Kelpie Sculpts - Tumblr Posts
Trying my hand at model horse making. Polymer clay is the medium. The eyes are glass beads
This is a horse.
I promise
Lemme tell you about a horse. And Sherlock Holmes. As you know, I'm a big fan of the 1984 Granada Sherlock Holmes series and I've watched it through a couple of times now. But I'm also a horse person, and so naturally, I took note of the horses used for filming. They obviously had a limited pool of horses to use so many of them appear and reappear throughout the series. But one horse caught my eye. She was a beautiful chunky little chestnut mare (I think) and she was EVERYWHERE. Right through from season one until The Master Blackmailer, which I believe was her final appearance, there are very few episodes where her face doesn't appear. And when I say she was everywhere I really do mean it. She appeared so often and in so many places that it became a joke between @lyracalmuse and I that she was the mastermind behind every crime Holmes investigated, because there was no reason for her to be present at so many otherwise. So she gained the nickname, Mareiarty, the Marengo of Crime. For some reason I couldn't get her out of my head. I wanted to make her so badly. So now I am. Here's the picture I'm using for the reference for her pose. I picked it because I like the bunched up energy and want to try and capture it. My reference document for her is over 70 pages long, all screencaps from the show where she appears. She's kind of taken over my brain, I can only assume with malicious intent.
Yes that's 221b behind her.
Thicckening commences. For this bulking out stage, I'm using @smoothon's Free Form Air putty (why do they have a tumblr???). It's very lightweight and fairly inexpensive (and also one of the few epoxy putties available in my area), so it's good for blocking in the general shapes. It is VERY sticky though, so I'll probably switch to something else for the details. I've never done a horse on this scale before. If we're using Breyer's scaling system, she's a small Tranditional. Maybe 1:10 scale? A little smaller than I'd intended due to some weirdness with a printer. I've never actually finished the other horses I've started, but I'm excited for this one. Don't expect this momentum to continue though. I've got the week off, hence the speed of the updates so far.
Mareiarty Update!
My little crime horse has been chugging along on and off in the background. She takes a backseat to commissions and academic stuff so progress has been slow but I'm learning a lot from her!
When we left off, I was bulking her out with Free Form Air putty. Once that was done, I switched to Pratley Putty for refining. The putty is not intended as an art medium, but I'm learning to work with it. It's the most readily available putty of the sort for me since it's produced here in South Africa! The bead I used for her eyes are slightly too big. They were the only ones I had in the house at the time but they were later sanded away.
I got a bit enthusiastic with the wrinkling on her neck, which was later redone. I like the stylised look, but not for this sculpt. She's supposed to be realistic. I am very happy with the muscling on this shoulder though. It still needs sanding and refining, but its definitely on the right track.
In November, this was her. Her foot had been snapped off because it didn't quite align with the leg, and I was keeping it on with tape so I didn't lose it. Her neck had been smoothed out (still a long way to go). I was still blocking out the face, and forgot to fix the fish lip before the clay cured, so that had to be dremmeled later.
I chopped off two of her legs for repositioning. Poor girl couldn't stand for a while. I'm very glad I didn't lose her legs, cos they would have been a pain to remake.
At the start of 2024, this is where she was at. I'd left her alone for a couple of months and come back with fresh eyes and decided that I didn't like the position of her head and hindquarters. So she was scheduled for plastic surgery (hence the dotted lines)
I don't have any photos of her immediately post surgery. But I started properly sculpting the details on one of her legs. I'm pretty happy with how this one turned out, though the scale is a little off and it will probably have to be redone. I'm finding Pratley's to be a fairly good, versatile putty, though the large grain size (as it's not intended as an art medium) is causing some grief.
SHE HAS A FACE Not a great face, but still. This was the first version of her eye. It wasn't perfect but I learned a fair bit about both the anatomy and the medium, and the fact that Pratley was not intended as an art product became very obvious at with such fine detail. But it buffed fairly well with the metal tools and even though this version of the eye was drilled off, I still think it was worth it for the learning.
And now we reach the present day! Last night, I resculpted her eye, and it came out waaay better. I think I've gotten better with the medium and the anatomy and expression are a vast improvement. It still needs a couple of touches but I hope to be able to do those without having to resculpt the whole thing. Still considering switching to a Milliput Superfine for the very fine details but that'll have to be ordered in so we'll see. So that's where she is! The Marengo of crime, the arch nemesis of Sherlock Horse and Doctor Trotson...Mareiarty!