+1 agree my friend!!!

Alexandros
http://alexminiatures.blogspot.com/

Thanks Marc, Christos and Alexandros!

Marc: I'm working on a tail and some ears also.

Christos: I'm trying to be quicker but I'm lacking free time.

Cheers,
Marcel.

looks like a fine beginning! bill

great looking progress mate, nice work on the horse and getting a nice fit with the rider.

Why Rush ?

Its the end result that counts

All the best mate

Steve

Thanks Bill and Steve!
Lately I can spend only a few hours per week so the progress is still going slowly.
But I managed to get some more work done. I did some additional work on the saddle, sculpted a horse tail for Marc. I did some reins and sculpted the jacket around the arms. Here are the pictures.

Cheers,
Marcel.

Last week I could find some time to work on the figure again. Now I have changed the facial expression using a mix of Magic Sculp and Duro. The nose is made a bit longer and some more wrinkles on the cheeks and chin are added. Still a bit of more work and a moustache needs to be added. I also sculpted the colpack, next the red bag will be added. On the saddle cloth some details were added. The sword was carved from a 1mm polystyrene sheet.

Thanks for looking and all comments are welcome!

Cheers,
Marcel.

Your making good progress Marcel, this is going to be a stunner when complete.

Roger.

Thanks a lot Roger!

Cheers,
Marcel.

Marcel that is some great sculpting , very smooth and neat work. Following

Cheers Ken

Good progress on this one Marcel, will be following with interest, like the pose of the figure and the horse.

Tommi

Very good work Marcel.
If i may make a remark. The right arm has a very sharp hook in the elbow. In my opinion to sharp. (it good be the angle from the picture!!!!)
Second: if you look on the picture taken from behind there is not much musculature on his upperarm right. There are two strange curves in it. It looks like you bend the putty when wet to the outside ( in medicine to lateral).
Further i want to see more muscle into the upperarm left instead of a great wrinkle from the armpit to almost the elbowjoint.
But again: it could be the angels within the picture was taken.

Marc

Excellent so far Marcel, looking very promissing project, my congrats.

Thanks for the compliments and commenting Ken, Tommi, Marc and Christos!

Marc: Your right that the bended arm is not correct sculpted. I noticed it also. Yesterday evening I checked in front of the mirror and I noticed when you have the arm in this position the shoulder is coming a bit more up. Also the clothing under the armpit should move upwards a bit. The folds of the upper arm are going to be resculpted a bit more diagonal and hopefully it will look better afterwards. Although the arm will be mostly covered by the pelisse when finished.

Cheers,
Marcel.

Marcel,

May I make some comments on the horse?

Your work is beautiful but I see a few things here and there that might help. I hope I'm not too late since I just caught this thread.

Your horse is just a tad short in the back which is making the rider look a bit large for him. The head and neck are gorgeous! You have the horse correctly flexing at the poll. YAY! It's hard to tell from the photos but the neck might be a bit short as well (I'm comparing the length of the spine in general to the size of the barrel, chest and hindquarters.)

I'm not really as familiar as I'd like to be with the tack of the period but double check the placement of the girth on the saddle. I believe it's too far back which affects your rider's position, the right leg is also too far back, if he's not careful he'll hit the horses flank with his leg and he will be on a bucking bronco. If you look at the horse from the side, you've sculpted the heartgirth correctly on the horse (nice job!), the place right behind the front legs, just before the barrel expands outward. That is the place with the girth needs to go and it fits naturally there.

My biggest concern is the hindquarters and back legs. And it's something you see all the time in sculptures as a whole. The horse is rearing with the weight of the rider on his back. He's supporting literally hundreds of pounds between his body and the rider on those two back legs. But there is no sense of weight or gravity. The horse's muscles and joints need to be stressed in this position, the weight needs to be coming down into those back legs.

I hope you don't mind but this photo demonstrates what I mean.



The muscles in the hindquarters of your horse are large and rounded, too much so. Those muscles should be contracting and lessening that rounded shape.

Even though the horse in the picture doesn't have his weight evenly distributed on both hind legs, you can still see the stress of his muscles and joints. Rearing to a horse is like us doing a handstand, it requires strength and balance. Those muscles and joints are working hard.



This horse doesn't have a rider and he's going upward rather than up and forward like your horse and the horse above. Without the extra weight and forces, his muscles aren't working as hard but they're still working. His weight is sinking down into the hip, hock and pastern.

The key to this will be the angle of the horse's hip and the line that goes down the stifle to the hock. The hock needs to show that flexion and torque. The line down the cannons leads to the pasterns and fetlock, those also need to show torque and flexion but to a lesser degree. They aren't as "up" as the ones on your horse.

I hope this make sense and I also hope you don't mind me posting this, this is just something I spotted. Over all I think the sculpture looks fantastic and I can't wait to see it finished.

Cheers,
Karrie

Karrie,
Sorry for the late reply but I was away for several days.
But thanks a lot for the useful comments and compliments.
You have to know that the horse is mostly a resin copy. Because my knowledge on horse anatomy and sculpting skills aren´t sufficient yet to create one from scratch. But your comments make sense and I will try to correct as much as possible as long as I don´t have to rebuild to much of the figure. Positioning the figure a bit more in front is hopefully not so difficult to fix. Let´s see what I can do. Thanks again.

Cheers,
Marcel.

No problem, Marcel, I understand completely and knowing it's a resin copy helps. One of the things I do in the model horse hobby is customize. (I can't sculpt one from scratch yet either.) Because you already have a foundation, you can take an existing model whack off what you don't want and resculpt what you need. A Dremel, a heat gun (a hair dryer or embossing gun would work too) and Apoxie Sculpt go a long way.

But I know it can be really tough if you're not sure about the horse anatomy. You do have a great start - don't get me wrong, please. If I can help in any way, please let me know.

Good luck!

Cheers,
Karrie

It's already been a while since I post any update of this figure. But the progress of this figure is simply too slow to post some regular updates. Nevertheless I made some progress. After the comments I tried to correct as much as possible without having to destroy most of the work. So first the position of the figure on the horse was moved more to the front. Therefore I had to resculpt a part of the saddle cloth. The folds of the riders left arm were also resculpted and from the right arm received some corrections. Also due to the turned position I raised the left shoulder of the figure. Next I sculpted all the details of the colpack with a MS/Duro mix and added the outline of the pelisse with MS. The scabbard and sabretache were cut from a polystyrene sheet.
Here are some pictures of the current status. All comments are welcome!

Cheers,
Marcel.

Despite my busy schedule I managed to get some work done on the figure. Now a few hours more and the sculpting process finally will be finished.
I still had to change one of the front legs so I cut it and replaced it with a better copy. Furthermore the tail of the horse was fixed. I sculpted the remaining hand holding the sword and added the fur on the pelisse. Also some missing details were added and some areas were corrected. Besides some corrections I still have to add the braid work on the pelisse, the fur on the sleeves, some hair and finally the reins have to be added. When all the sculpting work is done I can hopefully continue soon with painting phase.

Cheers,
Marcel.

Stunning work Marcel. Absolutely gorgeous.

Regards

Ron

Thanks a lot Ron!

Cheers,
Marcel.