Plastic Pony Peg Legs

Arrggh and avast ye smarmy poop-deck-swabbers!  ‘Tis that time of year when ye pirates and pirates wenches be bringing out yer best verbal swashbuckling because it’s Talk Like a Pirate Day!  And in honor of this most holy of pirate tongue waggling holidays, the good ship Don’t Eat The Paint has sailed pack into port to teach you youngun’s all about peg legs!  That’s right you land lubbers--Captain Blue Tape is here to help you greenhorns get your sea legs by sticking pegs into the legs of yer wild plastic stallions.

[coughs]

[clears throat]

Okay, I can’t keep that up for an entire tutorial.  Nonetheless, welcome to a new season of Don’t Eat the Paint! (Brought to you by my new found impulse to blog again and also talk like a pirate.)

Please Stop Showing Your Models as Appendix QHs

I’ve touched on this topic a bit in the past (you can read more here, here, and here), but I keep seeing it asked on Facebook often enough that I figured it deserved a post of its own.  This is really more a Showing 101 topic than a Don’t Eat the Paint topic, but it’s my blog and make the rules so there.

About once a week, I see someone ask if they should show their Carrick and/or Smarty as an Appendix QH.  I’m here to ask you to--please, for the love of Swaps—don’t do that.

Don’t Eat the Paint Strikes Back: Return of the Tutorialness

Programming note:

Hey folks!  So I haven’t written on this blog in a long time.  I took a break and it went a lot…longer…then I intended.

Part of the reason I stopped writing was time.  A full tutorial—once a week—is a time consuming operation.  The “new episodes once a week” schedule was aggressive and not something I can maintain long term.  When I had quick photos of work in progress and brief thoughts I wanted to share, it was easier to upload them to Facebook than it was to post them here.

Over the last few months, I’ve noticed myself doing the same thing that got me started on blogging in the first place: I’ve been running around the internet trying to tell people what to do.  The downside of this (besides the “who is this crazy lady and what’s with her obsession with blue painters tape?” reaction) is that I’m writing a lot of advice directly to people that gets lost when the topic dies.  Plus I’m starting to discover there’s a lot of helpful topics I missed my first time through.

I’ll be posting some new tutorials and rants about model horse showing in the coming [insert non-committal time frame].  I got really into showing performance in the last few years, and I have some thoughts on that to share.  

The best way to keep up with new content is to use some of my feed tools, which are posted somewhere on the right or join me on FB.

In the meantime, here's a picture of some tack and a horse I made:

My Little Nenya

A Christmas gift for Tara, owner of the beautiful Arab cross below.

It's Magic!

Like a lot of people, I have something of an issue with my attention span. So sometimes I sit down to write a presentation for grad school and instead make a Magic Eye:

[click to embiggen]

It's not perfect, but eventually I had to get back to writing about scambaiting and my eyes were starting to hurt. The hidden image is revealed after the jump:

What I Love About Animal Artistry

You know what I love most about AA resins? They are similar enough to china that they are tough to repair. I know it sounds counter intuitive, but I can repair them and most people are willing to give away a broken AA. That includes this little guy:

Royal By Accident

Many, many moons ago, I started a little Stone Chips QH. Being as anal about stock horses as y'all know I am, I practically resculpted his whole front end and painted him solid palomino. I showed him a few times under the name "Royal By Marriage"*, but the little guy couldn't buy a NAN card until I gave him a lacy tovero pattern. In return, he gave me my first NAN championship. I promised the little dude that he'd always have a home with me.

It's Been a Long Year

When I think of where I was and how I was this time last year, it's like night and day. I lost good things that made me happy. I still make some of the same mistakes that made me miserable. I've deepened friendships and ended others. I strive to be more honest with myself about who I am on a basal level and how much I can realistically pile on my plate.

What's that expression about the eyes being bigger than the stomach? My eyes are bigger than my schedule. It has been a consistent and lifelong fault. I remember having a conversation with my parents at the ripe old age of 14 about taking on too much. "Really? Laura, you think you can handle jazz band, church and school choir, the school musical, art class, models on top of your regular school work?" So I quit band and models, made honor roll, chased off a boy and barely kept from snapping like a twig.

My mantra was always "I'll find time." In my mind, that time was always the next free weekend, oblivious to the idea that the next free weekend could be months away and when I got there, I more likely would just collapse under the weight of my exhaustion. But then those valuable times of collapse/rest that often kept me away from a full systems meltdown went away when the unpredicted disasters started to flood in and take up every remaining second. I had to double and triple schedule just to make it to medical appointments. I would work sitting in waiting rooms. Or I'd sit there and marinate in self-pity or fear. It tenderizes the meat so I'd be emotionally soft when repeatedly stabbed with a metaphorical fork.

I'm working through a dramatic personal re-org. I'm learning how to say "no thanks, I'm full." I try to remind myself that taking on a new thing means compromising or removing an old thing. Baby steps.

All that goes to say that I'll be posting again, although I'm not going to promise to myself or anyone else that it will be regular or like clockwork as it was briefly. But I enjoy writing and making ponies and both feed into the other as a perpetual motion machine of productivity. And I wanna draw a little. I passed up an opportunity to sell my 2D art about a month ago. But the honest answer is it I don't do any of this to sell my work. I just like it. Sales are a byproduct.

Having said that, I'm hoping to produce some work for sale in the near future because I'm a poor college student and I can't buy groceries with personal growth or pay rent with emotional fulfillment. My landlord is a hard ass like that.

Ouch

First, something model horse-y and pretty...

I bought these two from Maggie Bennett at Breyerfest this year. There were my annual "I'm buying something for ME" treat. I find myself really drawn to paint them at the moment even though I have no shows coming up. Most of my live showing schedule went out the window for the foreseeable future with grad school. While I won't be driving to paint and sell whatever the hot new resin is this fall, it does give me time to refocus on what makes me happy. And that means little pewter ponies.

And then there's the new injury (pics after the jump.)

Beginning a New Chapter

So I'm starting graduate school in a few weeks. I'm going to be a Husky.

This has been a long term goal of mine, and not just because I thought their mascot was cute when I was ten. I am very excited to get started (and more excited to finish--and graduate--and start my new career--and make more money--a lot more money...) But the downside is my model time will be more limited over the next couple years.

Showing 101: Model Halter vs. Real Halter, Pt. 3

Color is a constant issue in model horse showing. Unlike horse breeders, Stone, Breyer, and independent artists aren’t restricted in any way as to color. We don’t have to worry about those silly genetics. We can just pick something pretty and run with it! As a result, it falls to the shower to research a breed that matches the body type of the model and comes in the same color.

Breed books are an okay start, but they have an unfortunate tendency to be unspecific unclear, and inaccurate. Luckily, hobbyist Leslie Kathman has created a handy-dandy guide just for this purpose. Beyond that, there’s good ol’ Google Image Search, which is where you’ll eventually end up anyway trying to find photos for documentation.

Showing 101: Model Halter vs. Real Halter, Pt. 2

I’m not going to talk about live Quarter Horses anymore (is that a sigh of relief I hear?) but I am going to start with this year’s NAN Champ OF Quarter Horse.

I’ve judged this specific horse at previous shows, I’ve lost to him at other shows, and I’d steal him off the table if I had a chance (I’m kidding--sort of.)

Showing 101: Model Halter vs. Real Halter, Pt. 1

When talking to non-hobbyists, I find it’s usually easiest to describe live showing as a shrunken down version of the real thing. However, this comparison only works to a point. Not all breed associations offer “halter” classes at their shows and those that do each play by their unique set of rules.

And then there’s fashion. A written breed standard is rarely amended, let alone substantially altered, but the current aesthetic in all halter shown breeds appears to be in constant flux. In some breeds, halter bloodlines have become so specialized they’ve virtually become a breed within a breed. For illustrative purposes, I’m going to use the Quarter Horse as the most dramatic example of this split, but the same issues apply to a number of breeds including other stock breeds, Arabians, and Morgans. Cutting, reining, roping, pleasure, hunter, racing, and halter have all split out to varying degrees within the AQHA, but no type is excluded from a model horse halter class.

When I judge a model QH class, I know I have options on how I can approach it. The first option is to judge it as a real world halter class and choose horses that best represent this physical type:

"First under all five judges."

Below The Belt

I asked on my facebook page a few days ago for questions and topic suggestions, when this particular--eh hem--topic came up again. By far, this has been my most requested topic to date: resculpting horse genitalia.

A Wrinkle In Time

Wrinkles are one of those things for which everyone has different approach. This is what works for me.

One of the more interesting and challenging things about working with Breyers (to me at least) is putting details back into a model. Breyer’s production technique (injection molding) is not detail friendly. The molds are made of hard metal and the subtle under cuts make it difficult to pull each piece from the mold.

Showing 101: Those Mysterious Yellow Cards, pt 3

Welcome to the exciting final installment of my explanation of yellow NAN cards! You can find part one here and part two here.

A wonderfully painted Uranus by Chris Nandell

Today, I’m focusing exclusively on workmanship. On Friday, I mentioned this is my favorite division, and I mean that both as a shower and a judge. I paint plastic ponies for a living, so this division most closely approximates the challenges I face as a painter.

To Top It All Off

Required Reading

Dress(age) for Success

By popular request, I’m adding a tutorial about how I sculpt the top of a dressage braid. To be honest, it’s not a topic I’ve devoted a lot of thought to in the past, but writing this has been a great chance to think about my technique, why I use it, and how I can improve.

Showing 101: Those Mysterious Yellow Cards, pt 2

Today, I’m focusing on one of the two “yellow card” divisions currently at NAN (and a regular feature at local shows.)

Collectibility is a relatively new division in live showing. Traditionally, a model’s rarity was considered in regular breed classes. But with Breyer’s introduction of newer, more detailed, and often more accurate molds, rare vintage models were gradually being squeezed out of traditional breed classes.

Band-Aid

After finishing such pretty necks last week, how about another pretty option to put on top of them? I covered sculpting basic long manes a few weeks ago, and it’s the prerequisite reading for today’s post.

I figured I’d class it up a bit this week and cover banded manes. Banded manes are a grooming style common in showing western pleasure, halter, and showmanship. It pops up in other weird places from time to time as well, such as Hunter Under Saddle:

Showing 101: Those Mysterious Yellow Cards, pt 1

Yellow NAN cards (officially "non-breed" cards) cover several showing arenas, so I've decided to split this post into three parts. As I did previously, parts two and three will cover common judging standards.

A collectibility winner, or a color class winner?