The making off... Daylight!

Ever since Coralie have posted the latest commission she did for me, we have been taken by storm.
Post like this demultiplies...

And instagram reshare too...

We are both truly happy that Daylight please you.

And I really want to say my feelings is that in the hobby you've got several people involved... the first artist is the sculptor, who gave every painter a blank canva to work on.
So thank to Morgen Kilbourn, wich also shared her enthousiasm!

The second artist who's involved is, of course, the painter. It's the person who's going to put all it's talent to make the best paintjob they can. Painter can paint horses on their own idea or following a commissionner idea.
In this story, we got Mule Deer Studio that I commisioned because I knew she was the one to paint somethin' as difficult as a wet horse.

And in the end, you've got the owner.
Who, in my case, is using their figures for photography purpose.
I've stated long ago that I loved better to own horses painted by other artists (in fact what I love with the hobby is to be able to own many different way to paint a horse) than keeping my own paintjob.
Every picture is my own way of contributing to the hobby.

So now that I've expressed my feelings about the artistry in our hobby, let's talk a bit more about Daylight painting process.

It all started several years ago, when I joined a French Appaloosa forum. Following the posts, I falled in love with a New Caledonia purebred appaloosa filly, Daylight. She grew up to a beautiful, near white looking few spot appaloosa and believe me, when she got on sale... I had a heartstroke not beeing able to buy her (1 - she was too far from me, 2 - I already had Amira and was more than happy with her).
But I saved pictures because I knew that one day, I'll own a miniature figure of her.

I'm sorry, I would not share that much pictures of her, as I'm not the owner of it.

The years go by and I never forget that wish I had, but also I never really found "the model" that clicked. Until... Xlurpie was released. I bought it in a heartbeat, knowing for sure it would be "my" Daylight. And I immediately got in touch with Coralie, to talk about my project: having a wet few spot appaloosa painted.

Coralie was enthousiastic about it, I shared her picture of the mare, luckily I got plenty of the mare dry and wet.

Photo credits to Daylight's owner.

We talked a lot about the project, I explained to Coralie that I do not wanted the horse to be completely wet but more wet in some area as it would have bathed/splashed. We got on the run for reference of wet splashed horses, I found some...

We discovered that it was easier to see splashing on a MUDDY horse :')

And also, while browsing again the appaloosa forum to found more angles, I get by this picture of another horse on the post...

Photo credits to Daylight's owner.

I and Coralie went nut about that splashing tail mark and decided to kept the idea. It is probably one of the thing MOST of people liked best about the custom...

Also, Coralie did several schemes to understand (and show me) how to process with that painting...

Caption say:
Really wet, mostly transparent
Really wet, not transparent

A bit in between there.

Photo credits to Daylight's owner.

Caption say:
+ or - dry
Middly wet
Really wet

She started painting, sending me every step and we kept talking in the making. Then it was time to gloss the paintjob and I got another scheme plan...

Caption say:
Not transparent
A bit transparent
Totally transparent

Transparent area intensity in painting

Wet area to gloss

Total

So you can see every step was planned to archieve that perfect wet look, with the most natural and realistic taste.

Daylight full album at Mule Deer Studio page 💦

I'm really, really glad everyone loved this project, that Coralie's work have it's own spotlight. She's talented, like many other EU artist... but also, beeing international is more difficult to be known.
No matter what you do in the hobby, if you're in EU, it's more difficult to be seen.

Speaking of France, we got really little liveshow and our artists lacks of viewing, their horses does not travel a lot. I probably should do a blog post one day about our artist, because all of them deserve a spotlight too.

Hope you loved this post. I want to inspire & be inspired, I want to never stop modelhorses pictures or project (only my wallet can stop me right now)!
I really loves how this hobby combine several artistry. As an artisan myself, I'm always glad to see artisan's success.