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Messy workbenches look so much classier in black and white! 😀

But as messy as it looks… January has not been a good month for finishing art.

I’ve been starting a handful of new projects, but it’s all been pretty piecemeal. Except for the small flurry of activity earlier this week, I haven’t moved too many things from the ‘pending’ to ‘completed’ piles. (And there’s been zero movement from the ‘completed’ to the Etsy store. *sighs*).

But February will hopefully be more of an adventure thanks to NaMoPaiMo (National Model Painting Month)! I’m going to be focusing on model horses and the last few overdue Fat Animal Magnet presents, so we’ll see how it goes… *crosses fingers*

Little Steps Still Walk Miles

I may not have gotten as much stuff into the ‘Finished’ pile as I would have like, but I did make some nice inroads! 🙂

I finished up the three Fat Foxes and now the person who requested them can pick from the trio. I didn’t do a fantasy one this time, but the replacement fox will definitely be fantasy themed. I’m trying to upload the magnets to Etsy in threes with the same realistic-realistic-fantasy mix as I did the Christmas Zoo. I think I might try my hand at doing a negative painting a red fox. *plots*

I’ve started on the Fat Norwegian Forest Cats, but their coloring is more complex…

I finally got most of the way done on the Star Trek Science Officer penguin for my husband. Ever since I did the first one he’s been requesting his own version. All that’s left now is the tiny tiny insignia and then some props! 😀

The person I bought the wooden drafters from is no longer making them, so now I’m back to my wishy-washy hoarding behavior with them. I’m trying to fight through and get them painted anyways, hence the blue tobiano. He’s actually a shaded blue, but it’s not showing up well in the this photo.

The blue pronghorn is from the North American Wildlife TOOB and will be heading to Etsy whenever I get around to listing again. I really need to start doing that! *is annoyed at self*

The metallic foal was just a bit of whimsy and will most likely end up with a very small appaloosa blanket much like the Christmas Pony. I was hoping to get it finished before February, but it looks like it will be my first completed one in Feb instead.

Further Down the Trail

Jennifer had the awesome idea to start a NaNoWriMo-like event, only for painting model horses!

So this February is the first semi-official NaMoPaiMo (National Model Painting Month). I think the current count is somewhere just over 200 participants, but the idea spread like wildfire. The general idea is that you pick a model and commit to finish it this month.

You can finish more models than that, but only one of them will count. The overly optimistic side of me is positive I can finish multiple Stablemates in that time… but I’d like to think I can learn from my past mistakes. 😉

I ended up picking the Icelandic since I haven’t painted it before. Right now I’m still not 100% sure what color it will end up being, but I’m leaning towards the same liver chestnut that the OF model is. I haven’t painted one of those in a long time and it’s a fun color. With the weather being a little crazy I don’t know if I can get the sealer to play nice in order to do him in pastels, so we’ll see.

The other big project on the workbench (other than the last of the Fat Animals) is a giant project of giant-ness! 😀

I am doing a body box trade in which I get new fodder for the body box and the other person gets customized models. Most of the customs will be portrait horses and quite a few will be done on bodies not from this box.

I wanted to work on my resculpting skills (and realistic coat colors) this year and this trade seemed a wonderful way to go about that. It costs them bodies they weren’t going to use anyways and it costs me almost nothing since I’m trading bodies from my own box for some of the customs.

And as always the three 99% finished customs from last year are still waiting for that last coat of sealer before they can go trotting home. 2016 was not a year of finishing things at all quickly. 🙁

But a new month is a new chance for glory! …or something like that. 😉

ONWARDS!