New year, new foal

Over the last few years a bit of a pattern has emerged in the models I make:

2009:

2011:

2012:

…and I’m afraid it doesn’t end there!  I’ve made a start on a new foal that I hope to be able to offer at this year’s Utterly Horses Hullabaloo.  The idea is that, although she (yep, it’s a girl!) is obviously not the same horse as Union Jack, she is just that little bit older, old enough to frolic around and throw her weight about now she has found her feet.

All new sculptures start off with sketches.  Lots and lots of sketches!  Here are the highlights of my scrawling:

All of these could have been the UHH foal, some couldn’t happen for obvious practical reasons (ie image 3) or would make any potential future plans of going into china* problematic (image 1,2,4).  You may have noticed that the sketches got less and less detailed as I went along, which is a good thing as I gradually stopped trying to make “pretty pictures” and tried to work out the general feeling I liked from the poses and ones that would make sense with resin casting and possibly china casting processes.  Image 6 had me sold, or rather, the cheeky little appaloosa that it was based on did (it was a Facebook image so I can’t share it here I’m afraid), it ticked all those boxes on casting whilst still having the lift and energy I was looking for.

*No plans as yet but you have to think about these things – look what happened with Union Jack!

The next stage was to build an armature.  I began by twisting various thicknesses of wire together to find the perfect thickness for those little foal legs:

The blue and pink were perfect for the “spine” of the armature, with the copper turning out just right when twisted with itself (not pictured).  The green and gold wire actually came from my wedding flowers last year, it’s what I used for Union Jack’s armature!

So I got to work measuring and roughing out the wire “skeleton”. You may notice something odd with the pelvis, but this is just the way I roll, the extra bends give me the flexibility I need with my armatures as I tend to move things about quite a bit after getting started.

Here is the basic armature. She started off looking more like a dinosaur than a horse – rwaaaarrrrghh!

But slowly she began to evolve into something a little more foal-like:

The upright part of the armature is actually a recycled trophy!  My friend gave me some to use as I wanted to see about using the marble base for another project, but when I removed the large plastic “trophy” I found some wonderful bolts and shafts of just the right length to use for this model.  The marble base also makes the perfect weight to keep her steady but be able to pick up, and the thread at the top allows me to remover her as I need to when I need to get to those awkward bits underneath!

(Excuse the bad photo below – I was on holiday visiting my sister and her family over in Ireland – some of this sculpting took place on the plane on the way home!!)

This brings her up to date, there is a way to go yet but she is definitely taking shape. I have all sorts of plans for her base but can’t start that until she is in resin (after the waste mold).

Here she is playing alongside the only classic scale mare I have (grateful thanks to Utterly Horses for letting me borrow her!!), which gives you an idea of her scale. I think they make a lovely couple, don’t you think?

More on this and my other projects soon!