Casting is coming along unbelievably well! Helen ( “Arlla” is her user name on the Windstone forum: http://www.windstoneeditions.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=4&sid=b246ac3725c09585269a67df7ed9972b ) is training two new casters, Wendy and Chris. They are turning out lots of good pieces! We have a drying tunnel set up now, to dry the castings quickly, and soon there will be enough pieces … Read more
The Phoenix has been found and will be rising soon. This is a photo of the Paint-your-own Phoenix looking very lumpy in his partially completed first master mold. He is sitting in a cabinet next to the larger Winged Wolf sculpture which is at nearly the same stage in the mold making progress. These two … Read more
I misjudged Melody Peña, the modest artist and sculptor who is the creative heart of Windstone Editions. I assumed that anyone who sculpts fantasy figurines would somehow view the real world through that fanciful gauze. Just as some members of the Society of Creative Anachronism bend their lives around the Medieval persona they portray at … Read more
Having arrived at the blue metal building that is Windstone’s new home in the Northwest, I opened the door and stepped into a small foyer with a service window into the office. Windstone brochures were perched in a stand on the window counter. On the floor below the shelf an amazingly lifelike lizard sat sculpted … Read more
One of my favorite subjects to rant about is: “What I do badly” . The list is endless, of course, but drawing “humans” is one of them. I am often asked what my favorite subject is, to draw or sculpt. It isn’t what you would think, it is not fantasy, or animals, it is people. … Read more
This is an unfinished digital painting I’ve been working on, and a quick sketch of a Hippogriff. I’ m trying to get a feel for this creature. Each individual part is easy, but putting the whole creature all together is a nightmare! I am planning to do Hippogriffs as Windstone sculptures, either as Paint-Your-Owns, or … Read more
I found this ink drawing I did of three pieces from the original old animal line that was produced by us, Windstone Editions, when we first started the company about 25 years ago. The lion and lamb sculptures are extremely rare, and unfortunately, we haven’t found any of these castings unpainted, but we did find … Read more
We are now going through the difficult after effects of moving . The most emotionally wearing part is not being able to find stuff you are used to having at hand. We have a system here at Windstone, of unpacking boxes, placing the contents out on rolling carts until the stuff can be put away, … Read more
CRIPES!! It is snowing again!! Us ex-Californians can hardly deal with drizzle, let alone THIS stuff!! We just love the weather here, don’t get me wrong , but wow, it is cold! Our California-raised llamas and sheep won’t come out of the barn. They aren’t stupid. At Windstone things are going well for a change! … Read more
Look at this! Our own Windstone Editions blog page! This is a blog in which we will be talking about several topics: Pendragon, John and I and will be talking about our epic move from southern California to Corvallis, Oregon, and our simultaneous push to expand our presence into the online world. I’ll probably get … Read more
This is the way I painted a first batch ( about sixty) curlies. Unfortunately, I see that this picture I took doesn’t show the intense violet part very well, but I painted these in a compromise color between the two curlies pictured in the blog entry titled “Amethyst Dragons”. The top coil of the curlie … Read more
On my first tour of Windstone Edition’s new Northwest production facility, John Alberti (the mechanical wizard behind Melody Pena’s superb figurines) led me up a flight of carpeted stairs, where a stack of Harry Potter books had come to rest permanently on the third step, to the large room that serves as the design studio … Read more
We are just now starting to work on production painting again! Restocking our depleted piles of inventory is a milestone in our settling-in process. The problem is … I don’t know how to do the production painting very well, so teaching someone else is an issue! It has been about twenty years since I have … Read more
I have described Melody Peña, the artistic creator of all things Windstone, as a naturalist to the imaginary world. But she does amazingly well in the real world too. Proof of this came to me in the rotund form of a guinea pig. I took my 11-year-old daughter, Tam, on a cross-town pilgrimage to Windstone … Read more
