Sculpting a horse...WIP

Hello dear friends~*grin*
I was not planning to do this post today but my kind husband took the children out for the day and I end up with too much free time in my hands, believe me or not!=)
well.... this is not a tutorial but I do want to share some things that i have learned through my own trials in sculpting animals,, specially large ones.
I am showing you mostly one horse but have been making two. This is a long process and when I am done, I don't feel like making another large animal for while. It gets to me in a weird way , I think.*grin*
I have made only few horses and few ponies so I don't have a lot experience but the idea behind any sculpting animal is mostly the same , just the anatomy and the level of difficulty is increased sometimes due to different reasons.

To get to his point I spent many hours preparing the clay, creating an armature in which consist of aluminum foil as a core of the horse's belly and a double twisted wire for the limbs. If one don't use the above will have problems. The final baked clay would be too heavy for the thin legs to stand firm and secure, for ex.





I have sculpted horses and baked as I go. For some ways is good because one can work with a hard surface and continue adding more clay and sculpting but in another way is not that great because one can not make changes and miss the over all finished look. So for this time I am not prior baking but rather sculpting the entire animal before iibake it.



Some times I start the head first but this time I did the body then sculpted the head...


Added the head ....

need to continue smooth and shaping the horse...
Now you can see that his face is getting the right shape... love it...grin... and I must say this ; * Nita, I was thinking of you when I was sculpting this horse...can't you tell why?*


As you can see ... he is ready for baking.... I needed to add support because although the armature is strong enough i don't trust the whole baking ordeal....
view from the back.... it is looking good,grin!
here he is baked and you can have a peek of my second horse too... both horses have apoxie sculpt on their legs... I love that stuff and use often with polymer clay. It strenghs the sculpture like nothing else. I would hate to have a animal broke ...
eyes... the eyes... the "life" of the animal, no?*grin*
For these horses I decided to paint with oil paints and then create a "glass- lens" afterwards ..
You can see a little close up for the second horse here... i ran upt white clay and had to mixed with flesh... that is 'why' the horse has a blended color...grin

Merry Christmas to you!!! I will post pictures of both horses when they are done!!

Now tell me... do you like me to show you my process or you like more just to see the final animals ?*smiles*