We are the champions, part one

NaMoPaiMo Champion of the Day is a fun, bragging rights only title awarded to members of the NaMoPaiMo community who embody awesomeness during the month of February. Since a lot of this year's Champions earned this honor while still painting, I thought it would be fun to check in with them again to see how their projects turned out.

Our day one Champion was Heather Bullach, who taught a huge class of online learners how to paint a black horse with oils. Her personal NaMoPaiMo project was to paint not one but eight venti scale Whirlwind resins. 

She got close. On February 29, she posted: I did it! One Whirlwind down, just seven to go. I will in fact have one more done by tonight…possibly two more. That leaves five or six that didn’t make the deadline. While they are not finished by the end of the month, I made serious headway on the project as a whole! Sometimes half the battle for me is just making decisions on colors and starting. So I am super happy with what I was able to do in a month. I count it a win and a perfect set up to finish everything in just a few more weeks!

Professional artist and longtime NaMoPaiMo mentor, Stephanie Blaylock, was our day two Champion. Stephanie's official model was the long haired version of the Breyer Astrid. 

There was never a doubt about this one. She was painted in plenty of time, Stephanie shared lots of progress photos and the finished model is gorgeous.

The day three Champion was the first person to finish her model. We didn't hear from Laura Piec again after that, but that's okay. Her model was done, so she really didn't need to say anything else!

He sure did turn out nice, though!

Hanna Wangsgaard was the day four champion. After her official model had to be scrapped, she rolled into Plan B, a customized Levi resin. She worked hard on him all month, shared lots of updates and asked some of the month's best questions.

Here's how her model turned out. Although he wasn't officially part of the event, I broke my own rules and included his picture in the final collage.

On to day five Champion, Teddy Bates! Teddy worked so hard and was so happy when they finished, they couldn't wait to take proper pictures before posting.

I love the enthusiasm, and I adore this pony.

Sarahbeth Barlas was the day six Champion. She was another artist whose hard work and strong emotions left a lasting impression.

And look how great her model turnout out!

The day seven Champion was Madison McComas. Her model was finished during the first week and is now earning his keep under saddle and in the barn.

I love this so much!

Day eight's Champion, Hannah Shumpert, was all about powering through with the help of a little Dr Pepper and Fireball. It must have worked. Her model turned out great.

Day nine belonged to the tack makers. Sara Bowman and Carrie Sloan Meyer are more comfortable with leather than paint, and this year, both of them ran into trouble early. It could have been the end of the road, but instead #TeamStripper was born. 

It was so nice to see them cheering each other on, and I was delighted when they both made it into the Winners' Circle. 

Yay, tack makers!

Kristie Strange was the day ten Champion. She finished her model early, but kept on painting. 

Eventually, she circled back to her official model and used some of what she'd learned to make better. I love that!

The day eleven champion was Levi Kroll. His amazing Croiken is done and gone, but like Kristie, he kept on painting. I love that, too.

The day twelve title went to one of the hobby's greatest encouragers, Sue Rowe. I am happy to report that her model made it to the finish line. She writes: I did it! Introducing Sunshine’s TR Schoolboy. Tara was kind enough to prep this lad - so all I had to do was paint. He is done in oils and PearlEx metallic dry pigments. Tiny brushes led to a few areas of hair by hair doings. This could easily have sucked up much more time. I so appreciate the amazing efforts by others! Schoolboy’s barn name is “Cool.” He was patient and kind. And because he is an Appaloosa… more coat changes might be in his future. The whispers from all those teensy brushes… Thanks, Jennifer, and everybody for daring another year - or your first - at this most wonderful of February Challenges.

It's not all success stories. Fully forty five percent of this year's participants did not finish their models. This includes the day thirteen Champion, Meredith Sanders. After a promising start, her horse experienced an unfortunate chemical reaction and then broke. It happens, it's fine. I know Meredith will be back.

Fortunately, our day fourteen Champion, Jes Michaels, had a more successful journey. She worked hard all month, asked good questions and trusted the process, even when it was scary. The results were spectacular. Look how nice this guy turned out! Bonus, Jes is local to me so I look forward to seeing him in person.

Our day fifteen Champion was professional artist, Myla Pearce, who showed us how to make a mid-course repair and keep going. Sadly, we haven't heard from Myla since. Hope she's okay.

The day sixteen Champion, Carly Kudalis, also went silent after finishing her portrait model, but given the circumstances surrounding that, it's perfectly understandable.

There are still twelve more deserving champions to check in with, but this is long enough. Look for part two later today.

The reckoning

 Last month a lot of people painted a lot of model horses. 

But how many is that really?

This is a surprisingly difficult question to answer, but as far as the number of official models painted by registered painters, this year's number is three hundred seventy nine. 

That's a fifty five percent completion rate, which is on the low end of average for this event.

Interestingly, the completion rate for American painters was also fifty five percent. Of all the countries with at least ten registered painters, the United Kingdom was most successful, with twenty of twenty nine participants making it across the finish line. 

In regards to age, older is definitely better, or at least, more productive. Fifty nine percent of the over forty group finished their models, as compared to fifty four percent for the twenty one to forty crowd and just twenty three percent of those under twenty.

Finally, it's the showdown of the skill levels. The advanced amateurs won this one, with a completion rate of sixty six percent. The intermediates were next (fifty eight percent), followed by the professionals (fifty two percent) and the beginners (forty nine percent). Only thirty seven percent of our first time painters finished, a statistic that makes me sad. We need to try harder to help our newbies.

But that's a problem for next year. For now, I am content to sit back and enjoy the three hundred seventy nine (give or take) beautiful new models created by my friends.

Thank you to everyone who painted with me this year. Regardless of completion status, you're all winners in my book!

Start to finish with Audrey Dixon, part two

NaMoPaiMo ended last Thursday, but there are still a lot of NaMoPaiMo posts left to share, including the second installment of Audrey Dixon's Start to Finish feature. Be warned, this one's a tearjerker. Thank you for sharing, Audrey, and know that you are not alone in mourning your beautiful Izzy.

Start to Finish

by Audrey Dixon

I made some good progress yesterday on my NaMoPaiMo (National Model Painting Month) horse. Just a week to go to get her done!

I finished getting the base color down on the mane and tail, as well as painting the eyes and chestnuts. I also took a white pencil and roughly penciled in Izzy's markings and brand.   

I still haven’t figured out what to do with the base yet. I am going to go looking for a nice stick so she has an in-scale log to be jumping over. 

Today, I double checked the placement and shape of her brand and markings with fresh eyes. Everything looked good, so I filled them in, and also did the detail work and shading on her hooves. Now this really feels like its Izzy.

She still needs her mane and tail highlights, but overall the horse itself is just about done. 

Quick close up of the hoof detail. Even though she just had "simple" dark hooves, they were still beautiful!

In real life her mane always covered her brand and laid completely on the left side of her neck, but that was a detail I wasn't concerned with since the mane on this resin is flying around from going over a jump, and it gave a better view of the brand on her model.

I'm very happy with how the brand looks - hers was very clear and easy to read. And of course, I had to put her little shoulder spot in too. I never knew how she ended up with it, she had it before I got her.

Here's the star detail. Of course it got more white hairs around it as she aged, so I put some of those in as well. I thought it was interesting how clear that little dot in her star was even as the grey hairs were spreading across her forehead. She never got grey hairs in that dot - just around it, so it became more noticeable as she aged!

I just have the highlights in the mane and tail left (and another couple layers on her star) and the horse itself will be done - then I just have to figure out what I'm doing with her base!

But she's almost done with only a few days left of NaMoPaiMo.

A few days later, my portrait model of Izzy is finished.

It has been an *extremely* difficult month for me. 

For the first time, I didn't have my model prepped ahead of time. That's fine, no big deal, but this turned out to be my most difficult year doing NaMoPaiMo - and not because of the painting.

I had chosen my 'Miss Prince' resin sculpted by Sue Kern, and was going to paint it as a portrait of my older mare, Izzy. I really felt like the model was just perfect for a portrait of her.

Unfortunately a few days into NaMoPaiMo - I made the difficult decision to put Izzy down. She was really struggling, and when I went out that morning to feed, it became pretty clear that that call needed to be made. I truly hope nobody has to go through what I did that morning. Losing a horse is hard enough, and I've seen a lot, but this one by far was the worst I've had to deal with.

And then because I was gone for two days dealing with everything and making arrangements, I got fired from my vet clinic job. They were fully aware of what was going on, but I guess the reason didn't matter. 

Izzy meant the world to me. I don't think I could have made it this far without her. She helped me through the most difficult times in my life. It's been a difficult month and I've felt kind of lost without her to go to anymore.

We pulled Izzy from a local kill pen when she was sixteen years old. and mostly unhandled. I did her training myself, and she was by far the best horse I've ever had. I'd trust her with my life. And she felt the same. She knew I would not ask her to do anything I didn't think she was capable of, and she was up for anything as long as we were in it together. To the very end there were still things she would only allow me to do. If anyone else tried she would give them all of the dramatic reactions to tell them to stop. I had an extremely close bond with her, unlike anything I've had from any other horse.

I had planned to take photos of her with my Miss Prince resin before and after painting the model - and I did. But it was not in the way I expected.

So this was defnitely the most challenging NaMoPaiMo for me by far. But not because of the paintwork.

Six days later

The last couple days of NaMoPaiMo are the best. My entire Facebook feed is filled with art and artists. There are triumphs and tragedies, people succeeding beyond all odds and people not succeeding in the traditional sense, but still coming out ahead. It's real, it's inspiring, it's amazing. I love it so much.

But then it's March. 

March is all about dotting the i's and crossing the t's and getting everyone's entries counted.

It's like herding cats, except cats are so much easier.

Especially this one. I love him.

But I digress. Here's this year's official collage. Despite my best efforts, it's probably missing a horse or three. I hate that, but also, herding cats.

Looking ahead I still have at least a week's worth of NaMoPaiMo content, plus some real horse things to share.

After that, it's on to BreyerWest!

The first week of March is always rough, but that's mostly behind me now. Onward and upward!