Alive

Some years ago, when I and my fellow Finnish bloggers came to the conclusion that writing model horse blogs in Finnish doesn't serve well, we started a new blog, Thousand Lakes Models, to write together in English. I ended up keeping it going with Kave, and... Well, she's been busy with real life for a long time now, and basically that means I have been updating TLM alone. I like the blog and could say it wins over this one. There's just one problem: TLM is not 100% mine, and because I have conscience and respect my friends, I can't just call it "my" blog. It is "our" blog, mine and Kave's. 

It's this Visualrat which is mine. My problem is that since TLM happened, I haven't felt the need or interest to use this blog much or at all. For a while I thought I could start posting some modelverse stories and scene photos (photo stories and photo stacks) here, but that didn't go well. By this time I just couldn't like to let people see what kind of old trash I store in my computer. They have value to me, but that doesn't mean they could interest anyone else or be worth seeing, let alone publishing. And I have done so much of those photo stacks that it could take forever to reach the episodes and quality my stories are at this day. So I just stopped and decided that I'm not continuing on publishing them. 

I have a lot of photos from the poor quality era, when I also used my smaller camera for model photos for a short time.

Current level of tack and rather recent experimenting with using no flash - I do own a tripod, so why the toe hadn't I used it for ages?! I do not have an "official" photo spot right now, but a shelftop is better than nothing and I just have the need to assemble and record these setups.

It is true that I have never been good at blogging. I can't update these (I own a lot of blogs) often enough, I am unsure about what people could think, and I cannot move photos from the cameras and edit them straight after taking them. I have tried that with one cat blog years ago, and it just didn't work for me, I ran out of energy for it. 

One could think that updating a blog at least weekly could be easy, since there could be several days between posts to hone and finish them. Nope. I'm really bad at that, even with the fact that I sit here reading and editing my posts basically all the time if I'm not sleeping or eating (or working on tack or customs). My biggest problem has long been the fact that I overthink, especially about how people will react to what I say. I have no problem with writing properly (especially in Finnish; of course I am not as good with English as it is not my first language), and I mean what I say, so I still don't understand why people so often misinterpret me and assume that I am angry if I in fact am sarcastic or joking. Maybe it just is what happens when one (me) has autistic brain and the rest of the people most often don't. Mmmm. 

Anyway, enough about that. What has happened during these couple of years? TLM will explain most of it really. I haven't made new dolls in at least a couple years now, but I have made a ton of tack, and been also customizing. Recently I've also started to feel that I finally have enough Breyer bodies in traditional scale that there is basically nothing that could prevent me from finishing customs. I try not to go too drastic with my customs these days, because the drastic changes are why I about never finish any of my older projects. That is annoying, because I have so many ideas but not much skill, knowledge or experience to make the ideas true and well. 

Some of my ugly Schleich customs being ready for paint.

(That must be the most ADD-makingnosense paragraph in a while... Just a thought flood with no much editing.)

2020 was when my saddlemaking got a big, big step further. After that came a few more steps which also are good, but that's it. My saddles are still a bit stupid, messy, and especially come in really dumb and ugly colors which I didn't pick for them - I just use what I can find locally, so that explains it! I could probably hunt for leather dyes and such, but I also think I need to make these things fitting and functioning properly before starting to do anything fancy like that. Though, with one pony saddle I went as far as painted some parts with acrylics, because that seemed to be the only option and I just wanted to test how it could go. 

The skirts and billets were originally black. The paint eventually cracked as I stressed the straps, but that wasn't surprising.

I am a painter by nature (or I just want to think I am - I never finish anything I start on canvas), so of course I had to start a mini landscape with those colors I used for the saddle parts. That escalated further, and I did a few more cardboard landscapes... And eventually I took some passepartout pieces which had been waiting for use since 2012! I used my own landscape photos as refs for most of these, and it helped a lot - I can't imagine what I should paint when it is "environment", so. Some of these got painted with gouache instead of acrylic, and that I could continue with. 

No reference.

With reference.

The mini paintings will of course serve for 1:9 scale rooms and related. My Rat Room (1:9 scale bedroom in a bookshelf) is full of my paintings. What I really find odd in these things is that usually dollhouse artwork is done (or seems to be done) solely as a decoration, and often so that it isn't served as serious art as is. That feels strange to me. I feel much better doing mini art than large canvases, and can finish a few minis in a day while not finish one big canvas in months! (I started one landscape last summer... I eventually got enough of it and moved it off from the easel.) Studying art in school - I am "officially" a painter - didn't help. They always make students to do some huge works and I never, never feel comfortable doing that. Nope. It is not easier to see or work with.  

This (these?) is a combination of a couple separate reference photos, and the one with more pink will go to USA.

What I was trying to say, is that I do all my drawings and paintings "for real", no matter the size. Most of those mini paintings I've done are less than 5 cm long on the longer edge.

In other hobby life news... Well, I already mentioned the saddles. Should I now say something about bridles, or halters? I think with them I have had only small honing here and there, which of course is always positive, but it's not much to write about. Plus I just recently published four texts worth of halter evolution into my Finnish blog, The Tuherrus. That was a ton of work and repeating it here is not very tempting. In general, I don't think my tack could be anything special for American readers, since the standards there are so high. 

The blog's name contains the term "rat" for a reason. I should let myself to chat here not only about plastic horses, but also the rats of the same kind, even if that means they are sculpted by me... No brand makes good rat figures, so they must be made at home. 

The thumb rat population hit thousand already ummmm... a couple years ago? In 2021? No wonder I struggle with identifying them, cooking up names or nice designs, as I have already used everything with them... This is alarming. It is also a little sad. 

Some rats drying on the tack shelf. The batch in total consisted of 200 rats.

At some point I got to chat about real and fictional genetics with my Swedish friend and fellow modeller, Decors, and that is why I ended up making so many bunches of thumb rats with simple designs: there could be about ten rats of one color with very little difference, and they could be told apart mostly by studying their positions. It can be interesting to do something like that, especially since I like to cook up fictional ratteries and then decide what each rattery focuses on.

But it was fun while it lasted. I eventually ran to a problem, which is that I can't see the rats apart, and sometimes changes in colors were so little that I couldn't say if a rat in a photo was yellow or technically green with a lot of yellow. They became too similar to each other... And sometimes my camera doesn't know what things look like and wrecks colors, which my computer misinterprets even further. 

Anja. Most likely an yellow with some green, but not enough to count as lime.

For the second big batch of thumb rats I strictly decided to do smaller groups of one color, and gave them some white markings and differences in eye colors. (I paint markings when they are small enough or somehow complex, but anything bigger and simplier I prefer to do from clay.) 

Kiivi. Green with a star and a belly spot. Eyes black.

Sivi. Green, eyes white with black pupils, no white markings.

The ratteries I can cook up for fun. I just get to decide a doll, and what colors, coat types or whatever else they could like to breed in rats. It's the genetics which I struggle with, since I can't just use color theory and real rat colors are really confusing as well. Most rat colors are just dilutes of dilutes, and names and standards vary between countries. Horse colors make a lot more sense... Because nobody can say "a bay should be only this shade of brown and the black points should not extend over this and this!". 

Kriikuna. Light blue.

Närö and Köpö. "Basic" blue.

Jemma. "Black blue", technically blue with black mixed to it.

Do I have any hobby goals for this year? First thought is to say "not really". I can't make promises to myself, I have ADD and I am still depressed. But then I get to remember that I have a bunch of hobby trades going on! I get to make tack and send it around, also internationally, and some customs. Right now I hate the fact that I can't keep my art room and workspaces organized enough, and I can do only one thing at once. For example, I've mostly had tack stuff going on, but making space for customs at the same time is not an option. I have had a massive need for customizing, or just repainting, recently... If thr stupid bridles could stop haunting me soon enough, and if I knew where to start with the cleaning, I could possibly get my newest batch of victims painted further! But then again, I planned to make straps for those hackamore shank pairs I cooked up, and I also need to make a personal halter for my brother's large littlebit scaled bronze model. Blrgh. If only could I have a permanent place where to spread the painting supplies, that could be nice. That way I could also work on tack when I want to.

Oh, what a semi-rant. I could stop now. So many things I mentioned and didn't mention... I could write separate update posts about some things. I always think I could do that, but then I don't, and end up posting these messy news texts once a year.