NaMoPaiMo 2024 - Complete

My model inspiration for this year's NaMoPaiMo event comes with a story. Back in October, I was browsing through my social media accounts when I stumbled upon a parent looking for a small memorial gift for her son who had to say goodbye to his beloved mare recently. 

After leaving a comment on her post that I painted model horses, the lady immediately reached out asking for my prices and work examples. I told her I was happy to gift it to her son completely free, she was overwhelmed. 

I had the model prepped and ready to go for months but the past few months were tough. My husband has been dealing with a ton of work stress and late nights since January and it was inevitably spilling over to me. My creative juices took a huge hit as a result. But art has always been my happy place and resolved to push through with finishing this project and managed to get it done for NaMoPaiMo as well. 

Rest in peace, Dolly. You were so very loved by your little boy. 

NaMoPaiMo 2023 = Complete!

NaMoPaiMo or National Model Painting Month is an annual event that takes place each February with the goal for customizers to start and finish a model horse within the month. This year the rules were expanded to allow for completion of a model that was started before the event and also welcomed international participation. 

I honestly thought I wouldn't be able to participate, let alone finish a model, for this year's event but I somehow managed to get it done! 

Breyer Stablemate Arabian Stallion "Twist" repaint. This is one of my favorite molds that I conga.

After finding out mid-2022 that we were expecting, I was forced to take a break from customizing when the nausea got really bad. By some miraculous timing, I finally started feeling much better towards the end of January enough to slowly get back into it. I had a few client projects sitting on my desk untouched and got to work the beginning of February. 

After much prep, painting, and detailing I managed to get not one but three models done before the end of the month for NaMoPaiMo. I'm really pleased to have accomplished this especially after such a long time away. 

My project queue is full of fun things coming up and I'm hoping to use the time during my leave later this year to make headway during baby downtime. This is very optimistic thinking obviously but here's to hoping! 

A New Artistic Venture

Expressing myself artistically has always been a huge part of who I am. It was my first self-taught hobby and played a huge part in my journey of finding myself during a time when I struggled to see value in who I was. 

I started small, on a college student budget, doing pieces for myself and friends. My real commission work breakthrough happened at my first art convention almost a decade ago when a friend offered to let me use a corner of her vendor table. I was unprepared to sell anything, but I put down a couple sketches I had done while traveling and hoped someone liked what they saw. I went home that weekend with nearly $1k in profit, just from doing what I loved. 

I kept on drawing after that. With each convention and commission, I used my earnings to restock art supplies that I needed to continue in the hobby - good materials were not cheap but doing commissions helped every bit of the way and from the ground up, I built a tight-knit community around my artwork and thrived, finally having found a place to express myself and my work. 

In recent years though as life picked up speed, I eventually found myself without motivation to pick up my tablet pen or pencil to draw for anyone, let alone myself. It was as if a part of me had went dark and chose to stay that way. Maybe it was the result of the pandemic or working through my emotional/mental trauma of my childbirth experience. I'm not sure honestly, but I knew something was wrong but I was apathetic to change it. 

Then about a month ago, I was contacted by a friend and repeat client who asked if I could take on an art commission for him. It was dusting off the cobwebs and flexing long unused muscles. I realized I missed being creative and I really missed challenging myself to learn a new skill. 

After giving it thought, I decided to take the leap into a new hobby and try my hand at model horse customization. In my mind, it was the natural combination of the two things I enjoy most in my spare time. Figuring out a new hobby has been quite the adventure so far. I've been learning about different model scales, live showing, photo showing, resin material types, painting techniques, painting supplies, and my favorite part- Collecting models to work with. 

My current project ponies in various states of prep and sculpting.
It looks like a mess now but this "diamond in the rough" stage is probably my favorite part of the whole customization process.

With my newly acquired model bodies, I did a few small projects to practice customization  techniques and I guess they proved that I was doing well enough to start taking on commissions. I'm currently working on my first custom order and I'm very humbled that what started out as a pipedream just a month ago is now reality. 

At its heart, I've always wanted this blog to have a shared focus of my two favorite things- riding and art. Customization seems to have neatly fit the bill. I'm still riding, enjoying trail time with Quest, and taking on catch rides when I can, but I'm pretty excited to explore and find my way back to this other side of myself.

Little guy has been watching me work on project ponies for a couple days now.
One afternoon, he asked for a brush and picked up a model bunny to “paint” <3

As of Late

I think the weather has finally decided that it'll stick with spring. Work business trips and friend weddings have kept me from enjoying the nicer weather lately but Quest and I have gotten in some solid rides still.

A few weeks ago, we did a fantastic 8.5 mile morning solo meander to Hawk Watch one weekend. It was 80 degrees(!) and our trails were unusually crowded with hikers, dog walkers, mountain bikers out enjoying a brief respite from the cold. Despite the high foot and road traffic, mareface handled herself quite well and somehow kept it together when two guys on dirt bikes suddenly came up behind us with engines revving at full tilt :/

We've also explored our rail trails again and worked on hill canter sets when the footing allows. Quest still does her jig-dance from time to time but I've figured out how to deal with that for the most part and she comes back down to earth after a few moments realizing her antics are way too much work than it's worth.

On the art front, I decided to finally upgrade my decade-old, secondhand art tablet and took on few art commission projects to celebrate the new purchase. One of my friends on FB asked me to do a portrait of her thoroughbred mare- I was quite happy to have such a pretty subject to work with!

Hopefully my work travel schedule settles down so Quest and I can get more consistent trail time together. Gotta work to take care of the mare and me though- we'll enjoy each day and each ride as it comes.

3-Day Weekend

I randomly took this past Friday off since I had extra PTO days that were use-it-or-lose-it before the end of the calendar year. It's always around this time of year I start to feel run down and sluggish despite trying my hardest to keep up the energy. It's a vicious cycle though so this year I'm trying to do things differently by taking care of myself BEFORE the total burn out happens. What a novel idea.

My friends A and T also managed to get Friday off as well so we decided have a fun random adventure day and it was a blast! We met up at the barn bright and early, piled into T's car and first headed to Lakota Wolf Preserve to hang out with British Columbian, Timber, and Arctic wolves. I've wanted to visit this facility for the longest time ever. Wolves are one of my favorite animals and I actually got started in art/became popular in online art communities by drawing wolves years ago. I still find them quite inspirational and took a ton of photos that I will be basing some future paintings on.

It was early afternoon by the time we finished at the wolf preserve so we hustled our way out to our next stop. T is good friends with a lady named D who boards her horse at a barn that offers trail rides so we stopped by to visit and go for a ride. Having an insider helps because we got our pick of the horses they had. When D asked us what kind of horses we wanted, I asked for forward so they hooked me up with a gelding named Chester who was supposed to be their most forward-est horse in the barn. Spoiler alert: I did not get forward.

It was pretty much this the whole entire ride. The trail guide seemed genuinely surprised and pleased that "naughty and rowdy" Chester was lagging so far behind in the hack line. While albeit extremely slow, I was happy enough if he was content just to plod along if uppity fast was his norm.

Saturday morning was my mareface time. The sky was bright blue and sun was shining but the wind was gusting so strong that it was swaying the trees. I don't know if I am brave or stupid but I still saddled up for a trail ride regardless. Quest made it down the end of the road before deciding there was too much going on around her. I asked her to whoa, hopped off and lunged her in the field off the road to get her head back on me (...love riding with rope halters and yacht rope reins for this very reason). When she settled down, I handwalked her the rest of the way to the trailhead and mounted back up. The rest of the ride went mostly without incident. I stayed alert because the wind created a lot of spook-worthy things but Quest was fine once we started moving out and we were even able to do a few canter sets since the trails were totally deserted. It was really good to see that she is getting confident enough to pick her own pace as the terrain allows and felt balanced enough to canter along open fields. I also discovered that mareface has apparently never seen alpacas before. One of the barn properties by the trail had a whole herd of them and they all came right up to the fence to say hello. Quest wasn't too thrilled about that. I had her take a few steps toward them and then parked ourselves there until she figured it out. Don't think she is fully convinced that they don't eat horses though!

Yesterday I got a late start driving up to the barn since I met a few friends for lunch after church. There wasn't  be enough daylight to fit in a trail ride so I decided to do an arena session to revisit ground poles and introduce cavaletti. I tacked up with the treed saddle though used the snap-on headstall/rope halter and rope reins. Must remember to clean and bring the bridle and leather reins to the barn next time.

It was painfully obvious that we have not done any arena work in a long time because we were ALL over the place the first 10 minutes of the ride. It did NOT help that one of the neighbors decided that it was a fantastic time to begin shooting his gun. Between the messy, abysmal riding and the ringing gun fire at random moments, I seriously half-thought about hopping off and just calling it a day. But of course, we rode through it and I'm so glad we did.

We focused on transitions to regroup and once that was in place, we started the ground poles and then the cavaletti. Once Quest realized what we were doing, just like that everything clicked and we had so much fun zooming nimbly over and between ground poles until daylight ran out. I hopped off a few times to adjust the pattern and Quest stood quietly ground tied in the open pasture while I dragged poles and shoved cavalleti blocks around. At the end of the ride, mareface actually decided to hang out with me for awhile before heading back to the pasture after I untacked and dispensed treats. She has always been/might always be somewhat aloof but it's certainly nice to see more of her sweet side.

Best mareface <3

Inktober 2015: Art prompts wanted!

So Inktober starts tomorrow and this year I plan to participate for the first time ever. The goal is to create an inked drawing every day for the entire month of October but since I have no idea how this is going to go for me, I’m planning on going the half-marathon route which is producing a drawing every other day.

My personal goal in doing this is to improve my inking skills and try drawing new things- this is where you come in! Feel free to leave me an art prompt or two in the comments and I'll draw as they come. To keep the feed from getting too spam-y, I’ll be posting the finished pieces here in a big post at the end of the challenge though they will be uploaded as they are completed over on my Instagram account- feel free to stop by and see how your prompt turned out. Wish me luck!

Riding Gig & Watercolors

Things have been quiet the past couple of months. Since no more Rori, I’ve been putting my time (and money) towards lessons which seemed to have paid off tremendously. Couple weeks ago I had a schedule conflict so did the lesson with another instructor who was 100% new to me. Within 10 minutes, she complimented me on my seat, high praise all around, and said that I was going to become very good rider- Cue biggest smile on my face for the rest of the night. The lessons have been great but I needed more saddle time. Plus I still missed Rori a lot and I needed a distraction. My friend has been trying to set me up with horses at the barn she rides at but very long story short, it’s been one set back after the other. It has been so frustrating to the point that I’ve decided to hell with leasing and I’m going to get my own horse instead. So I started looking at endurance prospects. I looked everywhere and had all of my local FB endurance friends keeping an eye out for me. Finally I found her. A 15yo gray mare that I was smitten with, pretty much 100% ready to buy and literally pending a test ride.  She was set to do her first 50 this past weekend with one of my friends piloting so I decided to wait until the mare got back before I went to go visit. Well just my luck, I find out (albeit indirectly) this weekend that the horse was taken off the market as the owner decided to keep her for herself. I was (and still am) disappointed but I guess it wasn’t meant to happen.

But maybe fate knew that the mare wasn’t going to be and consoled with some better news. One of my endurance friends contacted me on FB last week asking if I was interested in a riding gig. She gave me a number and name and next thing I knew I was on my way to meet H at his property. He had been injured last year and was still on the mend. In the meantime, he was interested in having someone ride his two pinto gelding trail horses for free. He didn’t want any money, just wanted them loved on and exercised. I met his horses, the boarders, and we chatted for nearly 2 hours. Turns out we knew a lot of…mutual acquaintances which we both had similar opinions about (that’s a story for later).  H seems like a true horse lover, loves trail riding/hunter paces, and has a down-to-earth attitude. So tomorrow I start my first horse riding “job”, the first few rides are going to be supervised which is fine with me. I’ve only been doing this about a year (November marks my first full year of riding) so all the eyes the better to learn from. Fingers crossed this works out. 

As for other news, I was recently inspired by one of my all-time favorite artists, James Gurney, to try my hand at plein air sketching so I splurged on a travel-sized watercolor set, water soluble color pencils, and small 140lb paper sketchbook. Of course after ordering the latter, I found a great tutorial online for a DIY watercolor sketchbook…oops. I’m still going to make one (or several) because I’ve got REAMS of watercolor paper in big blocks that aren’t very travel friendly. Keep your eyes peeled for more art because autumn will be here before you know it, along with all the colors! I’ve got a family vacation coming up next month to Acadia National Park in Maine, which I’m really looking forward to. We’ve been there once a few years ago and it’s been ingrained in my mom’s mind as one of her favorite places so we’re going again- no problem with me. I love vacations that involve hiking and trails, plus any an opportunity to do some painting in a new environment.