Progress, progress, progress!

I wish I'd taken a picture of Nanning's head when I finished work today - I spent most of today on it and there are a lot of changes.  I'll just have to post the pic another day!

In the meantime . . . I've done a lot of work on his back legs and rump, and now he has four legs, which I'm sure will make him very happy!  LOL  Normally I work with the horse's feet on the ground and build up "grass" around his feet, so I don't have to pay attention to how "level" they are - it all works out fine when they're on the ground.  But this one's in mid-air for several reasons.  For one thing, the owner wants the piece to be of just the horse, no ground under him, and for a life-sized piece, that's a good design.  It saves money (less bronze to cast, less weight to support, less expense in shipping, etc.) and looks more natural than it would with a "pad" of grass under it as a life-size horse.  To balance, three feet have to touch the ground, so I've had to lower the right hind leg to have the toe touch the ground, which isn't the way it is in the photo, but it's only off by a few inches.  I also had to straighten his front leg, which is bent in the photo, so he would have two feet completely flat on the ground, which will make him stronger.

Here's how I'm checking how level his feet are:

That's a piece of cardboard (from a calendar) that I've cut a slot in so it will fit around the post.  The level is way off right now, but the right front hoof still has a wire sticking out of the bottom, so it won't be level front to back until I cut that off.  I was mostly checking to see how the back feet were doing.  They're not too far off, so I'm happy about that.

Here's how he looked yesterday before I did all that work on his head.  I'll post the revised (and much prettier) head soon.

I'm still not happy with his hind legs, but he's in such an extreme posture (he was playing - horses can get into all kind of extreme positions when they play!), it's hard to get it exactly right early on.  My way of working is to build the horse too big and with everything in place as well as possible to start with, then carve away what isn't the horse I'm working on, making adjustments, either tiny or large ones, as needed.  He'll be gorgeous and his pose will make sense once I'm done with it!  I think I have at least a month's more work to do before he's finished.

The jumper is painted and finished, ready to be mounted on the walnut plaque.  Here's how it looks finished.  It's name is "Rolltop."

It's on a paper towel that has black paint and gold Rub 'n' Buff on it from me finishing a bunch of medallions as well as this relief.  I'm happy with how this turned out!  I think it will make a beautiful trophy.

Update on Jumper Commmission and Frieisian Maquette

The jumper commission ("Rolltop") is sculpted, the mold has been made and I've been making castings.  The first casting is usually one that has to be thrown away, because that's the one where I find the places where the mold catches on the resin.  When it "catches," that usually means the mold material has gotten stuck in the resin and torn off the mold.  These are usually TINY places, so they don't usually damage the detail of the mold.  The first casting also removes any clay that may have remained in the mold.  So the first one is tossed.  I've gotten a good casting now, so it just needs to be cleaned up (washed with Dawn dishwashing detergent to remove any oils from its surface), painted with a prime coat and then finished to look like bronze.  Here's are pics of it in the mold and right after I unmolded it.

The Friesian maquette for a life-size bronze is coming along well.  It's still rough, but the proportions are getting there, and some of the details are starting to show.  Remember, this is a work in progress - it will be in "the uglies" for a while yet.

His body is curved, as if he's turning to the left.  Hopefully it looks like that!  I know his hooves that are flat to the ground aren't quite on the same plane yet - that will come with a bit more work.  Ignore the position of the tail - it's just a "placeholder" for now. 

I try to work all over the sculpture at the same time, without focusing too much on any one spot.  So while the head looks almost finished, it isn't.  While the left hind hip and leg look nearly finished, they aren't.  Everything's being developed a little at a time.  I can see the beautiful horse starting to emerge, although most people will probably not see beyond his current not-yet-beautiful state.

I'm finding the hard clay difficult to work with.  My shoulders are sore all the time despite using a hair dryer on the sculpture to soften the clay before I try to blend it or add more or carve some off.  Some of my ribbon tools are being damaged from trying to carve this clay.  I sure hope the results are going to be worth the effort of using this kind of clay!   It's good to learn how to use a different kind of sculpting medium, but I'll be happy to go back to the soft clay I normally use.

Jumper commission is finished!

This was a fun break from the big pieces I've been working on.  I really needed to take a step back from the Friesian maquette and try to see where it wasn't working, so I worked on this little jumper relief on the tiny  bit of space beside "Tolt" on my crank up sculpting table.  Nanning (the Friesian) is on the worktable across the room with his big reference photo right behind him.  A couple of days of work on the jumper gave me fresh eyes for Nanning, so that was really good!  And I got this pretty relief finished just today.  The customer and I are both happy with it, YAY!

The first picture shows it at an early stage.  I worked from the rear end of the horse to the front once I had all the basic shapes in place.

Below, you see me trying a different jump than the one in the photo (which was a simple jump with standards, although a pretty one).  The original jump was awkward to make into a relief.  One standard needed to go across the rider's boot and the other looked as if it were stabbing the horse in the throat.  So I decided "no standards!"  I tried a coop jump first, but wasn't that happy with it.  That's below.

Then I did a rolltop jump and that's the right one for this piece.  Now all I have to do ("all" - LOL!) is make the mold box, pour a mold, clean up the mold, cast resin in it, clean up the resin, paint and finish the resin, mount the resin and the brass plates to the walnut plaque (my basemaker will actually do that - I'm not that good with power tools!) and voila!  It's a trophy!

I put the little bush at the end of the rolltop to show she's at a show - the rider also has a number card tied around her waist that shows on her back (which is why her back is a bit flatter than it might normally be).

I hope you like my little jumper relief!  It will be available as a trophy on my Trophy Gallery page once I get it finished. 

Sculpting with Gloves On and Other Adventures

I'll bet you read that title and said, "Huh???"  LOL.  Read and learn!

I got a "rush job" yesterday, a trophy job that involves me sculpting a relief of a jumper.  After I sculpt it, I'll make a mold and cast a resin of it, then finish the resin to look like bronze.  The problem is, the trophy has to be finished and in their hands by the end of March.  That isn't much time to get such work done, but fortunately for me and the customer, the big piece I'm working on requires a lot of "down time" while the clay is softening in the crock pot, so while the clay is becoming soft enough for me to use, I have time to work on other projects.

I'll back up and explain a bit here.  I'm using a crock pot as a double boiler to soften the Classic Clay Hard that I'm using on maquette for the life-size bronze I'm working on (I'll call it "Nanning," the real horse's name, to keep things simple).  It takes a while for the clay to soften even with the crock set on "high," so while it's warming, I have time to work on other things. 

I don't want to leave the crock plugged in and turned on while I'm not in the studio, so I don't turn the corck on and leave the studio while it warms the clay.  I've got the rider for "Tolt" nearly perfected and need to give that piece a couple of days of not being looked at so I can see it with fresh eyes before I do whatever touchups seem necessary.  Then I'll photograph it and send the pics to my client for approval.  I don't want to start working on the wings for the Pegasus I'm doing using "Feather" http://www.thesculptedhorse.com/feather.html as the horse's body because working on the wings takes both hands and my left shoulder is still sore and weak.  I don't have enough working room to get "Horseplay" out to work on while Tolt and Nanning are out.  With all my other current projects on "hold" for various reasons, I have time to work on this trophy relief while waiting for the clay to soften for Nanning.

My trophy customer sent me an excellent reference photo of a college-age rider jumping a nice hunter fence.  The background was very busy, with white vinyl fence behind the mostly white jump and people and a building there as well.  To  make it easier to see what I was doing, I cut the horse and fence out after printing the photo on my computer printer at the size I wanted to sculpt it.  To get it centered on the foamcore board I'm using as a working surface, I marked the outline of it on the foamcore.  This way, when I sculpt the piece, it won't be too far to one side or the other, and the mold will be much better as a result, with no possibly weak sides from being too narrow.

 Hopefully you can see the pencil outline on the foamcore above.  The cut-out reference picture that's been made the size I want it to be for the trophy is to the right.

Once I have the board marked, I start putting clay on the board to fill out the silhouette of the horse.  I will finish the horse first, then add the saddle, bridle, reins and rider (not necessarily in that order), and will build the jump and the bushes on either side of it last.

The trick to doing good reliefs is to remember that the parts closest to the viewer need to be the highest.  That seems like something that should be simple to do, but it isn't as easy to do as you might think.  Consider this horse's back legs.  The left hind leg is nearest the viewer.  That one has to be the highest.  You'd think the right leg would be the next highest thing, but this is a gelding and his sheath is showing, so the sheath has to be the second highest level and look as if it actually belongs between the back legs.  The right hind leg will be the least high.  The "least high" part still has to have a decent amount of depth top to bottom (as you look at the clay, not top to bottom of the leg) so the resin will pour well and the resulting piece won't be too thin and warp.  I have to be sure even the thinnest parts of the relief will pour well and be thick enough to be strong, but not so thick the piece loses its graceful appearance.  That's a trick in itself.

In the picture below, I've done about 45 minutes of work on the piece (with a couple of breaks to check on the clay in the crock).  You should be able to see the definition and different levels of the two back legs and the sheath.  The back legs, rump, top of the tail and the back part of the belly are all in pretty good shape now, although I need to detail the legs, of course.  I'm making this using the Classic Clay Soft I normally use.  I like it because I can push the clay around to get the various shapes needed without a lot of work, so my hands don't tire so easily.

The photo shown on the left above is the full photo.  It's about 1/3 bigger than the one I'm using for the sculpture.  You can see how the white vinyl fence behind the jump is distracting to the eye.  Having it cut out makes my job go faster - it's a nice shortcut. 

This is a *great* reference photo.  Having a straight-on, crisply focused profile shot where the camera is level with the center of the horse's body mass makes life a lot simpler for me, especially when I need to do a rush job. 

While I worked on the jumper, the clay in the crock turned to mush - I should've checked it more often.  As a result, I wound up "frosting" Nanning as if I were frosting a cake!  That was interesting!  I used a putty knife to apply the clay to bulk him up and tried to press the clay in place with my fingers.  It didn't take me long to realize I needed to get smarter about working with that hot clay.  First I took the lid off the crock so the clay would cool a bit.  That helped, but not enough.  Then I took the glass bowl the clay was in out of the crock and set it on the table beside me.  Within a few minutes, it had cooled enough to be easier to work with, but it was still hot on my hands.

Above you can see the crockpot on the left, a plastic box behind it with a red lid - that's where the sliced clay is stored - the plastic cup I used to bring more water to the crock today (there's no water in the machine shed where my studio is).  On the right of the sculpture are the tools I'm using on this one so far: the putty knife I'm using to put clay on (sometimes frosting the sculpture, LOL), a large wooden tool that I use to both press the clay tightly to the existing clay and to carve the piece a bit, and some smaller tools I haven't needed yet.  The Friesian on the bulletin board to the left in the background is not Nanning - it's just one I liked when I first started sculpting.  I never have sculpted that horse.  This is my second sculpture of Nanning (he's the horse pulling the carriage in my bronze, "Friesian Elegance" http://www.thesculptedhorse.com/Elegance.html).  The Friesian mounted on the blue Styrofoam directly behind the sculpture is Nanning 374.  In this photo, you can see the clay was laid on in rough "swooshes" - this is when the clay was too soft and I was actually "frosting" the sculpture.  It all worked out okay, don't worry!

I got the bright idea to use vinyl gloves to apply the hot clay.  The glove you can see in the pic below is a "chemical barrier glove" I use when making molds and doing other stuff with chemicals that might irritate my skin.  It's leaving interesting alligator-skin-like impressions on the clay, but that won't last.  I'll be carving this clay down with sharp tools, either heated or after having used a hair dryer on the clay to soften it (hard clay really requires a different working method than usual!) and you'll never know Nanning looked this rough or had alligator skin at any point in his construction, LOL!

As you can see in the photo above, I put a piece of clay on and smooth it out, filling in depressions and gaps with it as much as possible.  Eventually, the sculpture will be smooth and elegant and will look like the well-muscled horse it represents - it's still in the "uglies" stage for now.

 

This is the best way to measure with calipers - you don't put the curved tips toward each other but AWAY from each other so your eye won't be fooled by the curve in the legs of the caliper.  Here I'm measuring the length of Nanning's body.  

This reference photo isn't as easy to use as the jumper's because the horse isn't in straight profile to the camera.  His body is actually bent, so his shoulder is fairly straight to the camera, but his rump is in 3/4 view.  There are reasons for him being in this position, but the simplest explanation is that he was playing and horses do unexpected things while playing.

This is what the far side looks like when you've been adding clay from one side without turning the piece often.  The clay is still very soft, so the slabs are going on well and are smoothed out on the horse's left side, but they look pretty weird on this side, don't they?  Don't worry, I fixed it. 

Note the toothpicks sticking out of his point of shoulder and point of buttocks above.  They are there to show me how much he needs to be bulked up.  The clay should be built up until the top of those toothpicks are even with the clay.  I have a way to go, don't I?  :)

After adding more clay and blending it in, pressing it so it will be hard and strong and there won't be any "surprises" (depressions where there shouldn't be depressions) in the future, and adjusting the armature a bit (I moved his tail and two of his legs - in pressing the clay on, they got out of place a bit), this is the result.  His neck is too thick and his body not thick or long enough, but my hands and shoulders aren't as strong as they were prior to surgery, so I have to stop here for now.  Thankfully, I'm getting stronger and gaining stamina every day - it's just taking longer than I want it to! 

I'm happy with where Nanning is now.  I could see the "portriat" emerging from the beginning, but I'll bet you can start to see it now.  If you noticed the working board is up on something else, I have a 2x6 under it at the moment that has a turntable on the bottom, so it's easier for me to turn the piece to work on it.  When I get "Tolt" off my big sculpting table and no longer need to use the crock pot to soften my clay, I'll move Nanning to the sculpting table.

That's it for now!  Hope you learned something interesting from me today!