Carving Horses

[techniques]

My scanner won't work, so I took a picture of the pattern. I hope it works for you!

I also started working on step-by-step instructions and will post that when it's done.

Kathy

Hi Kathy,

thank you very much for the pattern. I think this works fine for me. I'm looking forward to your step-by-step instructions.

Could you please tell me how much I should enlarge the pattern?

Gisela

Edited February 7, 2010 by techniques

[PPounder]

Kathy,

Outstanding work!! And thanks for the tutorial.

Chris

[yaklady]

The pattern is 8" x 10", but you can make it any size you like! I should have the horse tutorial up pretty soon. Gotta go shovel some snow first. )

[yaklady]

Here it is, Gisela! I took a picture after each step so you could see what I'm doing. I did not make the little dotted lines that are in the pattern because I hate doing dotted lines! You don't really have to dot them all, anyway. Just remember that you don't cut anything inside, except the eyes, around the ears and the top third of the nostril. Oh, and the forelock. That goes for any horse pattern, not just this one.

This one shows which lines to cut with your swivel knife.

Bevel around the outside with a checkered beveller. Never use the checkers on the horse itself.

With a smooth beveller, do the ear, forelock and under side of the mouth.

Do the eye like I described before.

Bevel the inside of the cut line on the nostril.

Flatten the inside of the nostril with a large, flat, smooth pear shader.

Using a propetal, pick the horse's nose. Cut above the top of the nostril to give it a 3-D effect.

It will look like this.

Bevel the lines indicating where the muscles are with a figure carving beveller. Avoid using a sharp beveller here.

Smooth all those lines with a modeling spoon. Round out the outer edges so that your horse does not have sharp edges.

This will be continued in the following post. It seems I can't put too many pictures in one post.

[ClayB]

Kathy,

You need to stop hanging out with Freak. He want's to pick his friend's noses, you want to pick your horse's nose. It's a little disturbing having all these nose picking friends!!!!

I'm really glad to see you doing demos on here. Your horses are always great and so are you tutorials!!!

[yaklady]

Flatten the inside of the ears with a smooth beveller.

With a pointed beveller like F902, create hairs along the outer edge of the inside of the ears.

Use a hair blade on the forelock and the roached mane.

Use the pointed beveller to define the ends of the forelock.

A fine-point stylus makes the hair look more life-like. Use it, your spoon, and even the swivel knife to create individual hairs and depth between them.

Matt around the horse with a checkered beveller.

Texture around any portrait sets the carving off. Don't leave the leather smooth!

If any part of this is unclear, let me know and I will try harder to explain it. I look forward to seeing what you, Gisela, and anyone else who cares to do it, come up with.

Happy tooling!

Kathy

[yaklady]

Hey, Clay, when did you sneak in there? Can't you see I'm trying to pick noses here? Hmmm . . . that bring a though to mind (that rarely happens, you know) I need a picture of Freak's nose so I can pick it! On leather, that is!

[techniques]

Hi Kathy,

wow, what a great tutorial! It is so kind of you to do that for me. Thousand thanks for them.

I hope I can finish the carving on weekend and if it is not too bad I will post a picture here.

Greetings and again many thanks

Gisela

[techniques]

it seems as if I have troubles, with editing my posts. Here comes a scan of my horse head carving.

Edited February 13, 2010 by techniques

[techniques]

Hello Kathy,

the picture in the last post is a scan from the carving, which I scanned with 300dpi so that you can better see the mistakes. In the next post I will show 6 photographed pictures of the carving. I'm not satisfied with the carving. Especially the forehead made me troubles. And the muscles and contours of the head didn't work as I wanted. I have tried to make yet some changes, but I feel that the more I change, the more I destroye the carving.

On this carving it was the first time, that I have used a Pro Petal Tool. I have two sizes from Tandy in my collection, but have never used them before. I would more prefered if I had pushed the Pro Petal longer into the leather, but it seems as if the leather would then break and therefore I have stopped.

Could you please again critize them? I would also welcome if anybody at the forum let me know how I can improve.

I will also put my hands on some other tries of your horse eye tutorial in the next days and will show them here, probable next week.

Thank you again very much for the tutorial. You had so much effort and I hope I havn't disappointed you.

Greetings

Gisela

Edited February 13, 2010 by techniques