Leggies all finished!

Slow to post this here, I know! But, since the last post still showed her headless and bald, I figured I needed to update it with a finished photo.

After she went up for sale officially, I got a lot of people asking of what size she was, for the purpose of seeing if she would fit regular sized tack. Needless to say, I went to my tackbox (which I haven't been through in about a year) and dug out my newest saddle. It was SUCH an unexpected joy to tack her all up. Dave came home to me playing ponies at the kitchen table... it was the first time he's seen me do this, and he just smiled. He knows how long its been and how I've been in a performance-showing funk for what seems like forever.Just like the real Leggs, she has the perfect face for a bosal!

My own copy of Leggs will be a portrait of the real little princess. Bay!! My favorite color. I am going to continue to experiment a bit and try painting her in oils. Why not, right? I do all my portraits on canvas in oils, but never tried it on a model. I figure if its going to be a disaster, it might as well be a disaster on my own model, LOL! I'll definitely show the progress here.

I want to I plan on focusing more on sculpting over the next few months to see what propagates. Leggs was created by literally cutting an armature apart and building her in pieces. I found that this gave me much more control over symmetry in her face as well as overall quality-control; I could fuss over one piece of her without getting overwhelmed by the rest of the unworked sculpture. There were some minor issues putting the pieces together (requiring some dremmeling and resculpting), but the overall result was WELL worth it, and by far I think that this process was successful. Now that I feel like I have a method that works well, I want to keep pushing. I will be building a new armature next weekend, and I'll post pics of that as well. I think you guys would find it interesting (mostly because its unusual) how I put it together and then cut it apart.

The hard part now is coming up with a rough concept. I have ideas floating around for what to do next, but nothing set in stone. The model of Leggs was a piece born out of my desire for a portrait of the real Leggs, and a burning desire for a walking stock horse that I can performance show. I think working from a live model gave this piece a down-to-earth quality, so I want to keep up that look now that I've found a sculpting method that works. I'd be open to any ideas...

:-)