I have had the reference shots of the sabino-splash overo horse that I used for Quinn for some time now, but I hadn't found the right body.  One thing is true about horses with predominantly white faces, and that's that the sculpting has to be good enough to carry the piece, because you cannot minimize faults with strategic shading.  Finn seemed ideal because he has a wonderful head.

My other hesitation was whether or not I could capture the true look of this type of color in glaze.  Subtlety that is easy to achieve with cold paint can be elusive for those of us who work in underglaze.  Recently I've been trying to push the limits of the techniques we use to suggest hair patterns (like the recent auction piece Dawson), and Quinn was one of the experiments in that process.  I wanted to see if I could capture the variations in sabino roan coats, where some areas can be very softly grainy while others seem to form tiny, crisp dots.  Dawson showed me that successive layering (and a lot of hand control) could create more natural dark-on-light hair patterns.  What I wanted to see with Quinn was if there was a way to get this with white-on-dark hair patterns.  I think it worked well!

In addition to his ticked and roaned topline, Quinn also has two blue eyes (as would fit a splash with his type of pattern) and shell hooves with grain detail. His mane is streaked with varying shades of chestnut, cream and white and he's been finished with a gloss glaze.
 

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