Dixon
Red silver tobiano Shetland Pony stallion, claybody custom by Sarah Minkiewicz-Breunig from the Pour Horse Collier and custom glazed by Leslie Kathman. Created 2007. Leslie describes her participation: As a finisher, I have found each of these pieces to be a joy to glaze. The pieces have a great deal of surface detail that catch the glaze beautifully. With each piece, I have tried to select colors that both compliment the individual horse, and that allow me to play up what makes them special. In the case with Dixon, I wanted a deep color that I could place along his neck – particularly on the side he faced – to highlight how his skin wrinkled with the turn of his head. I also wanted to use a color with some mealy tendencies, so I could accentuate the tufts of fur inside his ears. I also wanted a mane color I could streak with color to enhance the movement there. So Dixon became a red silver tobiano. (His name, in fact, comes from Earl Dixon, an early breeder of Shetland Ponies, who was the first to systematically breed for the color, and whose ponies did much to popularize the color with the public.) I suspect many will mistake him for a liver chestnut tobiano, but in person his near-black hocks and ear lining, as well as the dark roots in his mane and tail, give him away for what he truly is. He is gloss finished.


Gunther
Leopard appaloosa draft stallion, customized from the Stacey Tumlinson Finn bisque. Created 2007. Leslie describes this piece: I have wanted to revisit some of the technique’s I used to create the well-known Okie, “Asheville”, for some time now, and the Finn mold seemed like a good place to see what new things I had learned. Like Asheville, this guy has a faint underlying pattern of dark skin, with a faint blanket pattern visible in areas. On top of that are black leopard spots, all somewhat directional (they skew slightly with the direction of the hair). The larger spots are haloed and there are ‘shadow spots’ throughout the coat. I’ve also my ‘streaking’ technique extensively on his mane, tail and hooves. He has a blaze with a mottled muzzle, and hind stockings (which is why only his front hooves are striped – the hind ones are shell hooves). All in all, he probably has more handwork on him than any piece I have done to date.


Lavaliere
Pale apricot dun tobiano with lacy blanket draft stallion, customized from the Kristina Lucas Francis Clinky bisque. Created 2007. Leslie describes this piece: I have a soft spot for this type of pale, pastel coloring, and I couldn’t resist putting it on Kristina’s Clinky. This guy is a pale apricot dun tobiano, but on top of that I’ve added a lacey, spotted blanket with slightly deeper over-spotting. His mane and tail – at least the parts not covered by his tobiano pattern – are streaked in varying tones of apricot, red-brown and deep chocolate. He has a blaze with slight skin mottling visible around the edges, and detailing on his shell hooves. But my favorite is his pretty face, which combined with his soft coloring and the sweeping lines of his mane and tail, give him a rather romantic look.


Boston
Dark bay tobiano draft stallion, customized from the Stacey Tumlinson Finn bisque. Created 2007. Leslie describes this piece: One of the most popular horses from the last lottery was the brown tobiano Hadrian, Hershey. I had feared that collectors would not like such a dark horse (dark does not always translate well in gloss), but once it was clear that this was not a problem, I knew I’d have to try the color on a Finn. Unlike Hershey, I gave the Finn a large, irregular facial marking, thinking it would give him a rather jaunty look. What I didn’t count on was how that effect would be completely overpowered by his large, liquid eyes. They give him a sweet, gentle expression (and probably make him very stereotypically one of my pieces). He also has lovely handwork in his variated mane, and on the grain of his hooves. (It is difficult to capture the tonal variations on dark, glossy horses - especially with my limited photo-editing skills! So his body color has been flattened out in these pictures more so than it is in person.)


Calico Jack
Red bay tovero Vanner stallion, customized from the Horsing Around Galileo bisque. Created 2007 as a raffle donation for Buccaneer Live. Leslie describes this piece: "Calico Jack" is a Horsing Around Galileo (the "Vanner" version). He has been custom glazed to a deep, red bay tovero with an irregular snip and a white lower lip. The edges of his pattern are ragged with areas of roaning. And in honor of the show's theme, if you look closely at his left shoulder you might just make out a pirate's skull and crossbones. Argh!!!


Dawson
Fleabit grey draft stallion, claybody custom from the Pour Horse Collier by Sarah Minkiewicz-Breunig, custom glazed by Leslie Kathman. Created 2007. Leslie describes this piece: He started out as a Pour Horse "Collier", though he looks quite different now. Sarah turned head, opened his mouth and gave him a longer mane and tail. He also has the little details that weren't practical in the production Colliers, like carved hooves and ears. (For those unfamiliar with the Collier mold, it is mini-scale, so Dawson is 3" tall.) Sarah then send him here, where he was glazed a fleabitten grey with a creamy white mane and tail. His color actually grew out of discussion Sarah and I had when I visited her studio in May. We both were working on techniques to give the hair-by-hair detail without the scale issues so many paint jobs of that type have. It is hard enough to suggest the grainy quality of greys (fleabitten ones in particular) in mixed-media cold painting. In underglaze ceramics, we have only a few tools with some big limitations. But I wanted to see if I could revisit this color - which is one of my favorites - and stretch what was possible using multiple layers. So there are layers upon layers of ticking on him, giving his coat far more depth than I've been able to achieve in the past. I think the color suits him well! He also have four socks and a blaze, and inside his partially opened mouth you can see just the hint of teeth. His hooves have hoof-grain detailing along with the carving of the undersides. Sarah's signature was etched into his belly before firing, and my maker's mark was added in glaze beside it.


Name unknown
Dapple grey draft stallion, custom glazed from the Pour Horse Collier by Leslie Kathman; created circa 2004. Leslie describes this piece: This little guy was done a few years ago. I was experimenting with subtle variations in color formulas for dapple grey, so there were a bunch of them done around the same time so I could set them side-by-side. Some might remember a much darker grey Collier, Beauxbaton, who was also part of that same group. She and this one were painted with the same colors, only Beauxbaton had many more layers of the darkest tones. She was also matte finished, while this guy was glossed. The other piece from the set was another lottery piece, an Animal Artistry (bone china) Welsh Pony named Clan Revel. He was painted almost indentically to this Collier. What I was looking for was the different in heavier dark tones, in gloss versus matte, and bone china versus earthenware. The tonal differences were rather striking in all three, at least in person.


Everette
Dapple bay draft stallion, customized from the Stacey Tumlinson Finn bisque. Created 2007. Leslie describes this piece: When I made the dappled bay Nomad ("Bentley") for the Spring Lottery, I knew I'd have to try the same color on a Finn. I had the formula all written down, but I didn't actually look at the pictures until I needed to color-correct the images of the finished piece. That's when I realized that not only had I copied the color as I intended to to, but I also managed to give the two horses almost identical markings. Oops! But I think that the color - and the markings - do suit him.


Cahoots!
Bay tobiano draft stallion, customized from the Stacey Tumlinson Finn bisque. Created 2007. Leslie describes this piece: Tobianos don't get more bells and whistles on them than this guy - roan patches, cat tracks, ermine spots softly blended into the feathers, a frosty bit of white on the tail top... they are all there.

It all started out as a discussion among the ceramic artists within the community. We were all curious to see how our approaches to various colors might be different (or similar). Someone suggested that we take a common set of references, and describe how we might do the color. Someone else asked if they might use the references to make an actual horse, and shortly after that a number of us were taking up the challenge. So in the interest of full disclosure, if you win this fellow you should be aware that he may have some unusual 'siblings' out there. As one of the reference photos I posted on my blog shows, I did take a lot of liberties with the reference pictures, so he's still quite unique.


Quinn
Chestnut sabino-splash overo draft stallion, customized from the Stacey Tumlinson Finn bisque. Created 2007. Leslie describes this piece: I have had the reference shots of the sabino-splash overo horse that I used for Quinn for some time now, but I hadn't found the right body. One thing is true about horses with predominantly white faces, and that's that the sculpting has to be good enough to carry the piece, because you cannot minimize faults with strategic shading. Finn seemed ideal because he has a wonderful head. My other hesitation was whether or not I could capture the true look of this type of color in glaze. Subtlety that is easy to achieve with cold paint can be elusive for those of us who work in underglaze. Recently I've been trying to push the limits of the techniques we use to suggest hair patterns (like the recent auction piece Dawson), and Quinn was one of the experiments in that process. I wanted to see if I could capture the variations in sabino roan coats, where some areas can be very softly grainy while others seem to form tiny, crisp dots. Dawson showed me that successive layering (and a lot of hand control) could create more natural dark-on-light hair patterns. What I wanted to see with Quinn was if there was a way to get this with white-on-dark hair patterns. I think it worked well! In addition to his ticked and roaned topline, Quinn also has two blue eyes (as would fit a splash with his type of pattern) and shell hooves with grain detail. His mane is streaked with varying shades of chestnut, cream and white and he's been finished with a gloss glaze.


Seamus
Chestnut sabino draft stallion, customized from the Stacey Tumlinson Finn bisque. Created 2008. Leslie describes this piece: Since releasing Finn in ceramic, I've had a lot of requests to make him in sabino. I originally planned to make the base color on this guy bay, but while compiling reference materials for my Mayhem trip I kept coming across pictures of flaxen-maned Clydesdales. They were all in my "darned if I know" files, because I really am not sure what is lightening the manes and tails on them. Certainly some small number are flaxen chestnuts, but most look suspiciously like bays with pale manes and tails. It's possible that these guys are red silvers, are that sabino itself is effecting the mane and tail. Of course, the sabino pattern itself covers up the legs and much of the face, which are where you'd usually look for clues. So that's my long explanation to say that I cannot tell you what color this Finn really is! I can say that the combination isn't really that rare in Clydesdales. And it's rather flattering on the Finn! (Oh, and this particular piece is glossy.)


Name unknown
Silver dapple pinto draft stallion, customized from the Stacey Tumlinson Finn bisque. Created 2008. Leslie describes this piece: He's one of the few glazed pintos I had done with mapping.


Connelley
Chestnut draft stallion, customized from the Stacey Tumlinson Finn bisque. Created 2008.

Carterhaugh
Brown/black sabino roan draft stallion, customized from the Stacey Tumlinson Finn bisque. Created 2009. Leslie describes this piece: One of the biggest challenges in working with ceramic underglazing is that they have to be applied from light-to-dark. That's part of what gives them their luminous quality, but it also means that some effects are extremely difficult to duplicate. One of the hardest is soft, roany coat patterns. White markings are not added to earthenware pieces; they are created when the bare clay is masked or the underglaze is removed. One of my greatest challenges has been to find techniques that remove color, and mimic the softer effects traditional painting can achieve with mixed mediums and dark-to-light painting. So far, Carterhaugh is the closest I have come to that goal. Using a variety of tools (and a really light touch), I've given his markings very soft edges and created a sense that much of his coat is lightly roaned. He also has a fair bit of hand painting in his mane, hooves and ear tufts. He is intended to be a brown or black sabino roan, lightened to a dark grey by his roan hairs, and softened to a warmer tone by a good bit of sunfading.


Dutch
Bay tovero draft stallion, customized from the Stacey Tumlinson Finn bisque. Created 2009. Leslie describes this piece: I am particularly fond of this Finn - enough so that I thought about swapping him out and offering the Bodacious (the chestnut tovero prototype for the mold) instead. (Bo does have a structural flaw - a leg broken during the greenware stage - so he really had to stay.) He is a tightly detailed, very precise horse, with every brushstroke right as I wanted it. Since underglaze painting is often done blind (you cannot see for sure what you are getting), that's a rare thing! He is a rich, sandy bay with intricate, lacey edges and areas of roaning. He's also unusual in that his white areas are softly shaded with a pale cream, giving him a bit more depth, while his feathers and mane ends are stained a bit darker still. This gives his coat a warmth that really helps to pop his striking frosty forelock and tailhead. (I like to play with mane and tail color transitions with a lot of the pieces that I do, and the ones on Dutch turned out particularly well.) He also has a lot more handwork on his hooves than past horses, giving them more depth and a more natural look. (Oh, and his name is from the rabbit coloring. I always thought that tobianos with colored heads and colored rears looked like Dutch bunnies.).

Moonfrost
Grey sabino Clydesdale foal, customized from the Alchemy-Earthworks Eira bisque. Created 2008. Leslie describes this piece: This little sculpture, "Eira", was produced in English bone china by Alchemy-Earthworks. The company sold some of them as undecorated bisques, which is how I got her. Once Earthworks closed, she became the only one I had. That's always a good way to stay unglazed here, because I end up changing my mind over and over on the "one and only" color I will get to try. Obviously I did decide with this filly. She's a silvery sabino roan with an irregular bald face, muzzle spots and one blue eye. The effect is to give her a rather feisty expression that is very appealing. Her pale coloring and her gloss finish make it hard to capture the detailing in her pattern, but she has fine ticking and lacey patches all along her neck, shoulders, flanks and belly. It's hard to tell because I use a light box to minimize the glare, but she is glossy while the little snowy knoll where she's running has a matte finish to better set her apart from it.

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