~ Casting Nahar ~

Sheri McKinney of Secret Loft Designs shared photos of the casting process for her horse sculpt Nahar. Nahar took over 2 years to complete. Sheri made him in scale to 1/3 BJDs. She sent her original sculpt to Resins by Randy to make the casts. The video shows the basic steps taken to create the Nahar copies. (The steps are similar to those used to make resin dolls.) The finished horse was shown at BJDC in Austin. According to Sheri, Nahar weighs approximately 9-13 pounds. The horse is being sold blank. He can be ordered custom painted and finished for an additional fee.

From Secret Loft Designs:

This impressive art piece stands 27″ from floor to ear tip. Length from nose to farthest end of tail is 30″. The actual 1/3 scale makes for a large 16 hand riding horse for regular 60 cm bjds that also works well with the new larger dolls on the market. His legs are reinforced with steel for strength. The original sculpture of SLD Nahar has taken 2 1/2 years of work to complete what I envisioned for my own dolls. It was very important to me that BJD collectors have a horse available to them that combined a stylized Asian Ball-Jointed Doll aesthetic with correct conformation and anatomy.

Nahar comes with a sculpted mane and tail. The mane can also be sanded off and the tail removed and a hair mane and tail can be substituted. Sheri’s first finished horse was completed with a hair mane and tail.

(To see BJDcollectasy’s previous article on Secret Loft Designs and more information on Nahar, go HERE. More photos of Nahar will be added to this article once Sheri returns from the doll convention.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_ZhA66EOtg

(Correction to the information on the video, the horses were painted in oil paint, not acrylic paint as stated. Sheri originally hoped to use acrylic, but later switched paints in order to achieve a more blended appearance on the surface.)

First step, covering Nahar with clay

Ready to make fiberglass support

making the mold inside the fiberglass shell

Pouring the resin

The finished casts

Nahar almost fully painted, before adding mane & tail

Two versions of Nahar on display at BJDC

Nahar with molded mane and tail

Dappled Nahar accompanied by BJD elves