Marimba 7 thru 10

I'm happy with her hooves and eyes.  I'm not happy with her mane and tail.  We'll try a post with only 6 pictures, Hah!!
Paradoxically I feel as though I have plenty of time.  However, I may not always have nice weather.  It keeps clouding up and the forecast is for rain.  Nonetheless, things look hopeful.  A few more dinks, solve the mane and she'll be done!  YES, you can do it [other NMPM painters]:  I've managed so much in less than a week.

Yesterday Layers 7, 8 and 9 came together.  I am reasonably pleased.  Although dry-brushing the Pearl-Ex gave a lovely lighter overcoat, it did not solve the deeper streaks, merely disguising them.  They may always be with her!  But she's finally starting to seriously grow on me.  That happened this morning, with the hooves and eyes.

I found only one colored pencil, of all that I owned, which would work:  which would actually draw on the rough Gesso surface and not slide off.   I painted the eyeball white, then penciled in (graphite) where I wanted the iris and pupil.   The colored pencil was a Berol Verithin and luckily it was the very color I'd wanted most: a turquoise blue.  (It's labeled Sea Green.)  The pupil was done with drafting ink, carefully maneuvered with a pin.  Two coats of nail polish finished the job.

For someone's very first blue eye, it's not too bad.

An amazing part of Layer 10 was how much nail polish I used.  All the pink on her is nail polish.  It is the most unforgiving of mediums.  I had to be right the first time.  Not much shading was possible, yet I blobbed onwards, swabbing with a microbrush, and somehow it came out all right.  Ears, muzzle, udder, eyes, hooves, the skin at the elbows, under the tail -- everywhere I thought she should be pink, she got nail polish.  Even the socks were given a light coat of it (though not that pink, which was a custom mix).  I learned this from Brasenose and Ambolena, my previous NMPM horses:  Gesso for a sock base, then warming and protecting the coat with polish.   Alas, the chance to shoot her mid-swab and really show the difference (between polish-coated and not) went by like a freight train and I didn't take it.

The hooves caused me trouble.  There is a yellowish base under there (thank you Christina Riley!) sealed with clear nail polish.  The hind feet behaved relatively well, but the front ones, perhaps because there was no white primer layer, fought like tigers.  I had to brush and brush, reapply and struggle to get them to match the hinds.  The alcohol I was using kept melting off what I'd applied.  Then I went and put too much color on all four.  Painting these hooves was largely a matter of removing color.  At the end I was layering on my Almay Creme light pink nail polish, the same as for the socks.

Marimba is hard to photograph.  I'm sure you're tired of hearing that!  Here at last I feel I'm closing in on a good angle of view.  Not too much exaggeration of the head, and it shows the eye and hooves, just not much of the tail.