Spotty Goodness

I guess I am a sucker for spots.  I own a very spotty dog.  I keep finding myself painting spotty horses.  I guess it all began when I discovered that I could do a decent sabino, way back when.  I got excited and wanted to do more, so Joanie of Pour Horse let me paint a run of Black Sabino Clydesdale pins.  After that, I turned my sights on the tobiano pattern, and started practicing that more.  The VA Black Jack Davy run really helped me to polish my skills with tobiano, but also let me work more on my sabino patterns, as well as the other various overo patterns.  It wasn't until I did a CM run on Sarah Minkiewicz-Breunig's Spinnaker that found out that I had a knack for the Appaloosa pattern as well.  I don't think I'd really tried it up until that point- but I was glad I waited, for the previous horses under my belt made it more attainable.  I was excited that Miniature Horses came in appy and pintaloosa, for that meant I could keep practicing with Jellibaby and Toot Sweet, which I delighted in doing.  And then of course, when I discovered that Irish Cobs/Gypsies came in appy- I just had to give Callahan a whirl!  Fun Stuff.

Now that I've finally sat down to paint a few Toot Sweet resins, it was an easy call to try to do an appy one.  But man, what a difference!  The choice was easy, the execution... well, it is proving to be a bit harder with this different medium.  Thankfully, some of my techniques are applicable.  But others- not so much.  With my ceramic appaloosas, there is the additive process in airbrushing the shading and hand painting the spots- but so much of it is subtractive- scritching, erasing and sanding.  Here I'm finding more, that I need to add in the little hairs to get the look I want, which is testing my skills & challenging my brain more.  But 'tis a good thing!  I'm always game to stretch and push myself.  I may even discover something that I can translate and apply to ceramics- who knows?!  In any case, I thought this Sweetie was coming along enough to share.  She still has a way to go, but I thought y'all would like to see her in-progress.  I'm kinda happy with the way some of the halo-ing on her spots came out. That was an interesting thing to play with- the halo effect is something I find challenging in ceramics, and I've never really been able to get it the way I want yet.  A few of these acrylic spots have hit the mark, in my mind (now to make them all do that!).  Anyways, I hope you enjoy the pictures.  I'm working on a resin Jellibaby to go with this mare- she's not quite as far along, but I will post pictures of the two of them together when they are both done!

:)