A Better Blue Horse

Back when I first starting trying to build an online presence for Horse Tender Studio, I found that I needed to have avatar pictures for all of the different sites: Facebook, Etsy, ArtFire, etc, etc. I thought they should be all the same, but had no idea what to use.

One of my products at the time was a bookmark that I called "Horse of a Different Color", inspired by the horse in the Wizard of Oz movie.  The design combined two things that I love: horses and color.

On a whim, I had taken a picture of just the blue horse, since blue is my favorite color, and used that (usually with a horizontal flip) as the picture for my avatar.... everywhere.

It is... a crummy picture.  Taken with the camera before, the camera before, the camera I have now (3 cameras ago, if you count the one I use now).  It was poorly lit (something I still struggle with, but I think I've gotten a lot better), slightly out of focus, and taken through laminate that I put on my bookmarks.  The stamped image itself was not very clean either.  It was certainly not made to be the "face" of a business.

My intent was to use it as a temporary picture, but when I recently updated my Etsy shop, I put it up there again - since it is on Facebook, ArtFire, and my website.  I was reminded that I had always meant to replace it, or, actually redo the picture to be clear and sharp.

I hadn't been in a hurry to redo the blue horse, because I had thought that at some point I'd come up with some sort of snazzy logo for Horse Tender Studio; the blurry blue horse was just a placeholder.  Well, I haven't come up with anything better, but I'm thinking I really should at least improve what I've been using.  I'm not sure what a blue horse has to do with the name of my Studio, but...  I love horses and I love the color blue, so...  why not?

Here is the new and improved blue horse:

I did a fresh stamp, right in the middle of white card stock, then carefully colored him in.  I fiddled with my lighting setup and camera angles and settings until I had some decent pictures.  But I still wanted them brighter.  I found an "auto adjust color" setting in the (very basic) program that I use for editing photos and the above pictures were the result.  It made the background much lighter and made the blue horse really "pop".  For the record, I tried that option on another picture and it did some weird stuff to the colors.  So it apparently doesn't always improve the picture, but in this case, I do like what it did.  Me thinks I STILL need to figure out why my camera won't seem to take bright pictures, even with a lot of light.  Anyway...  I'm happy with the new blue horse picture.

I'm still not sure the blue horse will stay on forever as my avatar/logo.  At some point I may try to draw something original, get a good picture of one of my custom horses, or design some sort of logo.  However, for now I'll stick with my little strolling blue horse.

Hachinoe Horses - Part Two

After a big shopping trip today with Jeff and a friend, two more Hachinoe Horses have joined the herd.

When I first spotted this one, I thought it was one of the unpainted ones that I've seen.

However, it's not completely unmarked, it has some markings on the one side and a bunch of writing on the other.  Plus, painted eyes and mouth.

I also found this one.  He is not so big!  A tiny little one.

He has plenty of attitude though.

He's not even afraid to take on the big horses!

So far the little white one is the smallest I've seen.  They get MUCH bigger than the black and red ones that I have, all the way up to about real miniature horse/small pony size.  I doubt I'll be able to get one of them ;) but it is neat to have a range of sizes now.

I did see several others today, but they were out of my price range.  It appears that some of them even have fancy costumes on them and others with "accessories", such as a pack saddle type of thing with containers hanging off the sides.  It would be neat to get some of those types in the future.

Thankful Thursday - Upcoming Winter Show

Last Saturday there was a "Home Based Business Fall Show" here.  It was a vendor event with several on base home businesses offering their products and services.  Many of the businesses were offering giveaways and I entered a couple of them.  I ended up winning this hand-painted sign!:

Appropriate for today's post!

I also found out that there is another show coming up, with a winter theme. It will be in early December.  Sign-ups for the limited slots available filled up within hours of the event being announced and...  I got in!  I signed up both of our home businesses: Cut By Light (our laser business) and of course, Horse Tender Studio.

I've been advised that holiday and winter-themed items are what will sell well.  One of my first ideas is one that I've wanted to try, but didn't really have a "reason".  Now I do have a reason!  I present: the first herd of ornaments (before being painted):

Tonight I did a bit of paintwork on one of them.  

He looks a little whacky at the moment, but he'll get there.

I had thought I'd do a few in holiday-themed decorator colors and do a few in realistic colors.  I may end up doing all of them in fantasy colors - just because.  It's nice to get back to painting horses and not have to stress over realism or the idea of "LSQ".  I did a quick prep on them and then declared them ready to paint.

I'm not sure how many I'll end up doing, it's always a gamble trying to decide how much of anything to take to a sales event.

My other idea is to make Christmas cards and other Christmas ornaments - primarily tatted ones I think.  I'll probably take whatever cross necklaces I have left, and who knows what else.

I'm thankful and excited to have a set event on the calendar to work towards.

Motivation Monday - Now Is The Time

Another week is upon us and I've got quite a bit I'm hoping to get done.

I find that these pictures all motivate me, I hope they'll do the same for you.  Let's have a productive, fun, wonderful week!  I hope it's a good one for all of you!

The Art of Taking a Break

When I finished with my first session of the TWH project a couple of days ago, I was pretty disgusted.  Nothing about it was even particularly hard to do; it really is work that I've always enjoyed and have missed doing.  But... I haven't done it in a long time.  I think I had other things going on in my head that day that were getting to me.

The whole time I was working on him, I was second-guessing myself.  I would check reference pictures, check again, search for more pictures, and check again...  and again.  Every move I made, I thought to myself, "that's not right, that doesn't look right at all".  After a couple of hours or so of that constant inner dialogue, I was exhausted and frustrated.  I thought he looked like garbage and I wondered why in the world I was even trying.

I showed him to Jeff that night, he said the horse looked good.  My (negative) inner voice piped in to say to me, "Yeah, well he doesn't even know what it's supposed to look like."  -and- "He's just being nice, it still looks like crap."

It's been a couple of days now and this morning I wandered into the studio, where the horse I had hated so much the night before last was still laying on my photo desk.  With some apprehension, I picked him up and looked him over.  This time my thoughts were, "Wow, he looks.... good.  No, really... I think I'm way closer than I thought...  Why was I so disgusted the other day??"

I think I've been learning a lot of lessons lately, about the creative process and life.  Such as: mistakes are okay, and: when things just aren't going right, I should take a break.

I'm hoping to be back to work on him soon.  Yesterday I bought a can of expanding foam insulation to experiment with for filling in his holes when the time comes.  My specialty has always been minis; I'm not used to working on such a big scale, or dealing with hollow horses.  I think that may have been part of my "problem" the other day; that and/or the self-loathing monster in my brain was on a rampage at the time, it's hard to say.

Or maybe it's all completely normal and I was just in the big green part of the pie chart below:

Being a creative person can be really tough, but I still love to create things.

Hachinohe Horses

Back when we first got to Japan, we went on a Newcomer's Tour.  One of the stops was at a Shinto Shrine and it was there that I learned about the Hachinohe horse.  Since then, we've seen little (and big) versions of Hachinoe horses all over the place.  I knew at some point I'd have to get some of them for my horse-shaped-object collection -  just because.

Well, a friend here stopped by yesterday and delivered two of them that she bought for me at a thrift store!  I'm not even sure she knew that I wanted any of them specifically, but she knows I like horses and said she's always on the lookout for "horse things" now.

Here are the latest members of my Japanese horse herd:

They are heavy, carved from solid chunks of wood.  They could both use some TLC: a bath and possibly some help in the mane and tail department.  I thought about trying to redo their 'do, but I'm torn about that.  I'd like to keep them original, but it would be nice to try and restore them too.  The black one is not too bad - except his tail doesn't stand up anymore, but the red one is in pretty rough shape.  They are both "shedding" like crazy, leaving bits of black "hair" everywhere.  For now I'll most likely leave them alone, since I have SO many other projects going on, but at some point maybe I'll try to fix them up.

Oh, also, at some point during out early travels here, we found a local store that sells blank Hachinoe horses for a person to paint and finish themselves.  Of course that peaked my interest and I figure at some point, while we're here, it's something I should try.  ;)

In Progress - Back to Natural - Chapter One

Back in November of last year, I wrote a post about a dilemma I was having concerning a "big lick" custom model I'd made a long time ago.  I decided that I would redo him, again, this time into a natural running walk.  I also mentioned in a reply to a comment that I had a Breyer Midnight Sun body who came in a batch of bodies I'd bought and that my plan was to eventually remake him into a naturally gaited Tennessee Walking Horse as well.

A few months or so ago, I learned of a page on Facebook called Hobby Heroes The Sound TWH Challenge.  Their idea is to have people remake Midnight Sun into a sound, flat shod TWH.  The models will then be auctioned off, with the proceeds going to Friends of Sound Horses (FOSH).  I thought it sounded like a wonderful idea, to take my plans for the Midnight Sun that I have and use it for a good cause.

Then came the big move and all of that.  I've been wanting to start on this project for a little while now, but I had two problems.  I wasn't sure I had enough Apoxie Sculpt to do that much work and my faithful Dremel seemed to be ailing.  I got in more Apoxie a few days ago and last night I finally had Jeff check out the dremel.  He said he thinks it's fine.  I'm hearing a clattering noise inside that I'm not used to, but we are thinking it's just the difference in electricity here.  According to the specs on the litle beast, it can run on what we have here, but it sounds different to me.

Anyhow, those problems solved, this is the short version of what I did today.

I turned this:

Into this:

I documented the whole process, just in case I wanted to share it somewhere, sometime, but I figured for right now I'd just post the before and after pictures from today's efforts.

There is obviously still a TON of work to do.

Aside from his legs not being quite where I want them yet, he looks off to me somehow.  Maybe it's because his tail is gone, but his front end looks HUGE to me.  Maybe it's just more obvious now, without his front leg flung out into orbit.

Truth be told, I'm not very happy at all with how he looks right now, but I had to stop for the day.  It was a long slog today to get this far and I finally decided it was time to call it a day.  Despite all of that, it was fun to be working on a horse again, even if I am woefully out of practice.