Phaze Studio Online Journal

I believe myself extremely fortunate to be able to make a living in this wonderful hobby. There are so many facets to it; so many different things going on in so many different mediums... and people creating new things each and every day.

As many of you know, resins are my medium of choice. I love customizing them and working with them; particularly the solid cast ones. I've always said that they are easier (for me anyway) to customize and change, and I also find them infinitely repairable.

Lately, however, I have found that I've been drawn more and more to china. Its rather bizarre, since I've never really had an affinity for them up till about a few months ago... and now I am cruising the MHSP china sections at least twice a day. I am particularly fond of the old Hagens by Maureen Love; and just recently purchased a (very beat up) Lippit morgan to work on. This is my very first china, and once I had him in my hands, the floodgates just opened and now I am on the hunt for other Hagans.

This particular Lippit is destined for something unexpected, in that he is such sad shape that I felt I could cold-paint him without feeling badly about it. He has quite a few chips and breaks, and so I've been going about repairing them and getting him ready for paint. His mold detail isn't amazing, and so I felt that with proper painting I can 'paint in' much of the detail that was lost, and create a really spectacular piece. I also plan on doing some resculpting on him to give him back some of that detail, especially in his eyes. This little guy is going to be a liver chestnut, like this.

While I wanted to cold-paint this particular piece right from the very beginning, I desperately have been wanting to get into custom glazing. Unfortunately I don't know a thing about it, and I don't exactly live close to some of the amazing people who specialize in it. :-( I may take a ceramics course if I can find the time. I actually took ceramics in college but we never did any kind of specialized glazing; it was mostly sculpting and learning how not to blow yourself up in the kiln. Hopefully this summer I'll be able to do some glazing; there actually is a pottery place not that far from the studio, and so I plan on going in some time and seeing what its all about.

Sometime in the future I would love to be able to release a piece in china. I love the the way the finished horses look; all satin and gorgeous. Which has lead me to thinking that its about time I tried my hand sculpting a piece start-to-finish. I tried this once before but it was a rushed attempt to say the least, and so what I was left with was many anatomical horrors that now, years later, I never would have made. Hey, live and learn! My work has come FAR since then and so now I'm musing what to do, that could be released in resin, and more importantly, china.

There are so many horses out there right now, and so many fantastic artists sculpting, that if I were to create something I wouldn't want it to be something that would be just ho-hum. I've been tossing around ideas, but nothing concrete yet... I have a few sketches here and there. Ironically enough, what I want to have cast the most are some pieces of dogs I've working on... I have a really great piece of Daisy Mable which is in process that is just too funny. Here are the photos I've been working from, along with the real Daisy Mable herself (its actually a lot more fun to have a live model!) :

The problem is that she is not trad. DOG sized... she is trad. sized HORSE size. My original plan was for her to be done in cold-cast bronze. I think painting her though would fun...