Horses are public models for clay sculptures.
Horses are attractive subjects for projects with modeling clay. The animals' finely sculpted and well-defined muscles, along with their flowing manes and tails, are easily represented with malleable clay. There are many types of horses to symbolize in modeling clay, including attractive quarter horses, thoroughbreds, Arabians, mustangs and Tennessee walkers. Heavily muscled and burly functioning horses such as Morgans and Clydesdales assemble excellent subjects. There are many beauteous breeds such as palominos, appaloosas, pintos, strawberry roans and paints to glance at in modeling clay, with its smooth working texture.
Instructions
1. Glance at and get down Steed anatomy before you pursuit to build one of the animals gone of modeling clay. Assemble a collection of reference photographs from books or the Internet. Photograph horses yourself from all angles and in a variety of poses. Draw horses from life to familiarize yourself with how their bodies look and move. Make naturalistic drawings of horses running, grazing or resting.
2. Build an internal armature to support your horse sculpture. Use a screw gun and screws to anchor a galvanized steel, round floor flange to a heavy wooden base. Build up the basic muscle groups by attaching small lumps of clay to the armature in an additive process. Work and and form the clay with your fingers. Smooth it with sponges.
Pull the wires through the tee until equal lengths come out both ends. Wrap 20-gauge wire through and around the tee to snugly secure the three wires. Set the armature on a lazy Susan. Bend the wires into the pose of your horse. Refer to your photographs and drawings to get the correct angles of the legs, neck and tail.
4. Use a horse skeletal anatomy book as a guide to building a correctly proportioned horse. Screw a piece of galvanized steel pipe, threaded on both ends, into the flange. Attach a threaded pipe tee to the top of the pipe.3. Cut three sections of 8- to 10-gauge flexible copper or aluminum wire and thread them through the tee. Use wooden or plastic ceramic sculpting tools such as scrapers, ribs and modeling tools to work up the shape of the horse.
5. Use subtractive clay tools such as clay cutters, knives, ribbon and loop tools to remove clay from concave areas of the horse's body including the flanks, nostrils, shanks and hocks. Incise fine hair details on the mane, forelock and tail with a toothpick or needle tool.
