To conclude our Appaloosa adventures, here are the rest of the steps I took to finish up the Callahan from the previous post. Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures from the hand-detailing stage! But here's the gist of what I did...
The paint on Callahan's eyes was scritched off to reveal white bisque. On one side, brown and black underglaze paints were applied to create a brown eye- on the other, dark gray, light & medium blue, and finally black were used to create a blue eye, as requested. Actually, I do have a graphic of my blue eye steps, from a former RESS article. I'll post that here, since I own the copyright, and some of y'all might be curious:
The rest of the detailing involved a little more scritching, adding a few more spots in brown & black, painting growth rings & stripes in a shell color, washing light grey around the face mottling, kissy spots and undercarriage, streaking the mane and tail in black, and painting the chestnuts in a taupe color. Oh- and I sprayed his nose and under-bits with pink.
Next came glazing! I sprayed Mayco's C-105 Crystal Clear (now, sadly, discontinued) in 3 solid layers (he actually needed a 4th- I had to run him through a 2nd glaze fire with another layer!). This is what he looked like, before he went into the kiln:
I always think it is magical how they go from that solid, powdery pastel stage to the final shiny finish. Here he is all done:
He was a tremendously fun piece to work on, and I hope his owner is as happy with him as I am! Now it is back to the studio to finish up some other projects, and hopefully soon, fit a little sculpting in! In the meantime, I leave you with some fun images from up this way. Summer is slowly beginning to appear (not today, though!). Our region is known for growing lavender amongst things- so of course we had to plant some in our yard! Our really nifty English lavender is just barely beginning to bloom, but I saw a giant honeybee buzzing around our very much blooming Spanish lavender the other day, just begging to be photographed, so I grabbed my camera:
Our dog Clover was rather curious about it all and came over to investigate and see what was more important than petting her. This pup tends to have two emotions- elation and self-pity. Here she is doing her best "Why aren't you paying attention to me?" look. Our vet calls it her 'Eeyore' face. Such a silly girl!
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