Labor and Delivery

I'm sure I am not the first to link mold cutting and the casting of the first resin to the birthing process. I have never given birth to a human, but somewhere deep inside a voice kept saying "breathe" and "is it almost out?" A picture is worth a thousand words, so without further adieu, here are the photos of the labor and delivery of Affinity:

That's one big block o' rubber! The 'holes' you see are the hooves, the armature pipe, and vents for the tail and head.

 

 Yes, a ratchet had to be involved!

 

It took most of a day to get this far. You are looking straight down to the belly, with the armature pipe removed.

  And....she's out! In pieces, but the mold is finally cut and ready to pour. At this point the only place she exists is in the negative space of the mold. 

Here we are this morning, getting ready for another day of refining details to get her ready for her photo session before the big release on Monday.

Looking back on last year

With the filly in the mold box waiting for a shipment of silicone, I've had a little bit of spare time catch up on other things. One of the things I've been wanting to do is reflect on everything that was good about last year. It is easy to forget that there were many things to be thankful for in a year that was so filled with sadness with the loss of two great friends, one being just a few weeks ago. It is snowing here, a good day to go through photos from the summer.

In July I got to attend the No Barriers summit in Winterpark, Colorado. I had so much fun! It is an outdoor sports retreat for people with disabilities, to give them the opportunity to try new activities and new equipment. Or in their own words No Barriers is a powerful community of modern day pioneers who use the experience of nature to promote innovation, education and assistive technologies that create transformative life experiences and inspire people with challenges to live full and active lives. Well, it certainly did that for me, a few weeks later we went on a pack trip and this time I put up the tent myself, having never put up a tent before in my life:

While attending the Summit I also for the first time climbed up a rope:

And rode an off-road handcycle:

I also got to kayak and canoe, but didn't take any photos as I wasn't sure about bringing my camera out on a lake. I *adored* kayaking, what a wonderful free feeling, and a good workout. Later in the summer Durango's Adaptive Sports Association held a four day women's sports program. I could only spare two days and got to kayak again, and tried waterskiing. Wow, that was something else! I liked flying over the water, but did not like crashing and rolling and having water forced up my nose.

Even though I was introduced to many new outdoor activities, I still prefer my horse for the ulimate outdoor experience. Here are a few of my favorite photos from this past summer:

Above Crater Lake, near Molas Pass

Rocky Mountain Columbines, Crater Lake trail

Above Crater Lake, looking north

Todd and Brush at Crater Lake

 

Late afternoon sun near Engineer Mountain

Mineral Creek from the top of the drainage near the Colorado Trail

Jypsi and I with Engineer Mountain

view from camp, Pine River trail near Sierra Vandera

Heading home

Sierra Vandera trail

There were a few other wonderful things that happened in 2011, like a great and much needed family reunion, making new friends and reconnecting with old friends, but this post is already getting pretty long so I will leave it at that. I already feel more hopeful about 2112 just by posting this. Now, off to enjoy the rest of my snow day!

Affinity phase one complete!

The clay phase of Affinity, the thoroughbred filly, is complete. She is happily waiting in the mold box for a shipment of silicone. Sometime next week I'll be cutting open a big block of rubber and 'birthing' a new resin! The first casting will be further refined, smoothed, and little details like veins and whisker bumps will be added. If all goes well she will be ready for ordering in a few short weeks, pretty exciting!

Here is how she looked moments before being placed in the mold box:

Thoroughbred body types

I'm learning a lot while working on my thoroughbred filly. One of those things is how varied the body types are even within horses of the same grading, age, and sex. I made this little animation of 4 year old G1 fillies to hopefully show what I mean (click to start):

Photos courtesy of Jessica Morgan

I picked these 5 fillies as they are very different from each other but are all 4 year olds and rated G1, the best of the best. If you look at one body part at a time the differences start to jump out at you. Necks...shoulders...legs...overall balance, etc. Of course the one vital part you can't see in the photos is the heart, the mystical properties of which can be poured into a less than perfect body resulting in a consistent winner. Interesting, isn't it?

Progress on the fily

Here is the newest pic of the thoroughbred filly:

She is finally starting to look like a racehorse and not just a thoroughbred. It has to be one of the most difficult subjects in equine art-dom. Not only should the sculpture be immediately recognizable as a specific breed, but a very specialized type within that breed.

I haven't done much with the off side yet, both off legs need to be reworked. At some point I focus on just one side, and when I am satisfied with it I take photos and flip them on my computer and use that as reference for the opposite side. The head is hard to judge from this angle, at some point I will get photos of just her head from the side. You can see all my scratch marks on her neck that are my way of taking notes as I work.

I feel her neck is a tad too long. Everyone keeps telling me 'longer neck, longer neck'. Is this what everyone was wanting? What I did was move the near shoulder back, which made the back look shorter and the neck longer. What I am learning with this girl is that what looks right to me might not be how a racehorse really looks. They don't look like 'normal' horses at all!

Transformations

It's easy to think of sculpture as something that spontaneously appears, without the long hours put in by an artist to create it. I find myself feeling that way about the work of others, it is hard to keep in mind that someone actually created it out of raw materials that didn't look anything like the finished product. Even with my own work I often forget how many months of effort (oftentimes tedious, sometimes fun and playful) has gone into each individual sculpture. Every new sculpture brings to my mind the question of "why is this taking so long?"and "shouldn't I be faster at this by now?". From asking around it seems like sculptors fall into the categories of  fast sculptors and terribly slow sculptors. I am, unfortunately, the terribly slow variety.

 I have been taking lots of photos as work progresses on the Thoroughbred. It is helpful to be able to look back and see that things are moving in the right direction, sort of like documenting a remodeling project so that you can see how far you have come on the days when you feel little is being accomplished, despite all your hard work.

Here is the filly as of today:

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I'm happy with the direction she is heading in, but there are still little things that bug me and have yet to put my finger on them. The neck still needs a few tweaks, something in both shoulders still feels a bit off to me, some more refining needs to happen on her behind, and I haven't really started on the face yet. She needs some facial 'zazz-ification' to make her truely look like the kick butt filly I imagine her to be.



Here she was as of 4 days ago. You can see that at that time I was happy with the shoulder and had it muscled out, then changed my mind and reworked it again for the most recent photos:

Here she was at the end of November. Her head was higher with a beefier hind end and shoulder, too beefy for a racing filly. The high head made her windpipe seem pinched to me, and visually made her neck appear too short:

 

This is from mid-November. She has a super beefy shoulder, and the arch in her neck makes her feel a tad less feminine. Her off front leg appears to be hanging more than reaching. I like this version of her hind end, though, and should have kept it how it was:

 

As always, your comments are appreciated and make this blog more meaningful. It always helps to have 'fresh eyes' look over a work in progress, and can make a positive impact while a sculpture is still in progress. She's coming along pretty well, but without your insights she can't be all that she can be, right now she is pure potential.

Clarity

It's been a few months since the last blog update, where did the time go? Well, I've been busy for certain sculpting the new Thoroughbred filly with an intensity of focus I have not had in years. Motivation has come from many directions, and every once in awhile inspiration comes from the piece itself and it seems to fly from my fingers with a strong will to exist outside of my mind and on it's own. Here are a few sneak peeks:

There is still quite a bit of work to do on her, so I can't say at this time when she will be complete. I'm hoping for the first part of the new year, which should be do-able as long as she keeps being a good girl :) I want to thank Bridget Corcoran for her fantastic thoroughbred photos, which have helped immensely with the relatively quick progress this piece has made. One of the things I do with photos to aid in sculpting is to make collages of areas, for example a collage of all heads, one of all hooves, or this one of leg up shoulders:

The actual collage is much bigger with more photos, but even from this small snippet you can see how anatomical details will begin to jump out at you when you have lots of similar horse parts all together. I make the with Photoshop, and they grow larger as I find and add more photos. I zoom in and move around as needed to see what I need. This shoulder collage has shoulders from the side as shown, as well as from the front and back. If I need the 'other side' for a future sculpt I can flip the image. I almost never use magazine clippings now, I find having images on my computer to be far more useful, and they take up less physical space :)

Before I go back to work I have one last thing to share, another tip of sorts. I forgot where I got this, it could have come from a sculpting forum, a horse training forum, somewhere on a hobby board. It doesn't really matter when it came from, but I repeat it to myself as I sculpt to keep me focused, I think it should be the First Commandment of Life:

"Clarify thy intent"