This picture shows the piece as "assembled" as I can get it for now. The shafts for the carriage are aluminum rods that have been sanded (on a belt sander) to make them square rather than round, and have been bent into the proper shapes for the shafts. The rest of the harness (the tugs, shaft loops, etc. - the stuff that connects the horse to the carriage) are simply a stack of wax strips right now, or wax with bits of clay on them to form buckles, etc. The driving lines (which are white rope in reality) will be made at the foundry.
Before you ask, yes, the man and carriage are proportional to the horse. The driver isn't a huge man, but the horse is big and kind of dwarfs him. The horse is 16.3 hands - there are 4" to a hand - at the withers (the part of the horse where the mane ends, just in front of that second strap across this horse's back). The carriage in real life has 54" high wheels, which are 6" high here - 1/9 lifesized, as is the rest of the sculpture. The wheels were made by my basemaker, Diane Soper of Sistermaide Woodworks (http://www.sistermaide.com), who makes reproduction spinning wheels as well as sculpture bases.
The bit is made from copper wire (the flat part is flattened copper wire) which took my hubby three nights of trying (and melting at least three bits!) before he got them soldered properly. I'd already given up on soldering them, since it took a propane torch rather than an electric soldering iron, and I'm not very good with torch soldering.
The horse is 10" high at the top of his neck and the whole piece about 21" long total. The detail on the man's face is so tiny, I was using micro tools, a toothpick and a straight pin to try to sculpt the details!
You can see this sculpture, called "Elegance," as a work-in-progress on these pages: http://thesculptedhorse.com/progress.html (scroll down to see the horse) and http://thesculptedhorse.com/progress2.html to see how I made the carriage (and there were no instructions - I had to figure it out for myself, argh).
I've just finished teaching a week-long sculpture/mold-making/resin casting workshop at the K-12 Gallery in Dayton, Ohio. It was fun but also a LOT of hard work!! The kids were great, and so were my helpers, but I was exhausted every evening when I got home, so, unlike my usual practice, I didn't get anything done other than cleaning stalls and feeding the animals. It's nice to get back to my usual routine!
On the writing front, I'm currently writing content for my book website, http://www.whspubs.com which may or may not be "live" when you check it. My web designer and I keep messing with it, trying to get it "right" before officially launching it. I'm currently working on a couple of "Writer's Tips" articles.
I'm also doing the final polish on Star Sons 1: Dawn of the Two before sending it to my book designer. I got the manuscript back from the copy editor about a week ago, but I've been teaching since then and haven't had the time or energy to do the revisions (all very minor - just formatting and typo-type things, mostly) until today. I hope to get it off to the book designer very soon!
And that's the news from here for today! Have a wonderful 4th of July!
Wonderful work! Do post pics when it is completed and ready to be sent.
ReplyDeleteThis is how it looked when I was ready to send it. It's at the foundry being cast in bronze now, YAY! Glad you like it! Thanks for writing!
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