Scrumpy the Pony Part Four

So by now, what had originally been intended to be a simple little project had turned into a nightmare build. Pretty much everything that could go wrong had gone wrong, and there was more to come....

While picking off the paint I started to discover soft spots where the paper mache was collapsing underneath the clay. The only way to deal with this was to push the clay in as far as possible and fill the in resulting hole with clay or tinfoil then clay depending on the size of the hole.

Huge hole on hip filled with tinfoil and clay.

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Holes underneath chest and at top of rear leg filled with clay.

Huge hole on rear filled with tinfoil and clay.

Scrumpy the Pony Part Three

It was time for Scrumpy to get a paint job, so that the clay and paper mache would be sealed and hopefully he'd look like a proper little horse with some colour on him. I used acrylic paint that I bought in the 99p shop, (the alarm bells should have started ringing right there, but I've bought some good stuff there before).
I started with a layer of black, because the clay dries white and it makes it easier to see which bits you've done, but also because I like to paint from dark to light.
When I checked him several hours later, something interesting had happened, the paint had developed a crackle finish, which I'd never encountered with acrylics before, and the pigment had sort of separated so that he was black with bright pink crackles!

Pink is the new black....apparently.

Scrumpy the Pony Part Two

I added Scrumpy's ears and finished him up, but something didn't look quite right. His legs had splayed out a little bit because his cardboard frame couldn't quite support his weight, and I realised I'd made his knees too big. Knee surgery was the only option!

I hacked the clay off his knees, and pulled all the paper out. Then I re-sculpted his knees with some fresh clay, making sure to push the clay well into the void left by the paper. A day later he was dry and looking perky and none the worse for his major surgery. I took him into the garden for a photo shoot.

Scrumpy enjoying the outdoors.

This little fella wanted his pic taken too!

A Horse's Ar$e!!

Yesterday I was mostly studying horses backsides. Why? Because when I was walking the dog, I suddenly realised that I hadden't given the rear end much thought, and halfway through horse sculpture number two I'd made an anatomical error.

Horses (and dogs) are constructed differently to us. Our legs move freely from the hip, but most quadrupeds have the hip well inside the body, and the back leg moves freely from the knee, while the front leg moves freely from the elbow, not from the shoulder.
Their hips and shoulders do not move around as much as ours.

Air Dry Clay and Paper Mache.

I thought you would like to see how Scrumpy was constructed. I used the same method as in the above video. Initially I thought this was the way to go with my clay sculptures, but as we will see, things didn't turn out the way I planned....   Video is from Bwana Foster on Youtube.

Scrumpy The Pony - Part One

Having decided to make a fully three dimensional figure, and being too scared to make a model of our dog, I thought I would start on familiar territory and make a horse. Now a horse is just about one of the hardest things you can make, but as a child I adored horses and spent countless hours drawing them, visiting them at the local fields and playing with little plastic models of them. A horse for me would be an easy project.
In theory.

Having done extensive research on Youtube, I determined that I would opt for a paper mache base with clay over the top. I saw a beautiful model made this way at Ultimate Paper Mache
I started by tracing the outline of a real horse from a book, then transferred the outline to corrugated cardboard (making sure to make an extra set of legs!) Next step was to cut the pieces out. Then the body was bulked up with newspaper and tightly wrapped with masking tape. Easy peasy! The same process was used on the legs, and then I added a couple of layers of paper mache and gave it a few days to dry. At this stage my sculpture was starting to look like a Welsh Mountain pony, and I duly christened him Scrumpy. Luckily we were smack bang in the middle of a heatwave, and he was bone dry in no time.


Now I was ready to add the clay, and after a couple of layers he was looking really nice. I was very happy with him.

Dragon Eyes.

So I'd had a block of air dry clay in a drawer for a couple of years, but was too scared/uninspired to make anything with it. I knew that eventually I'd have to make something with it. I had actually (rather foolishly) promised Hubby a model of our dog, but that seemed wildly ambitious. What to do?

After browsing through Youtube I found the perfect beginner project. Dragon eyes!

 

Here's the one I made.