Banded manes

Its amazing to me how much we can learn as artists once we really apply ourselves to a problem. Today I tackled something I used to dread like crazy: banded manes. I have been working intermittently on a piece for myself (a portrait of Legs), and I wanted her to have a banded mane... so decided that today was the day that I figured out once and for all how to do it in a way that looks in scale.

I've done quite a few horses in the past with banded manes, and tend to dread doing them because they involved sculpting each little band individually. Root, band, ponytail. Root, band, ponytail. It was incredibly time consuming, and while they always looked nice finished, that they never were truly in scale always bugged me.

A great example is the banded mane on Secret Weapon (2007), where the bands are just a little too fat:

If I hadn't said anything, you wouldn't have noticed, right? The problem is that I noticed, alot. When I band a real horse, I do 75-80 bands down the neck. For reference, here's a pic of a real banded mane:

I think on SW he has around 25. Thats less than half of what you see on a real horse, and so scale is a huge issue to me when everything else is so painstakingly done. Today I sat down with this challenge grinding away in my head... and with my epoxy and sculpting tools in hand, developed a technique that produces a far FAR superior look. I still have some cleaning up to do in the hair and on the horse itself, but just had to share. Finally! Tiny bands!

AND, using the same technique, I also can do tiny SM scale braids. Check out this customized Working Girl I am in progress on:

I am really happy with how it is turning out. My next problem-solving day will be how to streamline the process of doing traditional sized braids. I have a horse coming up in the queue who will be braided, and she's got a LONG neck!