How to get that 'lived in' look...

Eagle eyed viewers may have noticed a subtle change in the outdoor arena recently...



The fencing now looks distinctly...



...aged.



Although the plain balsa wood was fine, it looked too new and shiny which, from experience, absolutely no riding school fencing is! XD

I bought some more balsa to make a new set of fencing as the original wasn't long enough for the background and looked a little amateurish. Instead of flat vertical pieces, I got some square dowelling which did a much better job of supporting the whole structure than before. I made three separate pieces but you only ever really see two in photographs.



Each section is held together by pins and glue and (so far) nothing's broken!

The biggest difference however was in the stain. As I'm perpetually skint and I don't like spending money when I don't need to, I had a google to see if there was anything I could make that would stain the wood and make it look a bit aged. The process I found I'd heard of before but never had the opportunity to try out. All you need is vinegar, steel wool and cold tea! No, not a really hardcore salad dressing but a ridiculously simple woodstain with incredible results!

http://thefriendlyhome.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/how-to-oxidize-wood.html

I thought I'd taken photographs of the process but I seem to have lost them so apologies for that! The following is a shot of what's left of the solution - it's now mostly rust but I'm looking forward to seeing what another batch will produce now that it's been sitting in there for a couple of months.



 I also have a photo of what the wood looked like before I sanded and stained it atop the final results...



Pretty dramatic, eh?

I sanded each piece well before adding the stain and roughed up the edges to suggest that they'd been in use a long time. I used a scalpel to nibble away a few chewed up areas where loose horses must had gone for a munch as I remember seeing a few fences like that at my old riding school.

I'd made up a set of basic wooden jump wings a few months before that had the same 'brand new wood' problem so I thought to myself, why not give them the same treatment? After all, they'd probably be left outside most of the time so they were bound to get a bit grotty!



One or two treatments later...



I made the jump-cups this afternoon out of silver Fimo and wire as the old ones were terrible.





I had to glue a couple of the actual cup parts back on after I baked them as they'd come loose but they're pretty solid now.

The wings have holes in them so they can be adjusted to different heights. I was beginning to loose the light when I photographed them so I don't have any evidence as yet to prove that but I assure you that they can be changed! XD



I put the heatgun a bit too close to them so they've bubbled up a bit but I don't mind, in fact I think I quite like the effect!

I've been using 'My Beautiful Horses' jump poles for years but they're really a bit too small to fit in with my Julips properly. Luckily there was some spare plastic tubing going spare at college the other week that was due to be chucked out so I managed to snaffle a couple of feet of it before it all went. I cut them to size with a hacksaw, sanded the ends and then used coloured electrical tape to give them a bit of colour. It's not the neatest thing in the world but I like the kind of 'rough and ready' look it has, like they've been made by the yard staff rather than bought.







So yeah, if you want to make your yard look a little more 'lived in' I can really recommend this as a technique!

End of Year Show!

It was my end of year show last night and the turnout was incredible. The room was absolutely roasting as there were so many people there but it was really good. (I took the first before the room was open  :P)

 

 




There isn't much to say really other than to point out just how talented the people on this course are. :D

 I didn't take many photos (shocking, I know!) so I can't show you all of the second year's incredible models, all of which were incredibly professional looking, but here, have some from my year. :P


My Unicorn, (now officially named Ferdinand for no obvious reason that I can tell. XD) tree, door from last year and graded unit model hidden at the back because it's terrible.




Jack's graded unit model, prop and doorway...



Liam's graded unit model, door and prop...



Stuart's graded unit, prop, door etc.







Jonathan and John's work.



Robbie and David's work.




David's absolutely FANTASTIC 'Grotesque' carved entirely out of blue foam!



Julia, Paula and Robbie's work.





I only managed to photograph two of the second year's work and I can't remember who they were by but still, here they are!



Davy Jones from Pirates of the Caribbean (known jokingly as 'Farmer Jones' when his hat was still an uncustomised straw hat from the charity shop XD)



The ship from District 9.

A customised Cob Mare...

...who still needs a name!

Some of you may remember seeing this one up on ebay as a body. I recognised her from someone else's collection and really liked her potential so I popped on a bid and managed to win her for the bargain price of £16 +P&P!
She came to me bald and with a couple of rubs as well as an appaloosa pattern added on with acrylic.

I intended to keep her blanket but wanted to tidy the edges up a bit. As these things often happen, I ended up getting a bit carried away... XD She gained pinking and speckling as well as an extended and slightly more accurate spotting pattern on her blanket, oh and I added some more striping to her hooves.



I mixed up some dark chestnutty mohair with some grey which really suits her.










She doesn't have a tack set of her own yet but I think she really suits the red so her colour scheme is already sorted out.



Now all I need is a name! She's being very cryptic and won't give me any ideas at all! 8-)

A new rider for EAE

 

Now that I don't have to think about college projects all the time I can feel my creativity coming back full force when I'm at home. (All I've done recently is lie in bed and play Skyrim, heh)
Today was no exception; I spent the majority of the day finishing off a new rider for my yard I started yesterday and used the rest of the afternoon to photograph him alongside some of the herd.

I sculpted his head, hands and feet with Super Sculpey over a tinfoil and wire armature. I always leave the wires long so I can wrap them round the pipecleaner limbs later. I'm still getting to grips with sculpting at this scale but I have a few ideas on how to improve so I expect I'll be making a few more people this summer...

I meant to give him a proper neck but I forgot so he's now stuck with a ridiculously proportioned head. Oh well. XD

His body is made up of stiff pipecleaners and jewellery wire. I probably should have padded his legs out a bit as he looks really skinny but when I've tried to do that in the past they've all ended up looking like they've got some kind of fluid retention which isn't quite the look I was aiming for. :P

Once the Sculpey was baked I added some subtle shading with pastels and clear matte varnish. I'd run out of spray sealer so I ended up using some brush on, liquid varnish which, to my delight, didn't smear the pastels at all. I'm really glad I didn't skip this step as I think the pigments have given him a much more realistic skin tone than if I'd just left the Sculpey in its raw state. When it came to painting his eyes, I discovered that one of the plastic beads I'd used for the eyeball, had melted slightly from the heatgun getting too close and there was now a small but noticable bubble on the left one. Rather than trying to sand it off - which would have resulted in carnage I'm sure - I decided to use it to my advantage and use it as the position for the pupils. This meant that he has an interestingly quirky gaze as he's not looking directly ahead; something that I think I'll be using on future figures as I really like the effect.

His jodhpurs are made from chamois leather and may need replacing in the future as I found it nigh impossible to stitch so I caved and went with the lazy option of gluing the seams instead.
The top was based on a rugby shirt but I totally failed to make the stitching look anything near neat or subtle so shhhh, just pretend it's part of the design!

It took me a good while to choose his hair colour but I finally settled on red. I marked out his hairline with acrylic paint to act as a guide...

...then chopped up some suitably coloured mohair into a very fine flock and applied it with PVA glue. I needed to touch it up in some places but overall it seems to be holding fast!

 Practically as soon as he was finished, a name popped into my head and so, let me please introduce EA Equestrian's newest recruit: Rory Burns!

 

He's 13/14 and a very keen showjumper - so much so in fact that he's hoping to get our resident SJ pony Digby out on loan over the summer, with intent to buy if they get on well enough.







(and judging by their performance here, I think that's very likely!)

Rory has joined up with some of the other young riders (Izzy McDonald and Kelly Martin) for the yard's Junior Showjumping team, so watch this space, methinks they'll be bringing home the silverware soon!

Bonus points if you spotted the new poles. :P (Plastic rod and electrical tape ftw!)

Let the summer begin!

Today was my last day of college for this year (I still have one year to go) but it didn't really feel like it at all. The time has just flown by and I can scarcely believe that I've been doing this modelmaking course for two years now! O_O

I finished my door (complete with severed heads!)

 

(with Ferdinand the Unicorn. :P)

...and finally got the hellish thing that was the graded unit over and done with. I somehow managed to get 87 ½% for it which works out as a high A - something I was NOT expecting as I couldn't get enthused with the subject at all. I didn't mention it on here as I was stressing over it too much but basically we had to design a piece of sculpture to go outside the Glasgow Riverside Museum with the theme of 'man's love affair with transport'.

I ended up designing a zoetrope which would show the evolution of a particular mode of transportation in the form of a wheel which would spin either by the wind or by visitors pushing it. My final model was awful but the photoshop job I did of inserting it outside the museum in clusters wasn't too bad. :P



 I made a gif of what you'd see if the zoetrope part actually worked too. I drew all the frames from photos of old and new bicycles and motorbikes.



Anyway, it's our end of year show on Tuesday where we can showcase everything we've made this year then I have a couple of months of holiday before I go back in August. :D

I want to do a lot of model horse stuff in the summer while I can as I feel I've been neglecting it recently and I think I've probably lost everyone's interest in this blog as a result. :(

I've been making a few props and things in any spare time I could muster recently though so I might have something to post in the next week. I have a new Julip to introduce but I can't until she tells me her name which might be a while as she's being less than forthcoming!