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*