Everyone does a peacock pony, right? I mean, the colors are irresistible! And everyone does a henna pony at some point, too, because the designs are so appealing. Well, I got both out of the way in one go, and here's the result: Chandraki.
Chandi was a Christmas present for my best friend, and I only finished her in June. Yes, it takes me forever to get things done sometimes!
Chandraki likes electronica, heist movies, and anything orange-flavored, and her favorite thing to do on weekends is tie her hair back and get dirty in the garden. She has a soft spot for daffodils.
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loginChandraki 02 by
Naamah Darling, on Flickr
I just wanna say that the colors here are off. The color purple is really hard to capture on camera, so just know that her legs are a rich purple, and her rump is emerald green. The colors in person are really amazing, and while these pictures are gorgeous, I don't think they do the paint job justice. (Hey, I believe we should give ourselves credit for what we do really well!) I'll tell you how I went about the blending at the end.
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loginChandraki 11 by
Naamah Darling, on Flickr
She's got a little attitude!
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Naamah Darling, on Flickr
Nice pic of her display side markings.
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loginChandraki 08 by
Naamah Darling, on Flickr
Her little nose marking kills me with cuteness. It got lots of kisses!
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Naamah Darling, on Flickr
The markings on her breast.
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Naamah Darling, on Flickr
I want her hair SO BADLY.
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Naamah Darling, on Flickr
Her eyeshadow and eyes are all pearlescent. You can see the iridescent blue it's all outlined in just a bit here. Much nicer in person!
The postman walked up while I was shooting outdoors and seemed thoroughly perplexed and yet charmed by the whole thing, and we talked ponies for a minute or two. He also seemed pretty impressed. ("YOU did that?!")
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loginChandraki 04 by
Naamah Darling, on Flickr
Her haaaaair! The colors are Black Magick, Ultraviolet, After Midnight, Poison Ivy, and Golden Goddess.
So. The FBR. Super-brief notes.
I used Liquitex soft body acrylics in pthalo blue and pthalo green and titanium white. I blended a blue I liked from the pthalo blue and the titanium white, mixed up some green with a tinge of blue separately, then painted the pony with one watered-down coat of blue all over, let it dry, did another, and worked wet paint into wet paint to add the green where I wanted it. The green was not watered down nearly as much. I used a very soft brush with long bristles, maybe 1/2 inch wide, watered the base coat paint down until it was quite fluid, worked fast, and you can see I got very few brush marks. What brush marks there are show in the streaking of the color, but not in the texture of the paint. You CAN get a perfectly smooth coat of paint with a brush. You just need really good acrylics, and you need a good, flat brush, and you need to get it the right consistency. A little practice and you can do it.
The purple is craft paint in dioxazine purple. I used craft paint because it generally is more opaque, whereas artist's acrylics are generally more translucent but have much stronger pigment. Purple, like red, is a really translucent color, even in the craft paint. I dry-brushed it onto the legs with an old short, wide brush, a very, very little at a time. There are a LOT of layers on there because of how poor the coverage on that purple is, and it took a lot of patience. The results were great.
She's finished with Testors DullCote, and I really cannot sing its praises enough. Artists' acrylics tend to be very sticky and plasticky feeling when dry, even if you let them sit for a long time. Chandi sat for four months with her base coat on, FOUR MONTHS, and was still all grabby and picking up dust. The Testors knocked that right down, and gave her an even finish. That smooth matte finish with a very gentle sheen is so beautiful, and I see why y'all love this stuff so much. I will never use anything else.
I hope you enjoy her! She was educational and challenging, and I am very, very happy with how she came out, and I hope you like her, too. I wanna throw some props out there for my husband, who offered me hair color advice, and turned out to be totally right. She needed the black.
I also wanna say that I am always happy to answer how-to questions about anything I have done, seriously. I am big on sharing knowledge. For those that requested it, I will try, I really will, to get that pirate hat pattern done.
I have two more ponies to post pics of very soon! Next up: PIRATE PONY!
Love to all of you, hope you're having a good weekend!
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