windstoneeditions.com

It is probably hopeless for you to try to judge the color of these two curlie dragons on your computer screen , but these are test paints of the solid Amethyst color. The one on the left is the more intense violet, like the color on the "intense violet Emerald Peacock" dragon's color, the one on the right has the intense violet on his wings, face and spine, but has more of the blue-violet on his body. The blue violet is the color of violet on the production Emerald Peacock dragons. If you have any of those around, you can see the actual paint I'm using.

This is one of the griffins from the stoneware age.

I find that a common problem of people learning to sculpt (and draw) is the tendency to focus on the tiny details of what they are doing instead of the overall composition. Since one of these people is me, I came up with an exercise for myself to get away from my detail obsession. There is probably an artistic term for this exercise, like "gesture drawing" or "contour drawing" or something.. I forget. I just call it "drawing different". The goal is the same; to force yourself to think your way out of your artistic rut.

While rummaging through piles of old stuff, I found these pics of the unfinished Male Pegasus in clay that I thought were interesting. I think unfinished clay things have a lovely dynamic, fresh look that is often lost when they are detailed. Maybe because the hair detail smooths out the crisp light and shadow.
This was a Polaroid photo that had faded so badly I'm not sure what kind of clay this is, but I think this was sculpted in water based clay; most likely stuff called WED.

I get ideas from all sorts of places.
This is a pic of a concept for a pyo hippocampus. This head is a digital concoction of a pen and ink sketch of a hazel nut leaf I did, combined with a digital rendering of a horse, and texture suggested by some cool tire track marks that are imprinted on the cement floor of our new building.

This was a sign I put up in the painting dept of our first Windstone shop to encourage the painters to try to keep the bottoms of pieces clean. Fail.

Jennifer Miller sent me a great tutorial on sculpting by a real "creature pro": http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=18287 ( you'll need to scroll down through the postings to see the whole tutorial, it is worth it! )
These pro sculptors are simply amazing; the drop dead gorgeous anatomy detail is one thing, but they can duplicate a conceptual drawing with perfect accuracy! THAT is sculpting!
There is so much to learn!

I just did finished one "wheel" of Mother Grizzly bears. These 40 or so bears are more of the left-over castings that we packed away unpainted when we decided to retire first line of Windstone animals.

These bears were the last of the "old animal" line I sculpted, right when when we changed the name from "Mark Hines Creations" to Windstone Editions. I think that these bears were retired at the same time as the rest of the old animals, but I need to double check that factoid.

This picture is of one of the limited edition of "Lavender and Red Autumn Leaf" Old warriors, a variant of Autumn leaf, that we will be putting on Ebay soon. He is more golden and red than the first Autumn leaf color I painted, but equally complex!

There are two ways to come up with a color for Windstone Editions dragons:

The first way is to sit down and paint away with any color you feel like and see what happens . This is easy, fun and sometimes rewarding .

Casting is coming along unbelievably well!