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Continuing on from my previous post...

After the success of my G2 TB resculpt, Eclipse...

...I really fancied attempting another custom I'd been wanting to do on that mould for years - a landing horse.

I know, right, not the easiest thing in the world to do!

I knew I wanted it to stand on only one leg, through a wire onto a base (and let's be honest here, I really wanted to make multiple dioramas more than anything else!) in this kind of pose, with the other foreleg thrown out ready to touch down.

The sculpt as it was was fairly close to that kind of pose, so it didn't take much to remove one foreleg and reset it. I did all the resculpting with superglue and bicarbonate of soda rather than epoxy - more because I'm incredibly impatient sometimes and wanted to get as much done in one day, and also because I really hate using epoxy. It gets everywhere and just eurgh.

I wanted to tweak the hind legs more but I think I'll leave that for another future custom.

Anyway, I redid her mane and tail with glued thread which is definitely my new favourite way of doing hair as you can get some really nice natural poses I'd really struggle to capture with clay.

She's going to be a nice bright coppery chestnut with a bit of chrome, but at the moment I've hit a bit of a snag - I ran out of dullcote unexpectedly, and really needed to seal some pastels. I had an old can of sealer I thought would be ok but it spluttered a lot and well, you can see the result. I've ordered up some more dullcote which should arrive in the next few days, then I'll hopefully be able to fix it with another few layers, if not I'll need to sand her back and start again.

Prior to painting her properly, I set to work on what she'll hopefully be doing as a performance prospect - cross country!

Although I've made a teeny tiny micro mini water complex before, I wanted to try my hand at a proper water jump, and when I saw photos of -this one- at the 2010 Rolex Kentucky course, I knew I just had to make my own interpretation.

I started off with a cork-based placemat and a thickish piece of foamex for the base, then built up one end for the bank.

With a sanding block 'hedge'

A slightly better mockup with wooden dowelling and a rubberised horsehair hedge.

I roughed up the surface of the bank and 'water' with filler to give a nicer texture...

...then gave everything a first coat of paint.

Whilst I put the hedge together elsewhere, I started to add foliage to  the bank section. I probably should have waited a bit but it looked so empty!

I drilled some holes for the internal supports for the hedge and stuck them into place. I painted them afterwards so they wouldn't be so obvious. The wooden supports were made from pine dowelling and stained and buffed with natural beeswax (which smells amazing by the way, I should have been a carpenter!)

I couldn't find any suitable wooden sticks or thin dowelling in my wood stash for the uprights, but hit upon a cunning solution in the kitchen of all places - pasta!

Well, linguini to be precise.

Who has the shiniest scalpel handles? I doooooo!

Once in situ it really looked the part, as did the hedge once that was in place too.

I'm not quite finished it yet so I'll leave you with a sneak peek of how it looks at the moment...

 



 
...and I'll hopefully have an update this week once I've finished it off!

A tree-mendous tutorial!

Ok, ok, I'll keep the tree related puns to a minimum. XD

I've had this little artificial pine tree in my collection for many years. It was originally a doll's house Christmas tree and came with working lights and, if I remember correctly, perfectly in scale tinsel. Over the years it's been adapted and tweaked, decorated and stripped bare for various photoshoots with my models until recently, when I realised I needed more as it was really quite small and obviously wasn't much use for the heavily forested scenes I wanted to create.

I found a tutorial for making pipecleaner trees on pinterest, and adapted it for some wired Christmas wreath material we'd had knocking around in a cupboard from years before.

The resulting tree, seen here on the left, I felt was pretty good, but unfortunately I'd used up all the wire and was quite unable to find more as I didn't even know what to call the stuff!

This year I managed to find some more, albeit in a slightly different colour, and thought I'd illustrate the process as best as I can for anyone who fancies making their own.

The first step is to take two lengths of wire, twice as long as you'd like the height of the tree to be and fold them over down the middle. These will make up the trunk and will hold all the branches together.

Hook each folded section over the other and twist together until you get one solid trunk, with four 'arms' emerging from the centre. This is now the bottom of your tree.

Now for the bottom layer of branches. You'll need four lengths of wire, as long as you'd like the base to be wide, if that makes sense.

Twist two together, forming crosses, then place one on top of the other, so that the branches are evenly spaced in a star.

Now place this 'star' on top of your trunk, with two branches between each arm and twist the arms around them as close to the centre as possible. This part is really hard to describe, apologies!

This shows the two branches at the back in between the longer arms of the trunk.

Twisty turny!

Once you've twisted the arms around the branches, do the same for the neighbouring arms until you have another section of trunk above the layer of branches.

Now rinse and repeat for the rest of the tree!

I made each successive layer of branches narrower, but you could just as easily keep everything the same width and trim to size afterwards if you like. The first method wastes less material though.

With the trunk merely stopping at the bottom, it doesn't stand up on its own without help, but you could easily splay out the base at the start like roots, or sink it into a base or other form of support.

Varying the number of layers and how close together they are really changes the feel of each tree, allowing for a huge amount of customisation. 

I haven't bought from any of these retailers myself yet so I can't recommend them either way but seeing as it took me so long to find the material in the first place I thought I'd give you all a head start!

-link-  -link-  -link-  -link-  -link-

Anyway, I hope this comes in handy for someone - I meant to post it just after Christmas but you know what I'm like when it comes to posting things at the most inopportune moments. XD

Kinetic Sand!

I first heard about Kinetic Sand a while ago, and after seeing other hobbyists use it to great effect at shows and in photographs, I decided to take the plunge and try it out for myself. Until now, I've used buff coloured felt glued to a piece of cardstock for an arena floor, but the seam between the two sections really bothered me - not to mention the fact that it only vaguely resembles sand.



I've experimented with sand and other footings before but I don't have a phenomenal amount of storage space in my room, and finding room for a tray or something that could contain a lot of loose material has been difficult, but thankfully I no longer need to worry about that!

A new look for the indoor arena.

As much as I liked the old one, it never really felt right to me, and looked amateurish and plain - especially considering that the arena fence was originally made as a temporary thing for a single photostory! (and it was a circus background at that!)

I want EA Equestrian to be the kind of yard I wish I had in real life - lots of brick and dark wood with green and brass fittings, and this, err..wasn't.

I've always wanted to change it, but Nichelle's blog post the other day finally convinced me to actually do something about it and I couldn't be happier with the results.

I kept the same fence - a length of balsa wood - but flipped it over and glued stained strips of thinner balsa to it, along with another at the top and a kickboard at the bottom to neaten it off. Some of the planks fitted together almost too well, so the joins seem to disappear, but I can assure you that they're there!

I toyed with making some supports at the back so it would stand unaided, but I don't have much space for storage as it is, so I decided against it. It stands perfectly well propped up from behind with jam jars and glue pots anyway. XD

Looks like someone forgot to photoshop out the foot support!

The bricks came courtesy of slightly textured doll's house wallpaper, which I've used for the livery block's stables (which are set in the same building) before, so it actually works far better with them than without. The letters round the outside aren't as 3D as they look - I made them up in Poweerpoint and just printed them out, then stuck them onto thin card with double-sided tape to give them a bit more strength. I may get rid for future photoshoots though, as nothing looks worse when trying to give the illusion of a whole arena, than a really obvious landmark.

One of the first to try it out was David, and very green Kaimanawa mare, Echo. She's taken to being ridden well, but is very easily distracted, so she still needs rather a lot of work.

The leg wraps came from Utterly Horses, but now that they're finishing, I can't get any more without buying a full roll of vet wrap which is pointless as I don't have any real need for it. So if anyone could spare some scraps I'd greatly appreciate it! :P

Once she was ready, working pupil Lexi hopped on, and took her for a ride.



I made the halter/bosal thing a while ago with the original intention of giving it to Chego, the Criollo...but Echo has apparently claimed it for herself. She's obviously very good at acquiring things as she's nicked Pirate's saddle and Callisto's pad too!



The modifications to the background took little more than a couple of hours and now that it's done, I'm so happy I finally got round to doing it, as it makes such a difference and really makes EAE that little bit more 'real' in my eyes. I need to get some kinetic sand though, I think that would make it perfect.

...and finally, a sneaky peek at a future post where I'll spill the beans on where I got that very distinctive fabric... :P

Light up those pumpkins! (tutorial)

It may have taken me the best part of a month to post, but here's how I made the little illuminated pumpkins for my Halloween setup.

At first I just made them out of solid fimo, but then, whilst looking to see if anyone else had a better idea for making them hollow, I stumbled upon this excellent tutorial.
She advocated using polystyrene balls in the centre, as the material shrinks under extreme heat. I didn't have any the same type, but I did have some scraps of polystyrene packing material which I was able to tear up into little clumps. It's a fantastic technique and one I will certainly use again!

I used dried grape stems for the stalks, and made a variety of pumpkins of all shapes and sizes as I tried to work out how best to light them.

 I'm a big fan of £1 shops, especially this time of year as you get a lot of useful LED products to choose from with all manner of seasonal items coming out during the runup to Christmas. Most are too big and/or poorly made to use, but if you've got your eye in you can find a lot to salvage.
 I bought a set of battery powered LED pumpkin lights, and found to my delight that the hollow plastic pumpkins simply popped off the bulbs/ (I used a cut down one for David's head in the final photo, ahaha!)

As the fimo pumpkins were so thin, I carved a small hole at the back of them and fed the bulb through...et voila!

I taped the lights to the table and used a combination of blu-tack and, at one point, superglue, to keep them down as they kept pinging back up. XD

Once they were all in the right place I added the pumpkins, made sure they were secure and covered the exposed wiring with foliage.

I made a new batch of autumn leaves too, using some freshly fallen leaves from a cherry tree down the road and a variety of paper punches. I punch them out when they're fresh, then leave them to dry as if you try it when the leaves have already hardened they become incredibly fragile.

So there you go! :D