Who's there?

I was preparing for a few visitors to come and see this fellow over the course of a couple of days. First up was my Father, who was, as usual, absolutely invaluable in seeing and helping to solve some of the issues that were bothersome to the eye.

The shoulders, for instance. There was just too much there. And the lifted rear leg was too high. And. . .and. . . This stage of the game is always interesting because you spend X number of hours putting on clay and now you start to hack large amounts of that same clay back off. It doesn't matter how close I thought I had it in the first place, my eye always overdoes things. It's too difficult to try and worry about refining somthing when you're trying to capture that initial feeling and gesture that you want the horse to have.

The tail is, obviously, starting to hint at where this is going breed-wise. . .but there is so much more to be revealed about this guy!

I like this close-up photo because it's out of focus
and that makes it look like it's closer to being finished than it is. ;^P There's still a LONG way to go
but at this point there wasn't much time to keep sculpting because it was time to throw on a temporary mane and tail to look pretty for his next visitors! Stay tuned!

Knock knock. . .

Filling out a bit more. . .

I'm still not using any exact measurements at this point. I'm just trying to get the basic feel and proportion.

It's always interesting how soon the future "issues" in a piece start to rear their ugly heads. I can see that the shoulders and that lifted rear leg are going to take some thought. :^\

Anyone figure out the who, what, where, etc. yet? C'mon! It's no fun unless people play along! Humor me! I'm just sitting here, all by myself, in the middle of the night, listening to the dogs snore!

Guess who?

Wheeeee! Time lapse photography, the hard way!

More clay. . .

more. . .

Yadda yadda yadda. . .

More to come. . .

Back so soon?

Yes. . . I'm blogging again! Two more and I think I'll have beat my total number of posts for 2009! Yay me! Like I said, I have quite a few photos to get through before I'm showing where the horse currently is so. . .bear with me.

This is the revised armature and the first bits of clay.

More clay. . .

Aaaaaaaand more. . .

Anyone ready to start guessing? Hmmm? Anyone?

Have I mentioned. . .

. . .that I have a hard time finishing things I start? The wire critter in my last post did actually take some sort of shape before I set it aside but I'll save that for another time. Yes folks, I have difficulty completing projects that I start. I think that's because I don't HAVE to finish them and it's always more fun to start something new. This ongoing issue is one of my greatest failings.


*But* now I've taken on an exciting project that I knew from the beginning I would HAVE to finish! Nothing like a commission with deadlines to jumpstart my rarely used stick-to-itiveness. (yes, it's a real word) I know the details will become known over the next few days so, for now, I'm going to leave the who, what, when, and where up to your imagination. The why of it all though, I can tell you right now, it is my own personal quest to rediscover my sculpting mojo.


I HAD to share this photo of the armature because it was so darn funny. Armatures don't usually have much personality, but this one ended up just brimming with attitude. I had to make a few changes to it before I started sculpting and it was interesting to see how the small differences changed the original jauntiness. It's better that the attitude should be on the outside of the piece than on the inside anyhow. Ha!

I'll be doing a quick fire method of blogging here for a bit because I have a lot of in-progress photos to post before I'm caught up to "real time." Stay tuned!