Pieces of Ponies

So, while the snow has been coming down I've been guiltily spending time sculpting. I needed a break from the painting just to freshen myself up a bit. After pouring another layer of rubber on Mimi and Baldur (Morgan mare and Icelandic Horse stallion), I decided to make a little more progress on a little filly I'm having lots of fun with!

I find myself wanting to do more "dynamic" poses lately along with the older mares. And I do like a challenge. I really like to take an element that I'm a little unsure of and really come to terms with it by incorporating it into sculpture. Darcy's element was the parked pose, Gawyn's was the drafty bulk and how to make all that hair peformance friendly, Baldur's is capturing the weight distribution and angles of a galloping turn, etc. Each piece had challenges, but those pieces had more readily described ones. This next piece incorporates leg angles in the movement as well as really dynamic shoulder action. Legs don't just move up and down, they move in and out too. It's hard to tell how much movement this pieces has until I put the legs onto a body, but I'm really happy with the results so far!

The leggies are pretty much as far along as they're going to get at this point. You'll see they're not all the way done near where they'd connect to the body. This is because I want to sculpt that part in - one for more stability of the sculpture, and two to create a smoother blend incorporating the "separate digit" from the piece. It'll look more seamless that way.

Thanks to Liesl Dalpe for the inspiration of sculpting the legs separate from the body! This method of sculpting really works so much easier for me. I can pick up the legs and work around all the angles without trying to cram in a long-handled sculpting tool into a tight squeeze. They are also much easier to measure lengths this way. 

While I like her young face, you'll notice I messed up and sculpted the eyes too far down the head. I've photoshopped two of the images to show where the eyes will end up. Now if only they were that easy to move in real life!

My favorite order of sculpting things seems to be start with the head (my absolute favorite part of a piece), then get the dirty work of the miserable legs out of the way next (I *hate* sculpting legs but I'm really making an effort to get better at them!), start the easy work of the body and assembling the entire piece as a whole, and then finish up with my second favorite part - hair. 

That's all the peek you get! For now. :)

Bootylicious

Now that I'm farther along on him, I'm noticing Quick Draw has quite the caboose on him. We all like a big-butted stock horse, but this guy is a bit extreme! I like where the left side is blocked in at, but that right side...oh my.

So, to help me really see how much better it's going to look when I take away, I've Photoshop'd the first image to this:

His tail only has the right side sculpted so don't let that throw off your center line perspective. I also think it looks like his head is tilting ever so slightly to the left. Super easy fix. I find it's a really good thing to take lots of photos of your work in key points of the process. Looking at your horse via a photo clears your tired eyes and gives you a new perspective. I saw some other things that needed fixing besides just the width of the derrière.