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.