NaMoPaiMo!

(Will publish this slightly late, since it was written before I started painting, but anyway!) 

This is the first year of me participating NaMoPaiMo, a model horse painting challenge invented by Jennifer Buxton. I've always read about the stuff related to that event, but for some reason haven't participated until now. 

What am I going to paint? A Breyer G3 Peruvian Paso in stablemate scale. I'm using acrylics, because that's the medium I'm most familiar with and all kinds of sprayable stuff is out of my list due to various reasons (biggest of them being that I don't want to let the poisons to fly into nature). 

Second reason is that I have paintable victims, from which some are stablemates, but haven't managed to start yet. I'm bad at making things like this into routines, mostly because I have very limited workspaces and I like to work on millions of different things, and they just can't be done all once. Visual art is one of the biggest parts in my life - I've drawn through my entire life, and painting three-dimensional animal figures shouldn't be that hard of a task neither (have painted model horses since 2009). But it is, when you suffer from various annoying conditions, plus then these limited workspaces and all. Okay, excuses. Mostly it's been about not being able to kick myself into work. So that is why I participated - to force myself to paint, instead of just sitting here and wishing to paint. 

Third reason? I want to start working on stablemate scale. Not officially - my main goal are always traditionals. But since I've gotten two painted stablemates from Kave, and have seen so many well made SM paintjobs everywhere, and I haven't made anything like this since 2011 when I was a kid and the victims were ugly toys and I had no knowledge about painting in general... Sooo, all that online brainwashing made me ask myself, can I paint this scale? How easy or hard it will be compared to the other scales I've done (Schleich and traditional)? Let's see. 

Which color I am going to attempt? A red chestnut. A fiery red chestnut. With flaxen mane and tail. And some kind of sabino, which hopefully doesn't get out of hand as white markings by me have a habit of doing. 

I've painted several chestnuts already during these years. I can name two red chestnuts: Nuudeli and Raaste, who both were customized at 2017. Those are finnhorses, and flaxen chestnut happens to be the "classic" color of that breed. Yet that color is one of my favorites. Unfortunately, I had no finnhorses to paint and no time to customize anything into such, so I choosed a paso instead. I need to figure out if the world's best model horse shop has any suitable stablemate blanks to buy for a finnhorse resculpt attempt... Could do that next year! (Or year round...)

Nuudeli. Her name means noodle. (Those grey mane and tail are actually "hemp" and not flaxen.)

Raaste.

For this attempt, I want to try if I can paint a red chestnut without all that yellowish pangare, or at least so that it doesn't pop out too noticeably. I have a bad habit to exaggerate with some things, more than I plan to... So this time I will definitely layer some color, and then 'randomly' apply the pangare on the darker color. That is how I have painted lately, and it works much better than layering from light to dark (which is how people mostly paint).

While I browsed the registration site, I can't help but think how much I wished I had some epic traditional scale model as a chosen victim... But I can't sculpt that well and buying fresh traditional Breyers for resculpting is still a scary thought, so here I am with that mainstream stablemate paso everyone knows. Welll. I never know how the paintjob will go, so maybe it's a less scary victim to stress about. 

I planned that I could doodle some sketches for the sabino I want to paint, because I can't use internet when I paint. The art room doesn't have a computer and I don't have a smartphone. That didn't happen. Well, I have the entire month of time... And I know it runs past ridiculously quickly, so I have to do the sketches as soon as possible. Concept art, hah... 

Do I have secondary victims, alias other horses to paint beside my official NaMoPaiMo victim? Yes. At least one. I don't want to sacrifice all the other stablemates now, because I'm ridiculously slow at making anything into the paint-ready stage - I mostly paint only customs, so these stablemates are rare delicacies for being OF and ready for paint as are. And if I finish them all this month, the rest of the year may lack paintables... I even prepped these already long ago. 

The best secondary victim could be this Schleich custom I have. Once he was a trakehner mare, and now he's some kind of hairy, anatomically imperfect mess gelding. His ears are the first forward pair I've sculpted. And I've made a lot of ears (none of them are great...). 

I've learned that I can't sculpt limbs of any kind.

What is he going to be? I have no idea yet. I should yet prep him further, like apply varnish, then modeling paste * to smooth out clay edges and hone the hair textures... Yes, I do these things weirdly. A really light layer of gesso could also work before adding modeling paste. I don't use the best clays possible, but I also haven't handled my horses like jugglers handle their trick equipment. I apply varnish after sculpting exactly to prevent it from cracking further, and combining this with the modeling paste has really been good. 

* I found out my modeling paste has dried so it's useless. Almost a whole jar got to waste... Will not buy that stuff ever again then. 

There was yet one thing why I participate, at least I could call it a side challenge. Blogging! I have written a lot, but finishing texts and posting them public has long been really difficult. I can't do a thing, photograph it, load the photos on the computer, edit them and then yet post them somewhere online within one day. Even just weekly publishing is difficult. There was a time when I had a blog for our cats' crazy and funny antics, but eventually I learned that they do their craziness so often that I wasn't able to blog it in logical time. It should have been at least daily. Not possible! But maybe even weekly could work... With plastic horses. For now I at least should have something to talk about, unlike normally.