Max Does NaMoPaiMo 2024 - Photostory! IMG INT

What's this, blog activity?! In this economy?! 🤯

I actually shot this photostory last year, but procrastinated to a ridiculous degree in doing the actual writing part, so here we are a whole year later and I'm still finishing it last minute!😂

Anyway, here's when Max reeeeeally struggled to get started with her NaMo pony...

There's a LOT of photos in this btw, and I'm still getting to grips with google photos for hosting instead of Flickr. XD

 

NaMoPaiMo 2021! (VERY img intensive!)

 AKA the year I created Seònaid, hands down the best custom I've ever done in my life. 

Just FYI there are literally hundreds of photos in this post so if you have slow internet, consider yourself warned! 😅

Pony Painting with my Pals and other Fun Stuff

Friends are great things to have in general, but friends that don't mind driving eight hours across the country to see you and play with ponies are the best.

NaMoPaiMo 2019!

I've been procrastinating more than usual recently, and as a result my documentation of this year's event has been delayed by far too long!

I filmed as I painted, so there’ll eventually be a full video tutorial on YouTube at some point once I’ve got round to editing it all!

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For a project like NaMoPaiMo, success can be measured in many different ways.
For some, success can be as simple as adding paint to a model after years of no motivation, or trying out a new colour or technique. For others, it can be more specific, like finally finishing that AR you’ve been putting off painting because you lacked the confidence to even start it, or nailing the perfect dappling technique.

Everybody’s experience is entirely their own, and therefore, in the words of the inimitable Bob Ross:

’we don’t make mistakes, we make happy accidents’

That said, I made my fair share of mistakes this year, but I think the successes drowned them out overall.

Christine does NaMoPaiMo!

Max has hogged the limelight for far too long so here's what *I* got up to this month!

My goal for NaMo this year was to paint some models to sell (which I utterly failed at sadly) and finally get round to painting the Maggie Bennet micro mini Shetland I'd had sitting naked on my shelf for the last few years. I'd never been able to settle on a colour so he'd been relegated to the 'procrastination station' until such time as inspiration struck. It kinda didn't, but I pushed myself to paint him anyway and I honestly couldn't be happier with how he (and his bonus friend!) turned out.

Max does NaMoPaiMo - The Conclusion!

I meant to post this ages ago but I've been distracted by painting more ponies!😂

I managed to get everything spliced together into one video, so ta-da! Here's Max's work in its entirety!

I had a lot of fun making it all so I'll definitely be doing more like it in the future.

Max does NaMoPaiMo!

A little late to the party as ever, but the first of February marked the anniversary and new start to the incredibly fun and rewarding 'National Model Painting Month', or 'NaMoPaiMo'.

With well over 600 entrants this year, it's instantly bigger and better than last time and some people are already posting their finished horses on the Facebook group - some the same day the month long challenge began!

I aim to paint a micro mini I've had lying around naked for far too long...

 

...but I wasn't the only one in the household who had some goals for this month - Max wanted to take part too!

This post will contain the first part of her NaMoPaiMo experience...which includes stopmotions!
(click on the Instagram posts to view them)

If you're on Instagram you can follow #maxdoesnamopaimo to see her progress! 

I will of course be posting my own NMPM work, but let's face it, Max is way more photogenic!

Swaps and Stablemates

As per usual I've been procrastinating and although I've rather a lot to blog about, I kinda...haven't, so apologies for that!

One thing which has got me back in the mood for posting about things this week however is the lovely box of goodies I got in the post from Barbara/Willowisp on Blab as part of that forum's traditional 'Spring Swap'.

Counting Bodies Like Sheep...

In addition to the painting aspect, one of the things I wanted to achieve this month with NaMoPaiMo was sorting out my rather extensive collection of bodies.

I'm not exactly the most organised of people - though I do try! - and despite getting a big box with a lid to store them in, the lid had gone walkabout and the corner I'd stored it in had turned into...this.

The red box has some of my leather in it and the one behind, my felt.

Shockingly that wasn't even all my bodies - ones I was actively (or occasionally) still working on lived on top of a set of drawers, the windowsill and my poor Playstation 4 because it was the closest horizontal surface. (and it's nice and warm when it's on, so it speeds up drying time!)

I don't mind a bit of clutter here and there but this was getting ridiculous. I didn't even know what I had any more, so I finally bit the body shaped bullet and hauled everything out of that corner.

 (The flatpacked wooden stable will be sold eventually, though I have someone already interested so don't bother asking!)

Not including the WIPs, all piled up in the box it didn't look like I had that many. I'd had a cull of my bodies sometime last year, and I've got a big cardboard box in the loft full of the rejects - either cheap and nasty horse-shaped-objects that need a lot of work to look semi decent, or ones I know I'm never in a million years going to get through. I'll probably do a sales post with them at some point as they're just taking up space.

Once I took everything out however...

I had just a few more than I was expecting.

A post shared by Christine Sutcliffe (@lynkhart) on Feb 16, 2017 at 9:04am PST

I found a completely unopened bag of unpainted stablemates, in addition to a lot of loose ones too - I think I ended up with about 50 of those alone!

Some were WIPs I've had on hold for years, like this naked flockie-turned-zombie horse.

The rest were a glorious mixture of Schleichs, Magpies and other random brands thrown in.

Mini Haggis came out of the box with a friend. XD

 

The final tally, including a tupperware box of mini whinnies, came to 232, though I know I have a few more lurking elsewhere!

I'll probably take a few to Copperfox's Stirling show in a couple of months time, but the rest are very much not for sale. I went out to Homebase after I'd had a sort though, and bought two more boxes to store the smaller ones in and I think this looks a bit more organised now!

The current WIPs still live on the top, but there's far less space now so I hopefully won't be tempted to add to the pile!

I'm not sure if I'll finish any other horses this month but I've still got the best part of a week so you never know! :P

NaMoPaiMo - A few finished ponies!

Against all my original predictions I've not only finished my designated pony, but several others too and I've still got half the month left to go!

NaMoPaiMo - Day...3?

I've kind of lost track of the days a bit here, haha!

Progress has been made on all fronts however, and some are getting closer and closer to completion!


After another couple of pastel layers, the Shetland had his markings outlined, which is one of the most tedious, yet fulfilling parts of doing pintos.



I always love this stage, as the coloured areas really start to pop, even with just the basic outlines done!

NaMoPaiMo - Day 1

First things first, I needed to clear my desk! XD

NaMoPaiMo 2017!

As many of my regular readers will have noticed, other than the recent Julip one, there's been a distinct lack of pony posts over the last wee while. I've always had something of a wandering muse; one minute I'll be really into something, but in a matter of days or weeks I'm in the mood for something else, and so I've been doing a lot more with my dolls over the last few months while the horses took a back seat.

 I really needed something to get myself back in an equestrian mood, as my body piles have been mounting up whilst my motivation to paint them ebbed away. So, you can imagine my delight when Jennifer Buxton announced a brilliant challenge for February - NaMoPaiMo!

Inspired by NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) she came up with this one specifically to get hobbyists back into painting and interest in it has been rather dramatic!

I had no shortage of bodies and quite a few awaiting primer, so choosing my victims wasn't too difficult. Only one model would be counted in the challenge, but I've picked four I'd like to get done this month.

From left to right; 'Horatio' by Clare Stokes, 'Truffles' by David Mayer/Horsing Around, 'Night Heather' by Kelly Sealey and 'Hamlet' by Clare Stokes.

All of them have been sat next to my desk for the best part of a year. I occasionally sanded a few seams and carved out some hooves but other than that they've lain more or less untouched.

UNTIL TODAY!

Yet more mini customs!

I'm obviously in the mood for customising at the moment as I seem to be doing nothing but cutting up tiny ponies!

First up is this G2 Pacer - I've always felt rather sorry for this mould as there are so few breeds it could be shown as (as there are relatively few horse breeds that display that kind of lateral gait) that it rarely seems to be customised.

 

I thought it had potential as a trotting horse if I flipped the forelegs round, so after having to buy myself another hacksaw (I lent mine to someone and haven't got it back yet, haha) I set to work.

 I discovered that the bent foreleg was considerably shorter than the other one, so I had to tweak and extend it with a wire before I reattached it.

 

At first I was just going to bend the neck and lower the headset but after a while I thought it'd probably be far easier to just resculpt it entirely, so he was decapitated for science. :P

It was during this time that this stray speck of plastic pinged off and flew straight into my eye, somehow bypassing my glasses entirely.

I spent the next ten minutes in front of the bathroom mirror with a variety of small pointy objects, trying to extract it. Luckily it had ended up right in the corner, near the tear duct but kept creeping sideways the more I poked at it which was rather alarming. It came out eventually and I've had no problems but it did make me more aware of what I was doing and I'll definitely be investing in some goggles the next time I'm out as I usually just assume my glasses will be enough to protect my eyes but obviously not! If that had been a bit of glass or metal I could have been in serious trouble! 

A considerable amount of (careful!) sanding with my knockoff dremel later, I reattached the legs on the opposite sides of the horse with white-tac to see how it looked before making the join permanent with superglue and bicarbonate of soda.

 

 

As I've probably mentioned numerous times before, I hate using epoxy as it inevitably gets everywhere and I find it really frustrating to work with, but after accidentally supergluing the horse to my hand earlier on, I decided that I'd have to put up with it rather than my usual glue/bicarb method.

The throatlatch is obviously waaaaay too thick here, and I'll need to do a bit of work once the epoxy has cured but I'm pleased with how well the sculpting style matches.

I think I'll end up having him for some kind of western performance as he's ended up quite chunky and quarter horsey.

I still had loads of milliput left over so I worked on a few side projects to finish it off.

I bought this Schleich Akhal Teke at the Copperfox show, and lopped his head off almost as soon as I got him home. I reset it today a little lower and straighter, although trying to get the distinctive hair texture to match was a little trickier and I'm not really sure if I've managed it or not.

I started this guy years ago - a G2 Shire to some kind of cantering draught. I love the mould's head but not much else, especially that horrible, horrible tail, so that was the first part to go! His left foreleg is entirely new which is why it looks so bad compared to the rest!

This was another old custom I started a while back, a G2 Saddlebred. I really like the mould, but I'm not hugely enamoured with my resculpting here. :/ I really want to do a glued thread version but I can't find another body in my stash even though I know I must have at least one more!

Another custom from the dawn of time is this G1 Silky Sullivan I started way back in 2011.

She's really been through the wars and has had multiple surgeries on her neck, and eventually ended up painted chestnut with a mohair mane and tail, but somehow that never quite worked for me, so I stripped off all the hair the other day and started again with glued thread hair.

This mould has such a lovely face.

She was going to be flaxen chestnut but halfway through pastelling she told me she wanted to be a very dark liver chestnut...oh and she wasn't an Arab any more, she was a Welsh pony!

She's still very much a WIP but I'm really liking the direction she's heading in now.

Also in progress is this Britains Shire, who is well on her way to becoming a very hairy cob.