Have been unable to log in easily anywhere/get a reliable internet connect.  This of course happened to my mail server having an update.  Bottom line is I've been incommunicado as of late Sunday morning.

Get this!

Comcast tells me they can come out on THURSDAY to "take a look".  Since I've lived here they've needed to "take a look" many times.  coughcoughthisisbullsheetcough!  So I tell the man that that's just not acceptable, he tells me I can "upgrade to a business account to get better service, then they can see me usually immediately".

I kid you not.  Pay more to make the simple service you want WORK.

What the flock man.  Bite me Comcast.  How dare you!

I told the man the only upgrade to "improve my service reliablity" was going to be with a different company's service.

Anyhow, I have spent some of Sunday trying to scour around looking for security vunerabilities but the issue is pretty clearly seen by the lack of lights most of the time on my modem.  Being that I live in the sticks, there's a good chance a neighbor somewhere just got cable and is overloading an archaic switchboard at some Comcast box somewhere nearby.  That's how they've "fixed" it in the past.  I'm done with overturning my house (tiny apartment) to let some new dude trace it back to the wall.  What a crock.'

In the meantime yesterday some very scattered strong but haphazard T-storms popped up around the state.  I relied on friends to let me know if they were approaching the barn.  It's only a few miles away but I can look out my window and see a sunny sky and over only valley they're getting slammed with fire and brimstone practically.  Most afternoons this summer have been spent making hourly checks on the radar.  (*@$#&@# comcastic.

Anyhow, for the time being I'm typing this and will save it until Comcast's relay feels like letting me through.  A photo would be far too much to pass through the wimpy connection I've got at this moment.

****** rant finished for the time being ****** 

Had some fun in photoshop looking at Hazel in mirror image.  I made some light in the last post of brain damage but in reality humans do find mirror images to be foreign.  This be why we find our faces in photos to be so terribly ooooddd..  Those of us with more asymmetry probably find our faces more foreign than those more symmetrically perfect peeps do.  So cognitive theories aside, what this means for me is to flip the image gives me a "new view".  Very simple trick.  Some sculptors use mirrors in the studio, I've always taken a picture and flipped it in photo shop.  Someday when I have a bigger studio I'll probably do the mirror thing too.  I'm really crammed in there right now though.

What's going on here is that I'm assessing how much weight on the hind end she ought to be carrying basically.  In working with the bazillion refs of horses who are tearing along with magnificent efforts in speed sports, I want to achieve a reasonable amount of digging in BUT, in light of other recent works out too, I'd long ago decided I'd better make her moving more forward (already up to speed) than at the first stages of launching off.  The sculptor of the work I'm most concerned about has given me a recent critique on Hazel here in this pose and I know she knows they're not the same. Buyers feel differently about that sort of thing however and striving to make a very unique horse is always important.  Just so long as it isn't so unique that it's utterly unrealistic mind you. Um ya.. because that comes easily enough (wonky gait thing).

Anyhow, so some regular and reversed views and plays with her legs and flexing more through stifle down... and then the subtraction effects to see the extent of the changes.

By the time this is up I'll have embarked on some of these - but fwiw the process..

Then I fiddled with Rocky a bit. Yeeeeeeees that's the real horse's name and probably not the one I'll choose for this sculpture.  It's not a totally direct portrait, the real horse has a longer neck back thing going on and he's very tubular - looks to have saddlebred influence over his Lippett-ness.  I've worked to get more average proportions back instead of those exaggerations in the real horse.  I DO however just totally dig his "on" attitude and that's what this work is about.  I am betting he'll really come together quick.  I'm quite jazzed about him! (I'm also just so tickled to have good fingers again!)  

Anyhow, so I started proportioning his hind legs more accurately (measuring you know).  The feet are still rather big, yes.  Mane and tail are made of masking tape.  It really helps to get a "whole picture" by adding parts on.  I haven't decided but will probably not make anything all that windswept.  He's marching into a halt, ready to spin and march over to whatever he's looking at there.  If the mane and tail have much movement it'll be related to that.