UPDATE: This piece was originally intended for the 2007 auction, but was completed for the 2008 auction.

Following three years of Hamilton portrait customs for the NAN Auction, comes a new series of paintings, this time focusing on the Arabian breed. This year’s portrait is inspired by the painting, “The Lion Hunt”, by Horace Vernet in 1836

I will be using a Centeno resin by Gudrun Schmidt to customize into the grey Arab in the front. It will be a more involved overhaul than the previous portraits, as I will have to do a lot of refining and resculpting to turn the original resin into an Arab type.

Here is a before picture of the resin:

After the initial review and determining what needs altering to create the portrait, my trusty dremel gets to work. Here he is shown with his joints cut where he will need to be repositioned, and his head has been whittled down considerably. Next step will be to soda glue the joints in place, attach his head with a thick wire to set his head and start sculpting. Additional dremeling will be needed to refine his legs, but I'll wait until he is standing and the new position is stabilized.

Here he is pinned back together. Since this picture, I've removed even more of the original sculpture. I've dremeled down all four legs to realign joints and refine the cannons. The neck has been further reduced to allow for the more dramatic neck turn and I've started sculpting, though I'm not ready to share pictures of that quite yet...

Unfortunately, he never reached a point in his scukpting that I was comfortable sharing, and then I just had to get him done in time, so I skipped ahead to the finished piece. Here he is!