Let Me (Re)Introduce Myself
- paintponystudios
- 7 hours ago
- 8 min read
I realized the other day that it's been a pretty long time since I've introduced myself to everyone (if I actually have at all??? ever??,) and I have a LOT of new people here... So let's change that!
Short version is: My name is Emma, I'm 27, I'm from "middle-of-nowhere-almost-Canada," and I've been Horse Crazed since before I could properly walk. (My parents plopped me on a pony ride ONE TIME, and I have been this way ever since. Sorry mom and dad, but you kinda did this to yourselves.)
I've been running Paint Pony Studios since 2015 when it was actually just my art studio name. No mascot, no proper logo, no website-- I was a junior in high school with an airbrush, an Etsy account, and a dream. (A dream which was simply "use the money I'd make from painting to pay for my OF model horse hobby." And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that-- apparently, I just take things a little too far sometimes.)
But I've also been drawing horses for MUCH longer than that.
As I write this, I only have examples of my art from 2011 onward, but I feel as if it's very important to know that when I was in the 4th grade, I ran a Paper Pony Trading Company business out of my classroom desk where other kids would pay me for the privilege of having one of my horse drawings cut out like a paper doll. (I was paid in those cute little zebra-shaped erasers and pencil grips you could chew on, it's fine. But I did get in trouble with my teacher for it at one point.)
So as you can probably tell, I was business-minded pretty early on. (Also, if I find one of these little paper ponies, I PROMISE I'll show you.)
Speeding forward to 2015 again, I was a sophomore in high school making very edgy "sophomore in high school" art while at the same time practicing customizing Breyer bodies that I had just laying around from my carpet herd.
The other thing I was doing in 2015? Prepping for what was 10000%, absolutely-positively going to be my career until the end of days- I was going to work in comic books. I was going to have a very specific job doing pencils for very specifically DC Comics, and I was also very specifically going to go to a very prestigious art college in Chicago. So, I did what any goal-oriented teenager does when they love comics as much as I did:
I made my own comic book series.
And I self-published it.
Breathe #1 came out when I was starting my senior year of high school in the fall of 2015, and the series continued through 2018. It was a 24-page comic about my original character Lee and her horse-shaped golem- two characters you might recognize if you've opened a couple packs of trading cards or been in the Sticker Club before. While, admittedly, the comic isn't amazing, I'm still incredibly proud of it, and I don't think that I'd be where I am today if I hadn't worked so hard to get it off the ground.
It's also something you can still purchase and read, just in case you feel like taking a trip down Cringe Lane with me (I say lovingly.) All of the Breathe comics (there's 3 in total) and the Character Directory are still available via the print-on-demand site, IndyPlanet. (You can also ask me if I have physical copies still if you REALLY WANT because the answer is "Yes, I have a handful.")
The comic led me down some avenues I didn't expect. I started attending comic cons, I was meeting artists and writers who were giving me some amazing advice (shoutout specifically to Dirk Manning, whose encouragement of 16-year-old me was without a doubt the reason that I was so forward-thinking as a senior in high school,) and I was even invited to speak at local writer's conventions and table at Free Comic Book Day events.
At this same time, I was also heavily involved in Pony Club, so you could say that I was truly the Ultimate Nerd. Horse Girl + Art Nerd + Comic Nerd??? Yes, the Ultimate Nerd, indeed. I didn't (and still don't) enjoy competing, but I was very active with horses to the point where I was regularly hauling to WI, IL, and even the Kentucky Horse Park for Pony Club events.
By the time I graduated high school, I was a C1 in Pony Club, I had published two comic books, and I had nearly a full-ride scholarship to my local university where I'd be going for a Bachelor's Degree in Illustration. And then things just KEPT HAPPENING--
In 2016, my mom got a call from the owner of our local tack store asking "Would you want to take over the Breyer dealership for me?" Despite me still being in high school and her having a full-time job, the answer was an immediate "Yes!" Within a week, we had cleared up some space and took 6 cars' worth of trips from the tack shop to our store location in order to get all of the inventory settled in its new home.
Frankly, a lot of it wasn't good inventory. There were many things that nobody wanted, all of it was overpriced, and some of it was broken. But the biggest thing was duplicates. Duplicates of EVERYTHING.
We had taken in roughly $6,000 (our cost) worth of Breyer horses... So now Paint Pony Studios had become a Breyer dealership. But I still hadn't fully tied my art into it--
In 2017, I was invited to do a test paint for Stone Horses. Then, in 2018, during what was arguably my busiest year of college, I spent a whole summer in Indiana on an "internship." (It's in quotes because I was basically actually employed and then continued to STAY employed until 2022.)
While my main focus while interning was meant to be painting, I actually brought my computer and tablet down as I had won a T-Shirt design contest shortly before my internship began, and it was requested that I work on some graphic design/illustration ideas for the company on days I wasn't painting. This "downtime" I had birthed the very first digital Design-A-Horse builder, not hosted on the website itself, but on a separate doll-builder website (y'know, back when Adobe Flash Player was a thing.)
A huge thank-you to DB Productionz, one of the first Stone Horse Youth Ambassadors (one of the programs I created when I was at Stone) for actually having a video on how to use the original builder. I coded the whole thing from practically scratch, so HOURS AND HOURS went into this initial builder.
Eventually it got an overhaul when we had a different, on-website program to use. That one also took hours to put together, but it was a much better experience, which is the same one they're using today! (Just with updated art by a very talented friend of mine.)
These were some of the first ever OF models I painted, and I'm not sure where any of them ended up, but it was definitely a very cool experience and shaped the way I create my custom horses now.
Eventually I went on to have a full-time job with the company and moved to Indiana to work in the office. I wore many hats: advertising/marketing, DAH program, graphic designer, event planner, social media manager, model designer, painter, etc. A lot of you probably remember my work from Moonlight Madness and the first year of the Classic Literature series. Here's just a taste of some of my favorites--
(Please note that I wasn't responsible for painting these runs, but I was the designer for both customization and pattern. Wolfie, Sherlock, the buckskin Ambrosia, and Boo were all painted by Ellen; Maid Marian was by Ashley; Captain Hook was painted by Julie.)
My job was (usually) a lot of fun, but I was not loving Indiana, I couldn't find a good place to move my horse to, and (for reasons I won't disclose here because they're pretty personal) things were getting to be way too stressful for me given the position I was in, and I moved back home. I transitioned to working from a distance and going to the factory for in-person events, but after a couple months of doing that, it just wasn't working out, and I made the decision to walk away.
While things weren't perfect, I learned a lot about a lot of things, and it gave me the confidence to start building out my own business, which I had been HEAVILY neglecting. In 2023, I started taking Paint Pony Studios seriously (both my art and the Breyer dealership), and this became my full-time job. (I do have a second job on top of working for myself. Thankfully it's part-time and incredibly flexible, but at this point those hours are still necessary to keep myself afloat.)
Flashing backwards a smidge, I graduated college in the spring of 2021 with my Bachelor of Fine Arts in Illustration, focusing on sequential art (comics and storyboards) and character design. Both when I was designing horses at Stone and when I started transforming Paint Pony Studios into what it is today, I wanted to use what I'd learned as a part of my degree to not just make horses with character but make horses that ARE characters.
I feel like I'm finally at a point where I can make the things I always wanted to make and foster the kind of fun and creativity that I've been looking for. My job is not really a "job." And that's not to say that it isn't hard work, that I don't put in longer hours than I maybe should or that some aspects of what I do are not always fun and not always creative... But I still love it.
And, also, it's just me at this point. I sparingly have help from my parents, my partner, and my friends, but the person posting to socials? Fulfilling your orders? Planning for events? That's all me, gang. I try to come off as very polished and professional just because I want to. (I like it, okay? I think it looks nice, and I'm putting all my branding/marketing knowledge to work lol)
Every event that I vend at, I reliably get someone who, when told that I do all the artwork for my products, says "What? Really?? No way! I thought this was a big brand that I didn't know about." And I do take that as a compliment, although it might be a weird one. On the one hand, sorry I maybe come off so "corporate?" If that's even a good word. But on the other, it does make me feel good to be compared to Breyer, Lisa Frank, My Little Pony, or Bella Sara-- all things that had a massive impact on me creatively throughout the years.
So I hope that, while this is maybe old information to a lot of you, some of you walk away from reading this (I applaud you for reading the whole thing if you did!!) feeling like maybe you know a little bit more about me and why I make the art that I make. I know I don't get too personal on here or on socials, and I tend to keep it that way just for... mainly general internet privacy reasons, but also because I'm just a pretty private person.
But I think you can get to know me quite a bit through the horses and artwork of Paint Pony Studios <3
-Emma
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