Throw some hair on it, it'll be fine!

Ahhh yes, piling on the hair, an artist's way of saying "I don't know how to begin dealing with what's under here so I'm going to go ahead and cover it up." You can hide a lot of troubles with the right amount of mane and tail. . .eyes, ears, an occasional leg . . . and here I am trying to hide fetlock joints. Actually, I'm trying to hide a *lack* of fetlock joints. Either way, If I put on enough feathering, I won't have to sculpt fetlock joints, which would inevitably lead to re sculpting knees and hocks and I absolutely don't want to go there! This little critter has an overall "horsey" appearance, but taken piece by piece he starts to look more than a little bit unusual. Alas, there wasn't any hairy way (short of making him into a Clydesdale) to cover his poor little, oddly shaped, footsies . . . I decided I would just leave them and try to disguise them with paint later. So, are we looking at front legs or back legs? Well, I can see a ball of putty put on his undersized front hoof, So I know that the first two pics are front legs and the third (with the legs close together and seen from the rear) is back legs. I ended up adding a LOT of epoxy to that shrunken little front hoof to make it more even with the other one. It turned out to be a good spot to pile leftover putty up when I was done working in an area.

Well, go figure . . . Here I am typing about how I was NOT going to sculpt fetlock joints and I can CLEARLY see on this last photo that I did, in fact, make an attempt at giving him somewhat more pronounced and rounded joints. I guess there's only so much a person can do with hair after all!

Sure, but can you grow a moustache to go with that beard?

I'm having trouble remembering just how far from the deadline I was at this point. . . hmmmmmm. Let me think for a second. I guess this is somewhere in the middle of the night between Monday the 26th (of May) and Tuesday the 27th. The colt had to be delivered by 3 p.m. on Friday the 30th so, when I took these photos, I had PLENTY of time left . . . har har har! I had to time it all *just* right because all that epoxy had to have a good 24 hours to cure before any paint went on it. Anyhow, what we've got here is the completed little baby unicorn beard and the best effort I could make to blend the power tool re sculpted mane with a little bit of new sculpting on top to bring it all together. I didn't have the time, or the strength, to knead together and sculpt all the epoxy it would have taken to re-do the entire mane, so I worked on what was there a bit more with a large rasp (file) and added a few bits all along to match the new fore top. He's shaping up pretty good! From the shoulders forward at least! Haha!


The second to last photo here enlarges quite nicely if you click on it.

All those in favor. . .say "eye"

At this point it was GREAT to finally see *some* of the sculpting actually finished. In case you just started reading this blog, I should probably point out that the last several posts here have been chronicling the creation of a public art project piece for Lake Geneva, WI. It was actually completed at the end of May but, in keeping with my procrastinating nature, I am only *now* getting around to putting up these photos. Those of you who have been reading all along might be wondering why I am suddenly posting more often. . .occasionally two in one night . . . well, there's a reason for that but you'll just have to keep reading to find out. So. . .what's new in these pics?

Well, he's got a spiffy little tuft of hair around the bottom of his horn, and fuzzy hair texture inside his ears. But the thing that's made the biggest difference, in my opinion, is the newly sculpted eye area. The better defined lids and cute little lashes give him just the expression I was hoping for. Sweet and innocent, Awwwww!

So, stay tuned . . . there is a LOT more to come . . . way more than I bargained for, actually. :^\

Filling in the gaps

All righty then. . . let's get back to filling in those holes! The epoxy putty I am using is a two part sculpting epoxy that has to be kneaded together and used immediately. It stays pliable and nice for about 20 minutes before it gets too stiff to work with. Once it starts to harden it takes about 24 hours before it is 100% cured, so I had to jump from place to place on this critter to give each area a chance to set up. The tail area was a BIG mess. I could see I was going to have to sculpt over the whole thing somehow to disguise the weird vertical "hair" marks. The withers and neck were pretty choppy too, but I figured that the garland would take care of covering a lot of it. Wheeeee! I had a LONG way to go at this point and only about 4 days before the deadline! This all happened MONTHS ago, and I am still feeling tense writing about it! hahahaha!

So, I think I mentioned earlier that one of his ears was shorter than the other. . . I added to the tip and started packing the holes in the fronts of his ears so I would have a solid surface to sculpt over when I added the fuzzy hair texture in them. You can also see the beginning of his foretop. I couldn't resist adding the little Superman curl there. I was trying to balance out the side of his face too. Somehow the right side was sunken in on this casting and it made his face look crooked. He has brand new *round* eyeballs here. Nice little orbs to replace the flat ones he came with. I will come back and sculpt lids and eyelashes over these when the epoxy is hard enough.

So far, things are going pretty well. I only wish I had started a week or two earlier. Ah well, hindsight really *is* 20/20! He's looking sort of cute though, isn't he?

"Do I make you. . ."

Oh gosh. . . I swore I was going to keep this clean. . . seriously though, how can I NOT make horn jokes at this point? Here he is with his new horn, which I tried my best to make look as if it were a *real* horn and not some sort of stuck-on artificial appendage. In it's initial configuration it looked a little. . . ummmm . . . *phallic* and THAT was a problem, especially when viewed from below where every kid under the age of 4 would see it. Many thanks go to my Mother who was better rested than I and pointed (pun intended) out that it wasn't "pointy" enough. Ah HA! Problem solved. . .especially once it was painted some color other than it's current flesh tone. *cough *cough*

I need this like a hole in the . . .

Whoops! I guess there *is* a hole in his head. For the first time THIS particular hole was intentional. Since he's meant to be a baby unicorn, he needs a horn. . . but something sticking out like that on a public art piece needs to be sturdy. Fortunately, Dad is a whiz on this sort of thing
and he quickly put my concerns to rest by fashioning this creative little bolt reinforcement.
You can see the washer and nut on the outside. . . there is another washer and nut on the inside. The washer took some fancy maneuvering to get through the hole! Once it was properly seated on the inside, the outside nut could be tightened and . . . Voila! The bolt is being firmly held onto it's little forehead between the two washers! Nifty huh?
So, now he's taken his first step toward being a proper unicorn. The horn won't be very long (he is just a baby after all!) and once it has the epoxy packed into the hole and around the bolt, it should be solid as a rock! This is a good view of his new butch haircut too. More holes. *grumble* Not to mention the ears, which are headed toward having fuzzy texture put in them. . .but first, some stuff had to come out and. . .you guessed it! MORE HOLES!

Destruction, devastation and general mayham

Well, it was bound to happen. . . after a week of seeing the mass produced fiberglass horse sitting in his basement, my Father decided it had some "issues" that needed fixing. I could see all the issues too, but I was having an easier time ignoring them. I just wanted to paint it and be done. After all, it was Saturday, and the colt needed to be finished and delivered back to Lake Geneva by Friday at 3 p.m. But, we hauled it outside. . . and started talking about it. . . pretty soon somebody was brandishing a grinding tool . . . and then a larger grinding tool. . . before we knew it, we discovered that certain areas of this fiberglass critter weren't very thick!

So, we had holes to patch. . . and then there were more holes. . . and a few more. EEK! Holes everywhere, and grinding marks. . . lots of grinding marks! Hahahahahahaha! But we kept going because the overall silhouette looked better with each alteration. The tail looked a bit like some sort of exotic cucumber so one challenge would be to try and make it look a bit more like hair without grinding the whole thing off and starting over.

Can you see the fellow disappearing into the basement there? That's my Dad. . . he didn't want to be seen participating in this. But I can't remember if he was avoiding a photo. . . or if he was going in for a bigger tool. . . or if he was simply escaping from me saying something like "wait a minute! *somebody* is going to have to patch all of these holes, you know?" Another issue our fiberglass friend had was seriously curved rear cannon bones. I never did get a good shot of that before I did my best to camouflage them. They were sort of hook shaped from the hock to the tip of the hooves. Yikes! Another area that could use some improvement was the mane. It had the same sort of texture as the tail but with little short grooves instead of loooong ones. Again, of course, more holes in that thin surface. No wonder he's so light! He weighs about 40 pounds even though he's 55" to the tips of his ears.

The ground off area on the left side of the pic was the location of a good sized lump. . which proved to have something to do with the fact that the neck/head was attached separately instead of being cast all in one piece. See the straight line running through the gray area? Interesting. Also, probably best to avoid that area from here on since I can probably patch all of the small holes without much trouble, but having the head fall off would be *just* a bit more than I could handle so close to the deadline!

Just to prove that I am, indeed, working on this project, my Mother insisted that I pose for this photo. It was the end of a long day and, as you can see, my thumb is not actually on the throttle because I couldn't bear the idea of making any more holes that might need patching! The mask was a MUST! UGH That stuff produced such a thick cloud of stinky dust every time it was ground, filed, or sanded. Take my word for it. . . wear a mask if you ever need to work with fiberglass. . .even if it's going to be "just for a second" it isn't worth risking your health. Ear protection too. . . power tools and ear protection should always go hand in hand. I haven't always felt that way. . . but. . . what? Did you say something? You'll have to speak up! I should have had on some sort of approved eye protection but I honestly couldn't bear the thought of strapping yet another item to my already aching head. Looking at the pic though, I guess I *could* have removed the ever so fashionable head band. DOH! O.k. I should have another installment on here soon. I am juggling some house sitting duties along with taking care of my own house and trying to produce some new work while simultaneously writing about old work. Ahhhh! A procrastinator's work is never done. . . before it absolutely HAS to be! Haha!

P.S. Oops. . . I found another pic that sort of belonged in this section even though it hints at what comes next. This does show some of the re-textured areas on the mane though. Originally, the mane was a continuous, stiff looking mass. . .more like a zebra mane, so yet more holes were created by grinding off the fore top and breaking up all of the straight lines. The tips of the ears have also been worked on here. . .although one of the ears was about 1/2 inch shorter than the other. . .so I'll address that later once the putty comes out!