More Work in Progress Photos 🖤

I have so many work in progress commissions and customs that I thought they should probably all go together in one big blog post. I have had a full desk of commission work that has been coming and going since early January, but I have been very forgetful when it comes to posting it to my blog and my socials, lol. I am trying to do better about that though! I did just join Instagram, and I have been more active over there recently.

Ok, into the customs!

This blue roan appaloosa Django is about halfway done. He still needs a lot more roaning, and several more layers of whites to build up better opacity. His blanket edges need to be tidied and haired too, of course! Then he’ll be getting his loud appaloosa spots. ✨

This Indian Pony ought to be a familiar face! She was featured in this blog post: Spotted Dreams Studio: WIP Wednesday ~ Roans Everywhere

She’s almost done now! I’ll be doing a few more layers of color on her mane and tail, and re-touching/perfecting her eyes and hooves. After that she’ll be ready for gloss!

This gal needs quite a bit more polishing up, but she’ll be done soon! I thought I had a full body photo of her, but I can’t seem to find it. Sorry! She is a purple roan tobiano. 💜

These foals are a very fun commission for a repeat client. Both of them are really just in their early stages, so their whites are VERY streaky looking! They should be ready for their glamor shots in a couple of weeks.

Here is a fun side project I’ve been working on alongside my commissions. I’m not really sure what I’ll do with her when I’m done with her or what color she’ll end up being. I actually really like her as a solid so far! Her base coat is far from done (look at those streaks and graininess!) but she’s not a rush project. I like having at least one “slow” custom that doesn’t have a deadline.

Sneak Peek of one of the completed customs!

I have two completed customs I’m excited to show you, but they will have to wait for another day. One of them is a sales piece (who just sold, sorry!) and the other was a part of a trade.

Speaking of selling customs though, I wanted to post a quick update on commission availability. Currently I am booked up until the end of May, HOWEVER, I may consider exceptions, so feel free to reach out. I will be opening my books for June/July sometime in May, probably. Until then, keep your eyes open for some fun sales pieces that have not been shown on my pages yet!

Thank you for reading and I hope you have a beautiful weekend. 🖤

PS

My new hobby room carpet has been delayed until mid-April, so I won’t be doing many herd member spotlight posts until then. Sorry!

WIP Wednesday ~ Roans Everywhere

YES. I know it's Thursday. The auto post feature failed me lol.

I thought it might be fun to do a little Wednesday feature on some of my work in progress models! I have a lot of roans in my studio right now, and today's post will put a spotlight on two very special little mares.

This model is a really fun piece that I'm working on for KellieRae Turnmire. She commissioned me to do a mini me of a custom Traditional Indian Pony that she painted. Isn't she cute? 

Here's her reference pic:

I'm having a lot of fun working with this model, as roans are one of my favorites to paint. This little lady needs several more layers of white and some dark shading to go before she can get details!

The other wip for today's post is this pretty paint G4 Quarter Horse, who is for Michele L.!

Right now she looks more like a cloudy bay, but she's on her way to being fully roaned! She has at least 5 more layers before she's truly recognizable. She's to be a pretty purple roan tobiano, inspired by a sort of blending between these two references. 💜

I have four other commissions on the table at the moment, but I'll save them for another post! Hint: Two of them are spotted ✨

NaMoPaiMo 2026 ~ Puzzle

Well, I forgot to post a proper NaMoPaiMo post this February. Oh well, I suppose better late than never!

My namo horse this year is a Lonesome Glory. I lovingly refer to him as "Puzzle".

Puzzle was pretty beat up and had obviously been a child's play pony at one time or another, because he had several added markings in a thick, chalky white paint. Nothing a few hours of prep work and a bath or two wouldn't solve!

My plan for Puzzle was to paint him in hand brushed acrylics and pastels, using predominantly techniques that were new or at the very least, not my go-to methods. (Spoiler alert, this plan was abandoned.) I decided on a unique bay blanket appaloosa for my color. (Pattern references below.)

I started out the month strong, getting two layers in the first day. I experimented with some random color tones that I saw suggested amongst other hobbyists, and I liked what I was seeing.  There is no such thing as a pretty hand brushed base coat lol, but he was smooth to the touch, and the pigments were playing nicely with each other.

I somehow forgot to photograph almost all of the most important part of the process, where his shading and opacity was being built up.

In my defense, nothing was going to plan, and I was especially stressed because the deadline was looming menacingly on the horizon. I tried a new pastel technique, and it FAILED. Miserably. Leaving Puzzle a grainy, smudgy mess.

It took about a week to bring him back to a semi-passable state, and as much as I wanted to keep fixing him, I had to press on if I wanted to get to my appy markings. It was at this point that I abandoned all of my grand ideas of using all new techniques. 🫠

I spent a few very late nights finishing his shading and ever so slowly building up his white layers.

We finished on February 28th, just hours before the deadline.

He's not my favorite pony I've ever painted but he's done, and that's what namo is about. I had fun, even if Puzzle made me want to pull my hair out sometimes. 😂 This community is awesome. Something about hundreds of people all having art breakdowns at the same time makes it all worthwhile. ✨

Busy Busy Busy

So, January happened. That was somehow the longest month ever and the shortest. Anyway, February has already started at a full gallop, so I'll try to keep up!

I'm also participating in Minis Painting Minis!

The obvious topic is NaMoPaiMo. I am doing it this year and will have a whole post devoted to it hopefully tomorrow! I'm going to try writing it out this evening and scheduling to post tomorrow morning sometime.

Now, onto some information about upcoming commission slots! I had a few slots open for mid-February through March, but they filled up before I could post them here. I wasn't expecting to be fully booked in less than 12 hours, but that's what happened! So sorry. I expect to have openings starting sometime in March, and they will be announced soon. Current price ranges will be shared as well. This time I will make sure to post here first! 💜

There are some sales pieces on the table at the moment. No idea when they'll be done, but I will try to post here first for them as well.

Breyerfest reveals were coming fast and furious last month! Such a nice line-up this year. I won't be going in person, but I will be having a pick-up person grab a Cosimo for me! Such a glorious stallion. 👀 I am probably also going to be grabbing the surprise horse and the leopard Idocus. He'll look pretty next to Chablis!

YOLO, one of my favorites. Big thank you to Equiden, who picked this guy up for me last BF!! 💜

As one might expect, I've gotten a great deal of new models since the last time I posted. In fact, my collection has almost doubled. Obviously, it would be impossible to try to do a post about everybody, but I have been considering posting a few of my favorites. Would there be any interest in that? It would just a little post with some pics and info on some of the new faces.

As I get back into blogging again, what kind of content would you like to see? What kind of posts are your favorites to read? Please comment and let me know!

First Layer of Paint

Wow, did it take me long enough to write this post?? Lol, I meant to publish this two days ago.

Anyhoo, I got the base coat on my collab pony! It's streaky and patchy, but that's normal for the first layer of a basecoat. I chose a nice, bright metallic chestnut for the undertones. He'll get darker and darker, but that color history will make him nice and rich. 

What do you think? I'm pretty pleased with the pattern layout, and it should complement the color nicely. :) Please post in the comments how your paint-a-long horses are coming!

Collab Body Reveal

 Revealing the body from yesterday's post! 

Photo credit to IDYB

It was Sagr! He was released in 1983, the same year as the Christmas Story. 

This was my first choice, simply because he was fully primed. 😂 I also thought he would be quite cute with some cat tracks on that long neck of his. I was bringing him upstairs from the priming station, examining him for priming flaws, when he started to "talk" to me. He made it very clear that he did not want to be a tobiano. By the time we reached the top, he had convinced me and I set about hunting for another body. I settled on this one, a Schleich TWH Stallion. I primed him, and I'm laying out markings now. 

Photo credit to Schleich stock image found on Bing

I picked the TWH up at a yard sale some two or three years ago. I paid a quarter! Pretty good deal in my opinion. He's been begging for new clothes since, and I think seal bay tobiano will be fantastic.

If you are painting along with us, please feel free to send me photos of your models! I would love to post photos of your models on the blog.

Collab Voting Results! And a Sneak Peek.

The votes are in! They surprised me, honestly. I think the base color that won (and won by quite a good lead!) would have been the last one I expected. No objections though! You guys picked good. :)

The winning color is SEAL BAY TOBIANO WITH CAT TRACKS! 

*Not my pic*

Seal bay won by majority, getting over 54% of the votes. Runner up was "Other" which I will cover in a moment. Then there was a tie between bay and chestnut. Finally there was black. 

Votes for "Other" included a lot of roans, duns, and buckskins. There were a few others as well. :)

Pattern votes were a lot tighter. Tobiano won, with just 2 votes ahead of overo! 3rd runner-up was splash, with an even spit among the others (excluding solid, which received only 1 vote).

"Other" in the pattern category consisted of cat tracks, rare markings, and some odds and ends, mainly specifying how the pinto markings should be distributed.

The Extra category had some fantastic suggestions! Thank you all! The most popular one was people wanting to see Artist Resins. I'm sorry to disappoint, but I do not currently collect resins! I plan on starting into them someday, but my current hobby room does not accommodate such fragile beings. I follow them from afar right now. :) I may be able to reach out to some sculptors though and request interviews, if that would be of interest? Let me know what you think in the comments.

I have chosen my body, but I will not be announcing who it is today. Instead, I will leave you with a sneak peek, cropped from a pic on IDYB. I will not tell you what scale. Please feel free to put your guesses in the comments! I will reveal the answer tomorrow or the next day. :)

Hint: Given their year of birth, they're lucky they didn't shoot their eye out.

Collab Announcement!

It's finally ready for an official announcement! Equiden and I have teamed up for a blog collab! We are each doing a custom model in the same general color. Here's the extra fun part. . . YOU get to pick the color!! You can vote using a google form. Link here. If for some reason you can't use it, please comment your vote in the comments. Please comment if you have any questions!

We get to pick the bodies for use, and they will probably be in SM scale (but no promises!). After the form closes, we will each be doing a series on our model's creation-  start to finish.

The form is available for voting for two weeks (that means that the deadline is Wednesday, May 17th, at 11:59pm EST). You can only vote once, so choose wisely!

Added note: There is a bonus question on the form, asking for suggestions on future posts/series/topics for our blogs. This is optional, but it would be awesome if you could fill it out. :)

As always, it is tremendously appreciated when you share the links and promote this sort of thing to your friends and followers! Please feel free to link to any part of this.

Here's a quick link list for easy access:

Equiden's Plastic Ponies - https://equidensplasticponies.blogspot.com

Spotted Dreams Studio - https://spotteddreamsstudio.blogspot.com

Form - https://forms.gle/azCjgPJGE27vTwa56

P.S. Thank you for all the well wishes! It means more than you know.

Playing Catch Up

Well that was an interesting week. Ran my tail off yet I feel like I got nothing accomplished. My family member is home and doing extremely well. Thank you all for your prayers, you have no idea how much it means. 🥹 Things are starting to return to normal, but there still some things to catch up on.

I don't have too much to blog on, since I wasn't "horsing around" this week. I know AJ asked for a customizing post, so here is a rundown of most of my current WIP models. :)

This little lady seems bent on making me throw a tantrum. Every time I feel like I'm nearly finished, she goes and either has an accident or decides she wants another layer of white. I think she only needs one more coat and then edges cleaned. And details, and tail. Oh, and her legs need more blending.

This one makes me so so so sad. I had this guy all the way to this point of his black, one layer away from markings, and I decided to give him a quick coat of sealant. I forgot to double check the heater in the room (I prime in a basement which is only about 20 degrees F above outside temp). It turns out the heater failed to actually start, so when I came back down to check on him, the sealant had crackled. I sanded and sanded, but you can still see some faint little textural differences. *Sigh* When will I learn to always double check that the heater turned on??

The same thing happened to this little guy. He was in his base layer (that's masking tape on his back to help outline his snowcap blanket) when I gave him a shot of sealant with the black model. Crackles for him too, but I haven't started his sanding.

This little flaxen is actually last year's NaMoPaiMo model that I was just never really happy with. I grabbed him off my shelf and started to re-do him. I smoothed his original color and will be starting his re-shading soon. Yikes! His mane really needs re-done too!!

I'm also experimenting with new temporary lighting arrangements. This time of year, my porch receives little to no sufficient lighting for photos. My back patio receives too much, so I'm stuck with a long spell of bad pics when I need them. I'm not terribly happy with the results of this experiment, so I will be trying again this coming week with a new set-up.

The model shown is SDS Spiked Punch. I show him as a Selle Francais.

Thank you again for your patience during this trying week, and for your prayers. Things should be back to normal now. :)