Specializing in painting model horses to flashy Appaloosas with all the chrome and characteristics of real Appies!
How it all began...
I've been in love with horses (Appaloosas especially) since I was a small child. I had some Breyers and Hartlands that I played with growing up and kept them all, but I never knew there was a "hobby" of collecting them until I accidentally discovered it online while searching for Appaloosa models to buy. When I retired I decided to add to my collection but I only wanted to buy Appaloosa models. I would buy them off Ebay. In my online searches I discovered the Model Horse Blab site and that is where I learned about all the horse crazy women who never grew up and still played with their Breyers and other models. I was shocked and intrigued that people also cut them up, repositioned them, and repainted them and dressed them up in tack with riders! With each Breyer I purchased my hubby would just shake his head and say, "You can do better than that! It looks like a kindergartener painted it." (Of course the newer models look much better now, but he was looking at the old "splatter spots" versions.)
Portraits of Hall of Fame Appaloosas in Pokey's Pedigree
He kept encouraging me to try my hand at painting one - a portrait of my own gelding, Pokey. And as I learned and read all I could on Blab and got tips and info and ideas from the artists on the forums, I got brave enough to try. In March of 2013 I painted my first portrait of Pokey. (see above) I had so much fun that I decided to paint portraits of my other horses that I had owned. They were not Appies but I still had fun doing them.
Don was a great cheerleader and I got much encouragement from others on Blab so I kept on painting, deciding to do portraits of Pokey's sire and dam and one of him as a foal too. One thing led to another and I then decided to paint as many of his ancestors as I could find pics of - many of them are Appaloosa Hall of Fame horses.
I was addicted by then - LOL. And people on Blab began to ask for commissions. I put them off for several years as I did not think my work was good enough. But I finally got comfortable with my style, found my "niche" so to speak and I began to take commissions in 2016. With that, I was thrust into the wonderful world of artist resins, which I never knew existed before then, either. Been painting spots ever since!