Wednesday, March 7, 2012
Carousel Horses
I know that these are sitting in one of my many "galleries" but since it I'll be picking up a new piece to work on I thought I would bring them out front for a bit. These are full size carousel horses that were carved by my Dad and painted by me. There are another half dozen or so horses and animals in various stages of completion. He has painted one horse, a giraffe (although I did the butterfly) and a lion himself, but painting really isn't his thing. So here are the ones I have done and you can see some of the others in the background. These can be quite relaxing in some ways because I get to use a 2" house brush for most of it, for some reason a size 0 Kolinsky Sable just does not get it done.
In this next one you can see the statue that he wants me to paint in the corner. Must be somewhere between 2' and 3' tall. The lion he painted is behind this horse, its not finished yet.
An in process shot. I love being able to paint with a house brush.
Hippocampus was the last one I did and that's my Dad next to it
This is the horse my dad painted, the mane is done with gold leaf. You can see the Giraffe's neck on the edge of the picture that he painted.
The current horse in the carving stage.
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I'm so glad you put these up. They are exquisite and whimsical and fun. There's so much to wonder at here, from the carvings to the paint and the gold leaf on that mane. The new statue looks like it will be fun to paint. You better stop buying mini's for a little while!! (I just bought another one a few minutes ago).
ReplyDeleteThe carousel horses are something so much fun to do so totally different from anything else I work on. I just want him to finish the rest of them so I can paint them all! Everything is pretty much going to come to a stop when I get the statue to work on. I'm going to go up and pick it up on Friday.
DeleteWow... Never knew someone still build these and always thought these days people would only repair old ones (at best) or just scrap these when broken (at worst). So great that they are still being build!!! Proves we are not just going Playstation and internet but that there is still appreciation for craftmanship.
ReplyDeleteOld ones are few and far between these days. Modern carousels all use fiberglass horses and repairs are usually pretty ad-hoc and in someways almost brutal. We are restoring an original horse and the amount and crude nature of the repairs is almost heartbreaking. There are carvers out there still and there is at least one carver that runs an annual carving workshop in Oregon. So they are still out there but these days they are primarily carved for display or when a city or civic group decides that they want to put together a community carousel.
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