistic use? Anyway, that girl took her story down and hasn't stolen from me since then.

Then there came Griffin23 who stole Refiners and posted it as his own story ("Harry Potter and the Mysterious Ailment" rather than "The Refiner's Fire") on several sites, including HarryPotterFanfiction.com. My readers always alert me when such a thing is happening, but this clown posted that story to HPFF.com TWICE in less than a month, with no changes to what he'd posted before, not even to his screen name! He changed my chapter titles to synonyms of what I had, and made some other changes in various places, but everyone who read it knew it was my story. It took some doing, but the offending stories were finally removed from the sites where they were posted and Griffin23 faded into the Internet ether. Good riddance!

Then last night, I get a message from a reader that Refiner's was being posted on HPFF.com again, this time as a straight cut-and-paste but with the title changed to "Harry Potter and the Refiner's Fire" (the real title is "The Refiner's Fire"). The idiot posting it ("LFC DJE") said he had "received permission from the original author to upload it" -- HE DID NOT!!!!!!!! To add insult to injury, he misspelled "received" and "author"!!!! It took a couple of hours, but the story has been removed. (The site owners are cooperative about taking the stories down, thank goodness.) But to have the same story posted THREE TIMES on the SAME site in less than two months? ARGH!!!!!!!!!! (Note to LFC DJE and Griffin23 - don't touch my stories again!!!)

For those who've read my fanfiction stories - I'm normally a pretty nice person, but when you steal from me, I don't take it well at all. I have NEVER given ANYONE permission to post my stories ANYWHERE except for two people, one of whom posts my stories to FFA, SIYE and my Yahoo group for me, while the other handles the OWL site. I post to FFN and Schnoogle myself. These "helper elves" of mine have permission to upload my stories, but they're uploading my stories under MY NAME, not their own (bless them!!).

If you ever see one of my stories someplace with someone else's name on it, let me know, okay? I will not stand for this kind of thievery! I use ideas from my HP fanfics in my original novels (the ORIGINAL ideas are NOT JKR's so there's no problem with my reusing them!), and I will not allow anyone to steal my stories.

On a happier note: "Star Sons--Dawn of the Two" has been delayed a bit in publication, but I've seen a proof of it, and it's beautiful! What an amazing feeling to hold a real book in my hands and know that's MY story in there! SO cool! I expect it to be on Amazon.com by the end of January unless there's another glitch in the process!

Progress!!!

2007-12-18T17:56:00.000-05:00

Here's the final cover for "Star Sons"!!! I'm so excited! The real cover will have stronger colors, but isn't this gorgeous?!

The book designer will be sending the book to the printer in just a couple of days - soon I'll have a proof of the book in my hot little hands! YAY!

Writing novels is definitely a labor of love. I don't know that any monetary value could be put on the hours and hours and hours of effort that went into researching, writing, polishing, editing, polishing, editing again, etc. And then there was the agonizing wait to hear from those I'd asked to read it. Would they think it was any good? What would I need to change to make it better? What a relief it was when all of them liked the story and they didn't find huge problems with it! Yay!

I know very few authors make a profit with their novels, but it will be a thrill to have a real book of my novel! Can't wait!!

You can read a sample chapter here: http://www.whimsyhill.com/. Please leave comments when you read it!

What fun!!!!

2007-12-03T13:16:00.000-05:00

I uploaded the first chapter of my novel, Star Sons: Dawn of the Two (which will be published soon) to my HP Yahoo group and to my writing group, as well as to the publishing website (http://www.whspubs.com/). I was nervous as could be, exposing my "baby" to the world that way, but it's gotta get out there and be read if it's gonna be successful!! Imagine my delight when I got a bunch of responses very quickly, all cheering and delighted with it and wanting to know when and where they can buy it! YES! That's sweet music to my ears!!!!

The book's cover is being set up now - as soon as it's ready to go, the book will be printed! YIPPEE!!!!!!!! Can't wait to have it in my hands!!! Exciting times here!

It's a lot more work than it looks like . . .

2007-11-30T21:01:00.000-05:00

Getting a book published, that is. Yikes! I've gone through my novel close to thirty times now (I lost track a LONG time ago - it may be a lot more than that!), editing, polishing, proofreading, editing and polishing again, proofreading again, sending it to my group of readers and my copy editor for their input, editing/polishing/proofreading after input from each of them, etc. Then there's the proofreading after sending it to the typesetter. Thank goodness he's a patient man, because it's absolutely amazing how different the manuscript looks when it's typeset! I found errors that should've been caught in all the other proofreading and copy editing, which are being fixed, thanks to a kind-hearted typesetter. And today I sent him my final read-through. Once he fixes the few glitches I found (missing quote marks here and there - tiny things like that), it'll be done!

The BIGGEST headache to me has been coming up with a synopsis for the novel. I write long-form (novels) - short stuff is HARD for me! But with the help of a lot of writing friends, I finally managed to come up with one that's 150 words (which was my goal) and seems to be pretty eye-catching. Hopefully it will intrigue people enough that they'll want to buy my book! Telling the story is the easy part (124,000 words later, I'm a happy camper with a told story!). SELLING the story is HARD (synopsis, queries, whatever else - argh) - for me, at least.

Today I had the very great pleasure of looking at my second novel's manuscript for the first time in a very long time. I wrote the bulk of it (57,000 words) during Nanowrimo last year. It's now about 90,000 words and finished in first draft form. Now I can polish and refine it. I can't wait!

I'm supposed to be working on a short story for an anthology too. I need to get my first novel out of my head a bit so I can work with completely different characters, plot, setting, etc., and in short form, which isn't as easy for me as novels. (My second novel is a continuation of the series I started with the first one.) Various things about the short story intrigue me a lot - I just have to get immersed in it to get it going. With "Star Sons" out of my hair for a little while, anyway, hopefully I can immerse myself in the story of Robin and Cricket (Robin being a young woman, Cricket a cat with a tale to tell).

Watch for "Star Sons: Dawn of the Two" to appear on Amazon.com in a few weeks!! YIPPEE!!

Of Nano and GREAT readers!

2007-11-17T11:19:00.000-05:00

You can see from the count thingie that I'm not doing Nano this year (and have been too busy to remove the count thingie from my blog). I'm busy proofreading my novel, "Star Sons: Dawn of the Two" which should be published in January, with a possible "soft publication" in December, yay!! So between that and all the traveling I've been doing with my art, I haven't had time to think about new novels. I am working on a new short story for an anthology, but it's only 2700 words so far and nowhere near the end.

As for "great readers" -- the folks on my Yahoo site (you know who you are!) http://groups.yahoo.com/groups/HPRefinersFire are the BEST in the WORLD! They've spotted a second instance (in a few months!) of someone copying my Harry Potter novel, "The Refiner's Fire" nearly word for word and posting it as their own work on various sites! And then when I couldn't get the reporting system on those sites to work for non-techie me, they did it for me! Bless their hearts!! They take EXCELLENT care of me!! And I'll be repaying them the way they like best by beginning the upload of my latest HP story, "Now and Forever" in December. Thanks again, guys!! You rock!!

The Friesian Extravaganza!

2007-11-02T15:53:00.000-04:00

The Friesian Extravaganza is now over (whew!) and I'm about to leave for Equine Affaire in W. Springfield Mass. (if you get up there, I'll be in the Better Living Center, booth 517-518 - come say "Howdy!"). The Friesian show was my best show EVER! The first night, before it was unveiled (!), my Artist's Proof of the "Friesian Elegance" bronze was sold! And the same lady bought two more bronzes! I had a few other sales that weekend too, and several folks interested in commissioning portraits of their horses, or in talking their spouses into buying one or more of my existing bronzes. YAY! I could use more shows like THAT one!! It was great fun, too!!

The photo to the left shows me carrying the Concours d'Elegance trophy (which features my bronze "Friesian Elegance") away after the awards ceremony in which it was presented for the first time. It will reside at the FHANA headquarters at the Kentucky Horse Park, Lexington KY, with this year's winner's name inscribed on the first of the fifty name plates around the trophy base (the small plates you can see in this picture). I wound up carrying it all the way around the arena to get to the vendor area, where I had to wrap it up for its trip to its new home in Kentucky. On the way around the ring, I stopped and let people look at it as much as they wanted. That was great fun for me!

I had such a good time at the show, and my customer who commissioned the bronze was kind enough to let me ride one of his horses! I'd told him I wanted to ride in a carriage behind Nanning (his stallion) or just sit on a Friesian, or be led around like a pony ride, I didn't care. This was my best-ever chance to get on a Friesian and I wanted the chance, if at all possible. Imagine my absolute JOY when his wife and trainer came to my booth and his wife said, "I understand you want to ride a Friesian? We'll be ready for you in 15 minutes." YAY! Long story short, I not only got to sit on a gorgeous Friesian mare, but I also got to do whatever I wanted with her! So I walked, trotted and cantered her and had a BLAST! The pics aren't very good because of us being in an indoor arena, but here's a pic of me having an absolutely wonderful time on this lovely mare, who had just won the Friesian World Championship in Intro Dressage! (Good thing it wasn't a higher level of dressage since I don't ride dressage - I ride hunt seat and western!)

A bunch of folks who'd watched me sculpting or talked to me in my booth, as well as some vendors I'd gotten friendly with, came out to watch me ride. They asked if I was going to buy a Friesian after riding this one, and I said no. I have a wonderful Quarter Horse (Jack) who rides just beautifully and still has things to teach me, and he's PAID for, and he doesn't have all the "high maintenance" of a Friesian's long mane and feathers. He's my "forever" horse - I expect us to grow old together. But I sure did enjoy riding this Friesian! What a blast!

On the writing front, I'm still working with the book designer to get the layout done and proofread. It's a meticulous, painstaking process I had no idea would take so long. I have people champing at the bit to get my book now, and I still can't tell them when it will be published for certain! But it will be as perfect as possible when it is published!

While at the Friesian show, I started a sculpture of a small horse to be about the size of "Maestoso" (Shown in a marbled patina - also available in black). I thought the new piece would make a nice "pair" with Maestoso. I had it posed with its head turned the opposite way, reaching as if it needed to scratch its shoulder. Well, the sculpture started to bore me, because I'd started with no real plan, just grabbed some pics in a hurry, whipped together an armature, just to have something to work on at the show. That's not a good way to start a sculpture! Then suddenly I thought, "He's not scratching his shoulder - he's got an itchy wingpit!" So the piece developed wings! Well, wires where wings will go, anyway! As soon as I started putting the wires in place (after cutting out a big chunk of a well-developed body so I could get to the main armature wires), I found myself dancing and singing "You can do magic, bump-ba-dum" while putting the wires in place! And that isn't even a favorite song! And then I laughed out loud, amused that I was singing a song about magic while creating a Pegasus!

I planned a Pegasus years ago and got permission to take photos and measurements of a magnificent Andalusian stallion, Alborozo, who lives on the http://www.kilimanjaroranch.com/ in Malibu (I sure hope they came through the fires okay!). When I went out to measure him, they were having fires in the Simi Valley, just across the mountain from the farm. The pictures were made with the stallion's smoke-gray mane billowing in the gray, smoky air, with white ash falling on his white coat and all over us, too. I had a different Pegasus pose planned but this one appeals to me, and why not make more than one? :D So the new piece will be called "Feathers Itch" or "Itchy Feathers" - I'm not sure which.

A fun tie-in to my writing is the fact that in the second book of the series, my young mages are given winged horses, and the older brother's horse is named "Feather." I wasn't even thinking about "Star Sons" when I came up with this Pegasus idea, but it all ties in nicely!

The really cool thing was that when I stood back and looked at what I'd created after attaching the wires for the wings, I saw that there are heart-shaped formed by the turn of the horse's head and one wing top; by the two wing-tops considered together from the front, and again from the back; and by the swishing tail and the left wing-top! It's a very very cool thing to discover something nifty like that in a piece that just "happens"!

Anyway, as usual, my art and writing are closely tied together! I'll post some pics of Feather as he progresses. I'll be working on him at Equine Affaire next week.

This 'n' That

2007-10-22T13:50:00.000-04:00

Alas, December Boys was gone before I was able to see it. At least the DVD will be available Dec. 11 - the same day as "Order of the Phoenix" is released on DVD! A friend of mine said it will be a Dan DVD weekend, LOL!

In better news, my carriage piece is bronze now and is SPECTACULAR! Even if I do say so myself! The trophy will be awarded this coming Saturday night. Here's a picture of it taken at the beautiful Lake Wallowa in the Wallowa Valley, Hells Canyon area, near Joseph, Oregon. My foundry is in Enterprise, Oregon, just a few miles away, and we were blessed with this spectactular autumn day after the first bronze (the trophy, which is actually #2 of the edition of 15) was completed, so we went out to find a beautiful place to take some pics of it. My customer is really happy with the piece (he's only seen pics so far - he'll see the real thing tomorrow, actually!), which is GREAT!

The picture to the right shows the detail in the sculpture, which is 1/9 life size. I sculpted in all those tiny buckles and the patineur buffed them off to show the natural pale gold of the bronze. He even managed to paint the browband red, a detail so tiny, I didn't think he'd be able to do it! And the bit looks like a real Liverpool bit - I don't remember ever seeing a small sculpture like this that had a real Liverpool bit-shank on the horse rather than a simple ring snaffle. Kudos to Brian, the metal chaser/fabricator who went to such great lengths to get the details as accurate as I could possibly hope for, and Bart, whose patina work is, as usual, fabulous!

As for writing - my novel, "Star Sons: Dawn of the Two" went to the book designer today after I did final revisions and made formatting changes to the manuscript. Hopefully, I'll have a published novel soon!!

"December Boys" now in theaters!

2007-09-15T10:50:00.000-04:00

Totally off-topic here, but I'll get back to art and/or writing soon: Those of you who know me know I'm a HUGE "Harry Potter" fan and a huge Dan Radcliffe fan as well! Dan's first non-Harry Potter film opened in LA and NYC on September 14.

"December Boys" is an independent Australian film shot on Kangaroo Island, Australia, an absolutely beautiful location. The film was shot between "Goblet of Fire" and "Order of the Phoenix" but was delayed in release due to the problems of getting distribution set up that indie films face.

It's a coming of age film about four orphans who are given the gift of a month at the beach for their birthdays (all in December, hence the "December Boys" title). Dan plays "Maps" who's the oldest and kind of a big brother to the others. The boys' close relationships are challenged when they learn that a couple wants to adopt one of them, resulting in the boys (all but Maps) competing to be the one adopted.

Maps experiences his first kiss, first love affair (with the pretty blond in the poster), moons somebody (and Dan says "that's the geniune Radcliffe a**" not a double, LOL!) and heartache in the film. It looks like a sweet, entertaining film.

The problem is - being an indie film, it's opening in "selected cities" which means I'm going to have to drive 100 miles to Cincinnati to see it!!!! But I will! So all you guys who are in those "selected cities" need to go see "December Boys" so it will open wider (in more cities) so I don't have to drive so far to see it! :D

To get back to art: Dan came into his fortune at the age of 17, although nobody believed it because he didn't go out and buy anything expensive that anyone noticed. In interviews for "December Boys," he revealed that he did buy something when he got his money - a painting by Jim Hodges. I'd never heard of Hodges until then, but I've researched him online, and I'm glad I found out about him. His work is gorgeous! Do a search on him and check it out. (Here's a place to start: http://www.crggallery.com/artists/jim-hodges/ - follow the links to see more of his work and read about his career.) He's a sculptor as well as a painter, and his work (that I've seen so far, anyway) is light and airy, delicate and elegant - poetic, really. Since Dan's a poet, I'm not surprised he likes Hodges's work. I'm glad Dan (indirectly) introduced me to it!

Click on the link above to get to the "December Boys" website and find out when and where it's opening. Happy movie-going!

Writing Stuff and Art Stuff

2007-09-14T15:16:00.000-04:00

I've been too busy to update my blog for ages! Sorry about that!

Writing stuff: The book designer sent me his work on my original novel, "Star Sons: Dawn of the Two" to proofread. It's appalling how many mistakes I've found, nearly all of them glitches caused by Word being Word (not the book designer's fault). Argh. Paragraphs jumping up into the paragraph above, blank lines showing up just randomly (fortunately without deleting any text!) and so on, things that confuse the book designer so the section breaks wind up in the wrong places, etc. So I'm having to proof it very carefully to make sure everything's as close to perfect as I can get it!

Writing tip of the day #1: If you write in Microsoft Word, save your file frequently, but when you get to about ten saves, rename the file. Apparently, the more you save the file to the same name, the glitchier it gets. Kudos to my daughter for sharing this hint with me!

I've been busy writing a new Harry Potter chaptered fanfic that I promised my readers. It was unbelievably hard to get back into Harry's world after developing my own magical world, but once I got into it, it was just as much fun as ever to write. I'll include ordering information for "Star Sons" with each chapter as I upload it, so those who already like my writing will know how to order my original novel. It will be a handy marketing tool!

Writing tip of the day #2: Create a file for each of these categories:

*Characters (including their names, the meaning of their names if significant, what they look like, what's "important" about them, their relationship to other characters, their abilities, quirks, etc.)
*Settings (including whatever's important about these settings, locations, etc.)
*Incantations/Spells/Science of your world (if applicable)
*Anything else that seems important to you.

Also, start a "chapter outline" file, with an outline or paragraph or list of what happens in that chapter, who's involved, clues or "red herrings" you've planted, resolutions to clues from previous chapters, etc.

Keep these files updated every day, if you can! When you can't remember when little Sally actually broke her arm, you can look it up easily.

On to art news: The Friesian trophy ("Elegance") I've been working on is being cast in bronze as I write this! We'll be going to Oregon to supervise the finish work in a couple of weeks. "Finish work" involves how the parts of the carriage are put together, and the creation and attaching of all the little pieces that have to be made by hand for each sculpture, such as the bits, the driving lines, the terrets on the harness, the tugs, etc. I'm having three cast now, and the foundry workers will take notes and LOTS of pictures as we go along. Then when I order more in the future, they'll know how to finish them without me there. You can see that sculpture here: http://www.thesculptedhorse.com/elegance.html It will be awarded at the Friesian Extravaganza at the Clark County Fairgrounds, Springfield OH, the last Saturday in October. I will also have my booth there in the vendor area - come by and say "Howdy!"

Someone just ordered a perpetual trophy for the US Dressage Federation using my sculpture "Frolic" (http://www.thesculptedhorse.com/frolic.html). It will be awarded at the USDF Convention at the end of November. Detail and finishing work on both of these trophies has kept me very busy!

Once both of these pieces are awarded, they will go back to the Kentucky Horse Park to live in their respective organizations' headquarters, "Elegance" at the Friesian Horse Asso. of North America (FHANA) headquarters, "Frolic" at the USDF headquarters. With "Harmony" (http://www.thesculptedhorse.com/harmony.html) already in the USDF Hall of Fame, that makes THREE pieces I have at the Kentucky Horse Park! "Harmony" is just on loan (unless someone buys it and donates it to USDF), but "Elegance" and "Frolic" will be there forever! COOL!

I've nearly finished the sculpture of my husband that goes with "Just Trying to Help" (http://www.thesculptedhorse.com/trying.html, but the trophy work and proofreading "Star Sons" has put that sculpture on the back burner for the time being. I only have to finish his right hand and his paintbrush, then clean him up, and he'll be ready to send! But the delay isn't really a bad thing. I was afraid I'd have to send it with dry ice and overnight express, which costs a fortune, due to the heat wave in both Ohio and Oregon, but it's much cooler in both states now, so shipping can be done the normal way. Yay!

That's enough blogging for now! I hope some of my rambling has been helpful to you!

Catching up. . .

2007-06-30T15:16:00.000-04:00

I've been so busy, I've never finished the "final" page for my horse and carriage sculpture (well, not yet, anyway). Here's what I was working on for so long!

This picture shows the piece as "assembled" as I can get it for now. The shafts for the carriage are aluminum rods that have been sanded (on a belt sander) to make them square rather than round, and have been bent into the proper shapes for the shafts. The rest of the harness (the tugs, shaft loops, etc. - the stuff that connects the horse to the carriage) are simply a stack of wax strips right now, or wax with bits of clay on them to form buckles, etc. The driving lines (which are white rope in reality) will be made at the foundry.

Before you ask, yes, the man and carriage are proportional to the horse. The driver isn't a huge man, but the horse is big and kind of dwarfs him. The horse is 16.3 hands - there are 4" to a hand - at the withers (the part of the horse where the mane ends, just in front of that second strap across this horse's back). The carriage in real life has 54" high wheels, which are 6" high here - 1/9 lifesized, as is the rest of the sculpture. The wheels were made by my basemaker, Diane Soper of Sistermaide Woodworks (http://www.sistermaide.com), who makes reproduction spinning wheels as well as sculpture bases.

The bit is made from copper wire (the flat part is flattened copper wire) which took my hubby three nights of trying (and melting at least three bits!) before he got them soldered properly. I'd already given up on soldering them, since it took a propane torch rather than an electric soldering iron, and I'm not very good with torch soldering.

The horse is 10" high at the top of his neck and the whole piece about 21" long total. The detail on the man's face is so tiny, I was using micro tools, a toothpick and a straight pin to try to sculpt the details!

You can see this sculpture, called "Elegance," as a work-in-progress on these pages: http://thesculptedhorse.com/progress.html (scroll down to see the horse) and http://thesculptedhorse.com/progress2.html to see how I made the carriage (and there were no instructions - I had to figure it out for myself, argh).

I've just finished teaching a week-long sculpture/mold-making/resin casting workshop at the K-12 Gallery in Dayton, Ohio. It was fun but also a LOT of hard work!! The kids were great, and so were my helpers, but I was exhausted every evening when I got home, so, unlike my usual practice, I didn't get anything done other than cleaning stalls and feeding the animals. It's nice to get back to my usual routine!

On the writing front, I'm currently writing content for my book website, http://www.whspubs.com which may or may not be "live" when you check it. My web designer and I keep messing with it, trying to get it "right" before officially launching it. I'm currently working on a couple of "Writer's Tips" articles.

I'm also doing the final polish on Star Sons 1: Dawn of the Two before sending it to my book designer. I got the manuscript back from the copy editor about a week ago, but I've been teaching since then and haven't had the time or energy to do the revisions (all very minor - just formatting and typo-type things, mostly) until today. I hope to get it off to the book designer very soon!

And that's the news from here for today! Have a wonderful 4th of July!

Jim Baen's Universe magazine

2007-06-30T14:49:00.000-04:00

Someone (Hi, Sam!) suggested I try Jim Baen's Universe magazine. I recently read the October 2006 issue, and enjoyed it greatly! There are stories there in mind-boggling variety. My particular favorites were Mike Resnick's "All the Things You Are," an intriguing "love" story, and S. Andrew Swann's "A Time to Kill" about a time-traveling sniper who does his job magnificently well, but with horribly unforeseen consequences. The stories range in locale from the deepest reaches of space to the American frontier, in time from the distant past to the unforeseeable future. Fascinating stuff!

As an artist myself, I was particularly impressed with the beautiful illustrations for each story. They not only enhanced the story, but gave me even more to think about as I studied the artist's interpretation of the story.

This issue includes stories by well-known authors as well as first-time authors, a "classic" ("A Matter of Fact" by Rudyard Kipling) and two serial installments, non-fiction articles and columns.

You can read Jim Baen's Universe, which was the last project Baen started before his death last year, at http://www.baens-universe.com/. Check it out! If you enjoy SF/Fantasy, I believe you'll enjoy it!

WHOOOO-HOOOOOOO!

2007-06-21T15:04:00.000-04:00

Doing the squealy circle dance of joy here!!!!!!!!

Every book or resource I've read on self-publishing, self-promotion, etc., says you should get "quotes" from VIP types to put on your book cover or inside the front pages of the book, to use in promotion, etc. I don't know that many "famous" people. The movie actor I know is recovering from two hip replacements and probably is in no mood to read fiction. But a girl I went to college with - the only college friend I'm still in touch with - is the daughter of the man who was a very "high up" politician in the late 60s/early 70s. So I asked my friend if her dad liked to read (yes) - did he like fantasy (no, he never reads anything but historical biographies and that kind of thing).

Long story short, he agreed to read my novel despite the fact that he's not interested in magic and has NEVER read a fantasy novel. I sent it to him last week, he got it two days ago and he called me this morning! He said I disrupted his busy schedule because he COULDN'T PUT IT DOWN! He said it was a great read, a "gripping" story, and a real page-turner! He couldn't wait to see what happened next!! WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!! From someone who doesn't read fantasy, that's HUGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm so excited!!

Doing the squealy circle dance here! Joy Joy Joy!!!!

And since it's been so long since I've posted, I'll catch you up. I've converted the ISBN numbers I had left over after publishing my sculpting book ("Sculpting 101: A Primer for the Self-taught Artst") to the new 13 digit ISBN. I've got everything in place for my publishing business now, AND I have a group of authors (from one of my writing boards) who are working on an anthology that I'll edit and publish (IF their work meets my standards, which I believe it will -this is an "invitation only" group and they're all good writers). So now I'm busy trying to get things organized to publish things for more than just ME - that means contracts, etc. I've joined the PMA (an international group of small publishers) which means I'll be able to have books in BookExpo and the London Book Fair f0r a reasonable fee. I've been approved by the Library of Congress for their cataloging system (just need a final page count, which I'll have after I get the book back from the copy editor and book designer, before I can finalize the stuff with the Library of Congress). I've got a lot of other things in place too, but my brain is so buzzed about this wonderful review, I can't think! :) And sorry, budding writers, but I'm not accepting submissions from other authors at this time. When I'm ready to accept more submissions, I'll post it on my publishing business website (http://www.whspubs.com/, currently under construction).

In other GREAT news, I finished the horse and carriage sculpture today, YIPPEE!!!!!!! I'll post some pics here once I get the horse cleaned up and get the final pictures taken.

Sorry I haven't posted more often - but I've been a busy lady! :D

Well, I've been busy. . . .

2007-05-16T19:46:00.000-04:00

In early April, when I had my art booth at Equine Affaire in Columbus, Ohio, I got a commission to sculpt a horse pulling a two-wheeled carriage (with a driver in the carriage, of course) which will be used as a world championship trophy! I normally take about three months to do a single horse sculpture, and the foundry takes two to four months to cast that horse in bronze, but this trophy has to be awarded in October, so I have to HUSTLE to get the original made and shipped to the foundry! So that's one of the many reasons I haven't kept this blog up-to-date - I've been slaving away in my studio getting three months of work done in about one month's time! The horse is nearly finished (WHEW!), and I'll be starting on the carriage in the next day or two, hopefully (I'm waiting for the client to send me some measurements so I can get started).

On the writing front, I've been working on a new Harry Potter story to keep my HP readers happy, and letting both novels "rest" so I can read them with fresh eyes when I get back to them. I sent out queries to six agents back in March, all of whom stated on their websites that they report in six weeks. Each also accepted "partials" (a few pages up to 50 pages of the novel), which is why I chose these agents to contact first. I figure the novel will sell itself better than any query letter of mine! I heard back from three of the six, and have yet to hear from the other three, which seems rather odd to me (but maybe they're just swamped, I dunno). It's been way more than six weeks now.

The published writers on the Critters news group said to allow six months to hear back from them, but I'm beginning to have second thoughts, thanks to one of my betas. He suggested I try to benefit from the Harry Potter insanity that's coming this summer (due to film 5 and book 7 coming out within a week of each other!) and get my book out there ASAP. He thinks my HP fans will flock to buy my book now while they're waiting for Harry's next film and last book. So I'm researching self-publishing now, just to see what's involved in self-publishing fiction.

I self-published a non-fiction book, "Sculpting 101: A Primer for the Self-taught Artist" a few years ago (and that edition is nearly sold out - I need to revise and reprint it!), so I'm a "registered" publisher already, and know how to get the ISBN number and get my book listed on "Books in Print" as well as submitting the copyright application and a copy of the book itself to the Library of Congress. I did all of that for the sculpting book. I've had good art sales this year, so I can afford to print a certain number of books if I go the route I used for the sculpting book, which means shipping every book myself rather than having a Print-On-Demand (POD) company handle all that work for me (which is WAY expensive!!). So now I have a query into the local digital printer who did my sculpting book to find out what it will cost to print my novel.

I've spent a lot of today revising the formatting of my novel to a 6" x 9" "trade paperback" format and cleaning up some of the other formatting stuff that appears in a draft of a novel rather than in the finished book - and I'm only up to chapter 2, argh!! It's painstaking, annoying, frustrating work to reformat a 124,000 word book by hand, but that's how I have to do it. I can't do a "search and replace" because every instance of whatever needs to be changed is different!! For instance, the "internal monologues" (thoughts) had to be formatted with an underscore _before and after_ the internal monologue for proper "submission" formatting (or so I've read and been told numerous places). In the printed book, the "before and after" shown between underscores would be printed as italics. Apparently it's easier for a typesetter to find underscores than italics. Also, the existing format (the way I wrote it originally) is in 12 point Courier New, which is not a fun font to read in a book. I've changed the font to Bookman Antigua, which is attractive as well as easy to read, and I'm making the chapter headings in a different font to make them more attractive, as well (well, I AM an artist, after all!). I have to delete the extra space between paragraphs, indent each paragraph three spaces, and center the * * * that denote a scene change (they didn't have to be centered before). Argh. . . talk about a labor of love!!!! *sigh*

That same beta suggested I check into e-book publishing too, but I don't know if I want to go that route. I've done some research already, and found a software that SAYS it encrypts the files so they can't be pirated or shared, but who knows?? That's too much for me to think about right now!

The good news is, a friend of mine who's a *fabulous* painter (Elin Pendleton, www.elinart.com) has agreed to do the cover art! Now we just have to figure out what image would make the best impression as cover art! I have some ideas, but I've asked my betas to give me their ideas, as well. I may ask a few more folks for their opinions before I'm done. But getting Elin, who's a truly exquisite artist, to do the cover art is a real COUP!!!! And she's excited about the book and believes I'll make a great success of it! From her mouth to God's ear, that's all I can say!!!! LOL!

My horses are home from winter boarding at last, so some of my time is being spent doing barn work and taking care of my horses as well as riding. And that's on top of doing yard work, sculpting (of course), keeping up with orders (I just shipped two trophies to Kent, Ohio, and the week before shipped six trophies to a race track in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada! And I have fine art orders to fill, too - only one left to fill, but that piece hasn't arrived from the foundry yet).

On top of all that, I'm teaching a sculpture workshop at the K-12 Gallery in Dayton, Ohio, in late June. I need to do some preparation work for that. Then I have a sculpture show in Botkins, Ohio in July. By that time, the horse and carriage piece should be at the foundry and being cast, so at least that pressure will be gone. In the middle of all this, I have the Harry Potter story to finish and get to the betas, and the first novel to re-format, re-read and decide if I'm going to self-publish it, and the preliminary beta jobs on the second novel to read through and work with. Sleep????? Who has time!!!!!!! :D

It's been a while! Whew!

2007-04-01T23:59:00.000-04:00

Wow, I can't believe it's been so long since I posted to this blog! Asad wants me to write about my recent trip to Maui. It was wonderful! Ten days in paradise, where we rode horses up and down a steep mountain (at the Menendez Ranch - you can find them online, and they take VERY good care of you!), rode a helicopter over Maui (can't think of the helicopter company's name, but the pilot was Al and he was terrific - I'll post the name when I remember it), rode two catamarans, both from the Trilogy company (they're the BEST!), rode the Atlantis tourist submarine (our second time to do so - still quite a treat!), toured Lanai with Bridget, our tour guide (who's very funny!) and just had a great time in general!

My hubby and I don't swim well and I'm afraid of deep water, so when we went snorkeling, I lost my nerve while walking into the water. I told our catamaran captain (Captain Chuck, who's from Zanesville Ohio!) and he said he'd take care of us. He had a guy from the crew named Orren (I hope I spelled that right!) tow us out to the reef with a surfboard! Orren dove under the board and helped me with my flippers, and towed that surfboard around for about an hour, I think. He was wonderful, and we got the snorkeling experience while feeling SAFE (we did have waist floatie thingies, but they didn't make me feel as safe as hanging on to that surf board!)

Trilogy catamarans are wonderfully fun, and we had a great time both times we went out. We saw lots of whales up close and personal, including mother and calf pairs that breeched in tandem, a mother that spent a long time slapping her tail, her pectorals, breeching, sticking her head up to look around, and in general showing her baby all the things whales do on the surface - and then the baby tried them too. COOL! When we were sailing (the engines were turned off), a pair of adult humpbacks followed us for quite a while, and another breeched right beside our boat, maybe 25 feet off the side! By law, you're supposed to stay 100 yards from the whales, but if the whales come to see you, it's hard to outrun them!

We saw lots of shows, too, and wandered through tons of shops. One fun thing was that I'd bought a turquoise-blue pendant that's a paua (sp?) shell with resin "coral" with pearls and rhinestones embedded in it. I got this necklace here in Dayton, Ohio, at a discount store, just to have something bright, colorful and inexpensive to wear in Hawaii. Imagine my SHOCK at how many shop clerks, expensive jewelers and just people in general *raved* about how beautiful my necklace was! (I got it at Stein Mart, for $20!). That was fun!

I didn't get any story ideas in Maui - at least, I don't think I did - but I had a wonderfully relaxing time. I have gotten story ideas since returning home, including several today while observing people at a restaurant where my hubby and I had lunch. I don't know what story it's inspired, but a woman who had lunch with a big white rabbit (a stuffed rabbit wearing an Easter bonnet, who was given a baby seat, a bib and some crackers by the servers!) certainly seemed to be screaming to have a story written about her! LOL!

Meanwhile, my second novel has been through one beta and my Brit-picker so far, and a second beta is sending in his comments in pieces (which are quite useful!). All of them (so far) have said the second novel is "a good read" YAY! What surprises me is that they haven't reacted to what is truly a first draft as if it's a first draft, except for marking a few typos (I did write the majority of this book while riding in a truck, y'know. The fact that it's readable at all is pretty much a miracle!) I have a ficlet beginning to bubble in the back of my brain to keep my HP fans happy, a lot of whom are writing me that they're re-reading my HP novels online and enjoying them for the second or, in one case, hundredth time (maybe she was exaggerating a bit????). And one of my readers sent me a note saying it was the anniversary of the last chapter uploaded to my second HP novel. Boy, these folks are so sweet to pay such attention to my novels!! Now if I can get an agent, a publisher and get my original novels out there, maybe these HP readers wil buy them!! A lot of them have said they want to, or asked where they can buy them. As soon as these books are available, I'll have ordering info on every site hosting my stories and will activiate my "namesake" website, which will be my writing website. I'll post info in this blog, too.

I'm still waiting to hear from some of the agents I queried a few weeks ago. I won't send a second batch of queries out until I've heard from all of those in the first batch. I'm enough of an optimist to hope that someone in this first batch will LOVE my story and take me on as a client!! Keep your fingers crossed that such a thing actually happens, and SOON! Thanks!

On getting published

2007-02-06T11:39:00.000-05:00

Someone on my Yahoo group asked me how to get published. Well, I'm about to try for that myself, but I've done a lot of research on it, so following are my thoughts on going from idea to publication. Since I'm only published as a newspaper/magazine freelancer, I'm sharing my research, not my experience. When I have fiction publishing experience to share, I will certainly do so!

There are LOADS of books out there on how to get published. The best thing you can do to learn about writing and publishing is join a writers' group online where pro's and wannabe-pros (like me!) both post. Critters.org is a good site if you write sf/f/horror (mine are fantasy, so I fit there), but earning critiques there takes a long time. I use www.notebored.com for my crit group, Hatrack River Writers Workshop (Orson Scott Card's site) for the lessons there and the message boards (mostly the boards) http://www.hatrack.com/writers/index.shtml. Liberty Hall is a good site, but it's invitation only (I'm a member but don't participate there much - too busy, but it's a good site). All the sites I'm involved with are for sf/f/h writers. There are similar sites for romance writers, children's writers, etc. You just have to search for them.

The first step to geting published is to write, write, write, then revise, revise, revise (*way* more than three times!!). Set the story aside for a month or two and find something else to occupy your mind so that, when you look at the story again, you'll see it with fresh eyes. Then revise, revise revise AGAIN! After it's as good as you can get it, ask people whose opinions you truly respect to read and critique your writing. Be sure the people you ask like the genre in which you're writing - don't ask those who like techno-thrillers to read a fantasy novel, for instance. Your loved ones -- spouse and children -- may refuse to read it because they're afraid they'll hurt your feelings if they don't like it - which is why nobody in my family has read any of my fiction, *sigh* (and they're into techno-thrillers instead of fantasy, so that's another problem).

Don't argue with your readers, learn from them. Every opinion has SOME validity, even if it doesn't make sense to you (if it doesn't, ask them to clarify their meaning, to give specific examples from your story and perhaps they will also be willing to suggest ways to rewrite the problem areas).

Go through as many critiques as it takes for you to get to the point where there is very little you can find to change in the manuscript (I had 3 betas, my Brit-picker, two critique groups and two or three other folks critique mine). When you think it's really, truly finished, see if your most vocal critic will read it one more time to help you find any leftover plot holes, words used too frequently, etc.

While he's working on that, you can start researching agents you want to query. If it's a novel, those who know the industry suggest you try to find an agent first, rather than a publisher. An agent can get you through doors that you'll never get into by yourself. You can meet agents at writing conventions, many of which are sf/f/h conventions as well as writing conventions.

There are guide books published each year by Writer's Digest books and others that list both agents and publishers open to new writers. The 2007 Guide to Literary Agents is my next research assignment, once I get the polishing on "Star Sons" a bit further along (no, wait - I can do it today, since I'm polishing chapter 10 right now). Some agents want you to send the first five pages, others the first five chapters, a rare few the first hundred pages. When I have the first hundred pages polished again (I'm nearly there now), I'll start sending out queries to agents, ten at a time.

www.AgentQuery.com is a good site that has up-to-date lists of agents and tells what they're looking for. Jeff Herman has an annual guide to agents that's really nice because they answer questionnaires that tell their other interests, such as favorite films, which can help you get to know them better before approaching them (so you can do a better job of choosing who to query).

I've read many times that it's a good idea to break into publishing by creating a name for yourself by selling short stories. I'm not very good at writing short stories - I tend to think in "long form" - so I haven't tried that route. I do write articles for magazines and newspapers - I'm working on some now to publicize my daughter's new farm (a training/boarding facility that features educational clinics for riders - www.dancinghorsefarmoh.com), but short stories just don't seem to flow from my fingers all that well. It's a good idea to try them first if you can write them.

Query letters are difficult to master, IMO. The query letter has to catch the eye but be professional-looking and SHORT. A synopsis is also hard for me to write, as is a "blurb" (a one-paragraph explanation of the story). But those are all things you need to learn how to do.

All that said - hang out in writers' forums. Participate in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month - nanowrimo.org, I think), or at least read the forums. Read every book you can find on story, structure, character, dialog, plot, scene, description, etc. Read every book you can find on every aspect of writing and submitting your novel. There is a "Complete Idiots' Guide to Publishing Your Novel" that explains the process in simple language, and many others that are just as good. Learn to love spending time at B&N or Borders browsing the writing books! Subscribe to Writers Digest (www.writersdigest.com) and check out their book club, as well. WD covers everything from freelance articles to memoirs to poetry to screenplays to short stories and novels, and has books in the book club that are tremendously helpful for any form of writing.

Beware of vanity presses and POD (print-on-demand) places if you want to be published "for real." There are two distribution companies in the US that distribute books to all the big chain stores. Ingrams is one of these, and I can't think of the other, sorry! I've read in articles and on several forums that PoD places and vanity presses (both of which involve the writer paying to have the book printed) cannot get their books into the chain bookstores (Barnes & Noble, Borders, Waldenbooks, Books-A-Million, etc.) or even WalMart-type stores. So you'll have a garage full of books unless you can talk your family and friends into buying them or do a lot of SERIOUS marketing on your own. (To be fair - there are POD and vanity press success stories such as the "Soup for the Soul" books, but those are rare.)

Bookstores won't deal with distributors who won't take returned books (those that haven't sold in a certain amount of time), which is why they deal pretty much exclusively with Ingrams and that other place (darned swiss-cheese memory! *sigh*) POD and vanity presses won't take returned books.

POD books are fine for those with a small niche market - I did that for my "how to" book on sculpting ("Sculpting 101: A Primer for the Self-taught Artist" which, like "real" published books, has an ISBN number and UPC code). My art business (Whimsy Hill Studio) is listed as a "publisher" in all the places that matter. I didn't bother to try to place the book with a real publisher nor did I worry about distributing it through Ingrams, since it has such a small niche market. I sell it from my website (www.thesculptedhorse.com) and in my booth at shows. I also wholesale it to art teachers and sculpture supply stores, including the largest one in the US (as far as I know), The Compleat Sculptor in NYC. That's good distribution for such a book, and I make a tidy profit from sales. I actually need to revise it and do a second printing - I'm almost out of the first edition. But that kind of thing, church cookbooks and family memoirs are pretty much all PoD and vanity presses are good for if you're serious about being a PUBLISHED author, as I am. (And you can't count such "publication" on a writing resume - the pros in the field know who the PoD publishers are and will give no credance to such "credentials.")

Once your novel is as good as it can be, print it out and edit it again. You'll be surprised what jumps out at you when the novel is on paper rather than on a computer screen.

Once you narrow down which agents you want to query, find out how the agent wants to be queried (that's what AgentQuery.com and those books are for, to give up up-to-date names and addresses of agents who are LOOKING for new writers!) Print your novel out in the proper format (do some research - I don't have to tell you *everything* LOL! That can be another post sometime anyway) and send a fresh, clean, crisp copy (not your ONLY copy!) of however many pages they want (if any), along with your query letter, etc. and a self-addressed-stamped-envelope for the agency's response. Then cross your fingers that you get a good response!

Oh, another thing to do before querying is to go to a bookstore and look at books similar to yours. Look in the "acknowlegements" for each one (not all of them will have them, but mine includes this group, my betas, and the others who've helped me get my novel into publishable form). Find out who the agent is for the writers whose books are similar to yours. Then look in the guidebooks to see if that agent is taking new writers and query them, since you know they like work similar to yours.

If an agent asks for more of your manuscript (and you do NOT copyright your manuscript!! That's very amateurish. No agent or publisher is going to rip off your story), send them exactly what they ask for (but if they ask for the first five pages, for instance, and the chapter ends on page 6, go ahead and send page 6 - they'll accept that). After that, make sure you find a lawyer to go over the contract you're offered (if you're so lucky!) before signing it, and you're in business!

A reputable agent will not charge you a reading fee or any other fees up front. Once you have a contract, they may charge an "office fee" for copying, etc., but you shouldn't have to pay anything else. Agents are like commissioned salesmen - they make their money by making sales, not by charging writers fees. If, in your research, you run across an agent who charges a reading fee or other fees, don't query him. That's what all the pros say, and I think it's good advice.

If you're lucky enough to find an agent, and he's good enough to find you a publisher, the publisher should put you together with an in-house editor who may make suggestions about your story. Listen to the editor - he knows what works in the real world of publishing. But remember, too, that it's YOUR story. If you question something the editor says, there's nothing wrong with asking about that point (or so I've been told - I'm not at that point yet!)

Eventually, you'll be sent galley proofs to read so you can make sure the story was printed as you wrote it (you'll be looking for typos and real errors - no "polishing" allowed at this point). Once the galleys are approved, the book goes to press. Then you and your agent or publisher will discuss which book signings you'll attend, etc. and you'll hope and pray that lots of folks buy your book! (You should talk to the agent and publisher about how your book will be promoted and how much travel you're expected or are willing to do to attend book-signings, etc. If you're comfortable giving interviews, it will benefit your book for you to be interviewed on radio and TV and in print, so let your agent and publisher know if you are comfortable in front of crowds that way - that's where my years as a performer - both singing and sculpting in public - will be helpful to me! Yay!)

This is the publishing business as far as I know it from extensive research and talking to friends who've been published (but not in my genre, dang it, although one friend did try to hook me up with an agent friend - but that agent doesn't handle fantasy, *sigh*, nor did she know any such agents - I did try to get the networking thing going, but it didn't pan out, alas).

Hopefully, this rambling post is a bit helpful to you!

WHOOOOOOOO-HOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

2007-02-05T16:52:00.000-05:00

That squealing you can hear all across the country (surely you can, right??) is ME!!!!! I just put all the chapters of my novel together and did a total word count. I was SO worried it was going to be WAAAAAY over the 120,000 limit for first-time fantasy novelists, since it was 115,000+ when I started editing/revising, and parts of it have "grown" considerably. But one chapter got deleted completely, saving me 1800 words (which isn't much in the overall scheme of things), and I've been polishing polishing polishing as hard as I can go. So are you ready for my combined chapter word total????? WHOOOOO-HOOOOOOO!!!!!! Doing the happy dance here! It's 122,272, and some of that is chapter headings ("Chapter 1, Chapter 2," etc. through chapter 51 - so that's 102 words, right, that don't count in the word total? So I'm down to 122,170! YAAAAY!) I can trim 2170 words outta there, no problem!! YAAAAAAY!!!

Doing the happy dance here!!! (And there was nothing wrong with the chapter I cut - it was just not "necessary" to the flow of the story, so I cut it. Nice chapter, too bad it's gone, but YAY that I'm so close to the right word count! HUZZAH!!!!

Here I go, doing a celebratory squealy circle dance all by myself!

Media bias, grrrrrr

2007-02-01T15:16:00.000-05:00

I was simply appalled by the ridiculous media bias shown on ABC's "Good Morning America" when Diane Sawyer, Robin Roberts and an English correspondant reported on Daniel Radcliffe's publicity photos for the play "Equus." The reporters expounded repeatedly on their idea that parents wouldn't want their children to see "Harry Potter" nude. (Children aren't going to be taken to see "Equus," which is such an intense play, it's difficult for many adults to watch.) The reporters completely ignored the fact that every person they interviewed for the story supported Daniel's decision to appearin "Equus" as a very professional way to progress in his career from child star to an adult actor whose work is taken seriously. Even the mother of young children who was interviewed simply shrugged and said, "He's an actor. He isn't Harry Potter or a role model. He has a right to do what he wants to with his career." One person said Daniel was being very professional in his choices by taking a challenging part and changing his looks to prove he can do adult work, rather than partying, getting drunk and getting into trouble to "prove" he's a grown-up. And those who think that, at 17, he's too young for such a part need to remember that he is English, and he is "legal" there for such things at his age. Also, the British aren't as offended by nudity as some Americans are.

The photos themselves are true works of fine art and were shot in good taste. Some of them are comparable to many photographs, paintings andsculptures I've seen in art museums. As a fine artist myself, I am envious of the skill shown by the photographer, Uli Weber. I've done a lot of photography over the years, and won awards for it, but Mr. Weber's work is astoundingly beautiful.

ABC News just lost another household. We stopped watching Dan Rather when his lies and bias became obvious. For ABC's reporters to say exactly the opposite of what the people interviewed said about this subject is another form of media bias we will not tolerate. I really like Diane Sawyer most of the time. I'm ashamed of her for allowing this story to run as it did.

My busy brain. . .

2006-12-31T12:16:00.000-05:00

Wow, I just noticed that my last post was on Dec. 12, 2006. At the time, I didn't realize that was the actual anniversary of the day I started "Star Sons"! Now it's complete, going through critique on a writing website and after the post-critique final polish, I'll be searching for an agent and/or publisher!

Meanwhile, on Dec. 29, 2006, I completed the first draft of Book 2 of the "Star Sons" saga, which still has no title. This is the novel I worked on as my NaNoWriMo project, which is now up to around 105,000+ words. I have to go back and punch up some descriptions and other stuff to complete it. I pushed the plot forward as fast as I could, trying a different style of writing for this one, rather than my normal "write a bunch, next day re-read that and polish, polish, polish, then maybe write some more if there's time" style of writing. It will be interesting to re-read it from the beginning and see how "polished" or "unpolished" my first draft is!

Someone on my HPRefinersFire Yahoo group said my imagination must be very crowded, after I'd posted that book 1 is being polished, book 2 is finished and book 3 is clamoring to be written! I had to agree, my imagination IS crowded! That led to this post, which I'm copying here from my Yahoo group:

I start a novel with the characters in mind, a basic conflict in mind, and the ending, as well, but then have to hope I can weave all that together in a coherent whole and make it something people will CARE about! There's a lot of "dancing on ice" involved, hoping I don't hit a "thin patch" and fall through a hole (not being able to finish the story, or writing something that's BORING or that nobody can care about - ACK!). I think what I've written in book 2 is going to be an exciting read - sure hope so, anyway!!

You would not BELIEVE how crowded my brain is!!! Yet when I'm going to sleep now, with no scenes to plan, I feel quite lonely. Ethan, Jake, Laurel, Casey and Merlin have kept me entertained, excited, involved and curious for over a year now (I started "Star Sons," the first book, Dec. 12, 2005). I'm TRYING to give things a rest now so I can polish accurately and get some SCULPTING done (writing kind of takes over mylife and my art business just coasts along while the writing has control of my brain. Good thing I do editions instead of one-of-a-kind sculptures or I'd be in big trouble!) It's been strange since I wrote "the end" to book 2 how lonely I've been in my dreams, which are usually great places to plot scenes. Kind of hard to switch gears.

Now I'm getting ready to make some lists of things I want to "punch up" in both books to make the characters even more sympathetic, more flawed, more three-dimensional, more INTERESTING. I'm having trouble making Ethan "flawed" - he's such a hero and I love him so. His biggest flaw is his sense of responsiblity, which makes him, even as an older teen and young man in his early twenties, "stodgier" than his brother Jake - at least in Jake's eyes. Ethan is shy, Jake's outgoing, but Jake's an impulsive rascal and in some ways is more "dimensional" than Ethan. I have to make sure Ethan isn't a one-note hero, a cardboard cutout (although he isn't to ME -- I have to make sure he's as rich a character to READERS as he is to me). Ethan's other "flaw"is his temper, which can result in things exploding without his sending spells in any direction, so he's a very controlled person even as a child. But I'm gonna have to let his temper explode a bit more (and earlier in both books), I think, to show how dangerous it can be and make it obvious how good a person he is for being able to control it as well as he does.

Anyway, that's how Ethan and Jake are entertaining me today - trying to show me their flaws and foibles as well as their good sides, so I can enhance their characters in the book. <<

So now I'm off to work on those lists and start incorporating the critiques of book 1 from that writing site into the chapters (which is MUCH harder to do at times than it sounds!!)

It's been a while!

2006-12-12T14:25:00.000-05:00

It's been a while since I posted, but I've been busy! As you can see from the NaNoWriMo icon, I'm a WINNER with my NaNo novel coming in at 55,506 by the 28th of November, when I had to quit writing for a while due to real life pressures. That novel is the second in the "Star Sons" series and now stands at over 82,000 words. It's light on descriptive passages right now because I used the impetus of NaNo to push the plot forward, which is a different way of writing for me.

A couple of days ago, I posted some questions about fantasy battles on three different websites--my Yahoo group (HPRefiners Fire, the Hatrack River Writers Group, and Critters Newsgroups. I've gotten an amazing array of answers to my questions at these three sites. The first one, my Yahoo group, is made up of readers of my Harry Potter fanfiction, many of whom are eager to read my original work as well. Many of my readers are also writers of fanfiction, some more serious than others. They come from a wide variety of backgrounds, so they have lots of interesting expertise to share in many fields. The second and third groups are writers message boards. The people posting there are either published or hoping-to-be-published authors. Their suggestions and opinions are interesting, valuable and much appreciated by me.

The trick, when asking for opinions or suggestions for your writing, is to remember that everything any of these folks say is their own opinion. They haven't read my stories. They only know what I've told them in a post, which may or may not be a good representation of the story itself.

Sometimes it's hard to trust yourself, to trust that what you've written is actually of interest to other people. That's why I'm so glad I started out writing fanfiction, where I could upload completed stories and get instant feedback. Doing those fanfiction stories helped me gain confidence in my writing so that when someone does make a comment that leaves me wondering why I'm bothering, or if I get stuck and make my OWN comments about "why am I bothering???" I know I actually am a decent writer. So kudos to my fanfiction readers! And thanks to those on the various message boards who offered suggestions to help me out.

Off to a good start!

2006-11-02T09:31:00.000-05:00

The first day of Nano is over and I wrote 4680 words! Yay! Now, if I can keep up that pace, I might actually manage the 50,000 words by the end of the month, even with the interruption of my 10 day business trip, Thanksgiving and life in general. Onward!! You can watch my word count progress via the icon in the sidebar, if it's working - sure hope it's working! LOL!

And we're off!

2006-11-01T10:31:00.000-05:00

It's November 1st, and the beginning of the National Novel Writing Month. So far, I've written about an hour and have 740 words. I can't even do the math to see how many years it will take me to write 50,000 words at the rate of 700 words an hour - wait, yes, I can! Ah, it will take 7.15 hours to write 50,000 words at a 700 word an hour rate. I can knock that novel out in ONE DAY! Yeah, right. . . .

Anyway, good luck to all Nano participants! I tried to install the Participant icon here, but it didn't work for some reason. Oh well. Off to work again!

Just in time!!!!

2006-10-29T14:37:00.000-05:00

I JUST THIS MINUTE finished the serious revision I was doing on "Star Sons" - POV problems are worked out, chapters have been divided differently, writing has been heightened, deepened, intesified and I have not counted the total words. The total chapters will be 52, I think. I need to renumber the chapters after dividing chapter 5 into three chapters long after moving ahead. To avoid any MORE confusion, I kept the numbering system the same. Now I'll go back and straighten out those problems and see how many thousands of words I've gone beyond my 120,000 goal! Ack! But first, maybe I'll ride my horse if the arena's dried out enough (we've had rains of biblical proportions recently!)

Now the decks are cleared for me to concentrate on my Nano project, which will be the sequel to "Star Sons." I'll just count up the words I've already written and write 50,000 words beyond that to earn my "winner" icon! That's the plan, anyway!