Tackling the Nightmare Mare

Two years ago, I finished up a classic-scale jumping mare after months of work. How hard could casting be? I thought. I'll just do it myself. Ha! Two molds later, I had a ruined original sculpture and six awful casts. The molds both ruptured (the first one only got one cast in, the second got five before it was destroyed.)

For a while, I tried to fix the casts, filling in thousands of pinholes and re-sculpting lost limbs, tails, chins, and ears. Sensing that the attempts at fixing them were futile, I used some of the better pieces as test pieces for various paints. Finally, I was so discouraged, I hid the casts away, and I never wanted to look at them again.

Until yesterday.

For some reason, the dusty bodies, hidden under a piece of fabric, were calling to me. I sorted through them, and found the nicest piece.

To say she is "nice" is a huge overstatement. She has thousands of pinholes, some very weird texturing on her belly, and her chin and lips were missing from the cast, re-sculpted on (poorly) back when she came out of the mold.  She is also covered in thick layers of primer, and served as a test piece for some paint on her shoulders and front legs. Her back seam doesn't quite line up, and she lost almost all of the detail in her face, tail, and legs.

That belly... 

Ugh. I just wanted to cry.

 However, the more I looked at her, the more I felt that I really needed to fix this. I couldn't let my first sculpture look like this forever! In a fit of valor, I decided to fill in all the pinholes. Fix all the texture. Re-sculpt all the things. After about a hundred pinholes and an hour of sanding, I thought better of that proposition.

After some careful thought (and, I'll admit, some tears), I set a slightly more achievable goal for myself: to fill one pinhole every day. That's right. One. If I do two, or three, or twenty... awesome! I've achieved extra! But, my goal is one. Because, even if my day is really bad, or really busy, or I'm sick or sad or mad or hungry... I can do one little teeny-tiny pinhole, and then I've made progress.

[Yes, I took pictures with her hanging upside-down, yes, my work table is a mess, and yes, that is a crunch bar wrapper ;) ]

What a cute little butt... but so much work! Phew! Deep breath...

I can't let myself think about how much work she is, because I don't want to be overwhelmed and put her back in that dusty pile forever. I promise myself to keep working on her, one pinhole at a time.

And, some day, some long-away fate-filled day, I'll discover that there are no more pinholes to fill!