Custom Wee Horses (b.10 January 2010)

Meet the new additions to the Quernus Custom Stables - from left to right, Keona, Chelsea and Oscar. These beautiful horses are owned by Liz, who lives in York, and who sent me a message through the website on Friday. She then emailed me some photographs, and I had lots of fun making them up. I haven't made up a white horse before, and I spent some time working out the best way to get the colour right. That might sound strange for a white horse, but white horses are never truly white...

In the end, I did make the white horse out of white clay, but I made the mane out of ivory, and added grey to the inside of his ears. I also gave him a grey muzzle and nostrils, ensuring that the blaze went down to the end of his nose. Overall, I think the end result works well.

Keona, on the left, is a Haflinger, a breed of horse I hadn't heard of before. Similar to a palomino, her coat is a richer, slightly darker, honeyed colour, but still with the pale mane and tail. She has a grey-ish muzzle and dark hooves. I took my time mixing the right colour for her coat, and in the end, this was a mix of tan and white, with a couple of pinches of orange and brown.

From the photographs, Chelsea looks like a right character! He is a dark bay, and hasn't actually turned out quite as dark as he looks in the photographs. He has a lovely white star on his forehead, and again I spent a bit of time mixing the right colour for his coat, going for chocolate brown with pinches of black and red.

Working with colour is something which really interests me, and I recently bought a new book on the subject - Polymer Clay Colour Inspirations by Haunani and Maggio. It looks indepth at the science of colour, with lots of exercises to experiment yourself. I can't wait to get stuck in - I really want to understand how colours work together, and up until now, I've been going more on instinct than theory. Ideally, I'd like to use both.

Anyway, I am really enjoying making up Custom Wee Horses - I now have a listing for these on my Folksy shop - and already I've been contacted by Pam in Brechin asking for a couple of Wee Horses and a Donkey! I have to say I'm really looking forward to having a go at the latter, and I'll get started when I get back from the States.

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