Table portraits 1.

Here comes the second bunch in the photo bunch/table portrait series... I wish I could just call all of these "table portraits", but how could I when they aren't always taken on a table? Yea. I will split some bigger photo piles into a couple posts. 

So this bunch was taken somewhere in the late October 2019.  I of course can no longer remember what I was trying to achieve with this situation, but at least I had a gorgeous Breyer horse on the table and he had an overly complex bridle on his head. I wanted to photograph it just because. 

I kind of think a Valegro model doesn't deserve any negativity, but then again, no horse does. I happen to be a pessimist and I know way too much about the rotten eggs which are going on in the equestrian world, and that is what I often draw and miniaturize. And the Valegro mold simply has a fitting expression for scenes which include weird tack or poor riding. Enough said? 

The bridle seen in these photos is a mess which I have decided to name "fightmore", because to me it looks like something an impatient, abusive and selfish rider could want to put on their horse, instead of taking their time and effort to get along with the horse and to become a better rider... And in fact, unfortunately, we have seen photo evidence of these bridles existing, and often the rider has wanted to take a shortcut... I definitely call it a fightmore, but some call it hackabit. Maybe there are even more names for this monstrosity?

Though, in theory it is possible for a fightmore to be humane. It's just a normal bridle with a bit, a hackamore, and two pairs of reins. It can't do harm just sitting on the horse and nobody yanking from the reins, could it? I am sure, in theory it is technically possible that a good rider knows how to use one gently.

Well, even a properly adjusted noseband can cause harm. So can any bit. And so can any hackamore. I think this is a dilemma which can't be solved with just decisions like "this tool is yes" and "this tool is nope". I do not have a real horse life and I lack the experience to really know how to comment on these things, but I try to use my common sense and empathy. Horses can smell your feelings, and I'm sure they also smell if a rider doesn't care about their wellbeing. Pfff. 

I sometimes feel like I don't know what I should think or how should I explain it when I publish these horror bridles. Why do I make them? I couldn't like to cram that much stuff on any animal just to give it some exercise. (A harness, a reflective vest, a collar and a LED collar seemed too much at some point when we had our dog... I can't even imagine how some horse people can cope with all the strap adjusting every time they exercise their horses, since especially trotters often have very complex tack.) 

I also don't think it looks good if a horse is totally covered in tack... But for some reason I like to draw and miniaturize exactly that. Maybe it's the detailing which the model horse hobby is so crazy about? It must be that. I also simply like to design the complex mechanisms of hackamore shanks and related, and then try to make them in miniature. It must be that! Some people in this world make scary horror bits which, I have understood, are just pure art and not meant for actual use. And what else is the model horse crafting about than art? In the hobby we see a lot of tack which nobody uses with real horses.

What a rant. But that is what my rotten egg stories and drawings and - seemingly - mini crafts often are about. Plus, I want to say, I think it is important for people to add some explanation to why their photos or crafts look like what they look like. To add a backstory for it. The saying "let the viewer interpret it how they want" does not apply to my works, because I often want to say something specific with these. I do NOT want to take the risk that someone could severely misinterpret especially these rotten egg works. 

The second bunch will also be about a fightmore!

Art photo pile: Lanttu from 2018

So here should come the first photo bunch of what I mentioned in the previous post. Hmmm! I need to be self-critical and realistic, and not to try to post every pile... Because that is not what I planned to do.

The horse in these photos is Lanttu, officially "Lost Wits Of The Halter Creators" refering to how I and some of my friends are crazy takcmakers. And Lanttu has been a good tack mannequin and common in my archive photos since he came to me in January 2018. 

My photos from that era are usually very contrasty, sometimes harsh to the eye. I like contrast, but I also can go blind for the quality, and computer screens vary so much... And too much is too much, even for a contrast enthusiast. I also often like to keep the colors rich, so I set them so already in the camera. I can't know how the end result will look on the computer, of course, and I always edit my photos to some degree. For basic information I have to say the camera is a DSLR, Nikon D3100 with its kit lens and built-in flash. I spread the light by taping a piece of white paper in front of the flash (on the camera logo) and make sure none of this is touching the actual flash part. 

February 2018 was when I already had the three heavy mirrors which I bought entirely just for model horse photography. They really did make an effect in my photos, though I'm unsure how visible it is from these overly contrasty things... Anyway, at least I got some fun shots where the horse looks like as if he was admiring himself from the mirror. 

I see, I also tested if I can take any good shots without the softening paper. Bad idea. 

Softened.

Not softened.

Definitely not softened.

The bridle is one I made clearly in early 2018, I think, and it has always been that bare... And symmetric. I recently updated the whole thing by replacing the old buckles with more realistic in-scale ones and which have moving tongues. The reins are, unlike what I usually do, a part of the set. Not so sure about the bit. In general I feel as if this bridle was almost made for this exact mold and model, although I don't design tack that way most of the time.

What else can I say? I like to take portraits and headshots... They are usually quite easy, but can get slightly boring at times if there's nothing else. That is why I am so glad I now have the big studio option back, no less with the same fabric which served as a backdrop in these photos as well.

To compare these to how I take my photos now: I could have added a doll who could hold a lead rope, or a chain. I use that now even if I never include the doll in the photos! 

Hmm, wonder what the next post in this "series" will include...? As I mentioned, these are not what I usually take, which means the next bunch will be from October 2019.

Photo piles

For a while I have planned to do blogposts of some bigger bunches of photos I have taken over the years. Posting them to dA is fun, but I also don't want to post too many there and I kind of don't keep the bad shots at all anyway... So I only try to post the photos that I think are the personal favorites of mine. Usually it's about posting 2-5 pictures in one go, and then I take a pause, or move to another photo stack. 

Photo taken in February 2018.

But I feel like I don't only have a couple good shots in each stack, so I have wondered why I never post them into my blogs. That way I couldn't need to go so picky and perfectionistic with them, and could post several versions of one photo at once. One photo pile can contain about 20-40 pictures... I also don't like the idea of titling every single photo separately, and in dA I have to make sure even non-modelhorsiers understand what I say in the descriptions, so it's a lot of repeating to do. And, the last, I just can't cook up a ton of words about every single photo and keep them interesting. I try to, but I don't think people read anything these days... Which is lame, because they should. 

These photos I plan to post here are not what I usually take. My average modelverse photos have been taken on top of a shelf with some kind of backdrop, which, in fact, is currently a textile. I got back to using my old textile backdrops after ages of not having it possible. I also normally use the camera flash with these, routinely.

January 2018.

I recently took some art photos on that shelftop as well, but it went mostly lame due to me not being able to reflect the light anywhere with anything, as the only source of light was and is the roof lamp... And the camera flash. I use a tripod these days so I can also leave the flash off at times, but more often than not I simply feel like it is crucial, unfortunately. It is not as bad as everyone says, if you know how to make it work, but at times I could like different light. And the light spreading... I have made some light spreading tools by taping aluminium foil over cardboard and then crafting some metal wire (actually the heavy thing which holds a spool of metal wire in shape) into the cardboard to keep it in the right angle. These work very well when the source of light is very close to the model, like when I take photos on the worktable. I like to play with the angles a lot when so. 

But if I try to use the spreading tools on the shelftop and only have the roof lamp, it's useless... Even if I use flash. Years ago I had a big box which as itself made it possible to prop spreading tools into it. I own some large-ish mirrors I once bought exactly for photography use, and they were great. But I can't place them anywhere on top of a shelf. They are heavy! 

One of the exact mirrors. February 2018.

Anyway... I simply meant to say that I plan to post some "artistic" photo bunches here. That includes portraits. Now I just need to figure out how old these can be. I spotted some less interesting photos taken around 2019, and further digging made me decide that I draw the limit to 2018. Often my photos of that year are okay, but not up to my current standards, and I couldn't be motivated enough to post anything older. But at least we will have some material to compare with newer shots! Most of the pictures will be just horse heads with or without tack, because I often haven't had the space for anything else. Life is lame at times.

I could also have posted these photo stacks into my Finnish blogs, but asked an American friend and it may be more practical (and possibly shareable) to have everything in English instead. Finns read it like nothing so it is not an issue, BUT I could always like to write about the model horse hobby in a less common language and for a folk which does not know so much about the hobby. Here will always be those individuals who don't know enough English.

This is the photo quality I will be posting... a lot. Depressing black and white is so yummy. Photo from autumn 2019.

I also want to mention that I should more or less retake some of the pictures I may blog about. My tackmaking has improved a lot since 2019 or so, and we know how important tack quality is for good scene photos.

Show thoughts from a person who has never showed

I got this idea when browsing liveshow photos from blogs. I have never showed any models myself, so I have no experience or knowledge in that sense. But I like to assemble scenes with my horses, dolls and tack. 

When I see a photo where there are many horses on a table, tacked up and with dolls or not, I see happenings. I know the entries don't correlate with each other, but - what if they did? Why don't Americans (or Swedish, since Finland has no shows) cook up some group scenes where every entrant has a horse and a scene, and it should look like that there's some interaction with others going on? Could that make any sense? It could be even more fun if people weren't so stuck with the idea that every setup should be perfect, what I feel like is the main thing in performance. That is why I am more interested about scene photos than just performance photos, while I have very little interest for halter. 

I guess this is a riding lesson going wrong.

So, why could there be no "tiny world" on the table? It could be interesting, seriously. I could compare this to what I have seen on blogs and websited of Finnish dollhouse enthusiasts, who also do shows (or exhibitions; no competition) - sometimes there have been several houses in a row, alias a street, interacting with each other. Seeing something similar with model horses could be awesome. 

You see, as a modeller I'm not very interested about perfection. To me the hobby is all about realism in anatomy, color, dynamics, etc... If it is possible in real life, then it is possible in model life. I have never had any interest towards competiting in horse sports or related, and I do not try to make my customs a perfect example of any breed. I rather cook up my own breeds or mixes and sculpt and paint them how I like. That also means I could never show my horses well, because they just aren't what people could like to call good. Because they are not good, most of the time... But real horses are never perfect neither. 

I should recreate this old scene... But the Running Stallion copy isn't worth using and also is not too tack friendly.

I am a "moment in time" person, when it comes to modelhorsing and scenes. To me that is the salt of the whole thing, plus the fact that everything should be as realistic and accurate as possible. I see a lot of real horse photos where there are tack errors, riders have odd facial expressions, horses "misbehave", and so on. Action photos about odd situations like fails are interesting, and I about never see those in miniatures. I struggle to assemble any myself because the factory Breyers of course are made for performance perfection. Hmmmm. 

Those action shots and fails could be interesting to see in a big group scene where nobody needs to be perfect. The horses' expressions and positions could matter, as well as how close the horses are to each other. It could be a group from a mini world. And the big rule could be that people shouldn't know beforehand what everyone else is doing with their setups! That could make it unexpected and possibly absurd and thus interesting and funny.

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.