There is still quite a bit of work to do on her, so I can't say at this time when she will be complete. I'm hoping for the first part of the new year, which should be do-able as long as she keeps being a good girl :) I want to thank Bridget Corcoran for her fantastic thoroughbred photos, which have helped immensely with the relatively quick progress this piece has made. One of the things I do with photos to aid in sculpting is to make collages of areas, for example a collage of all heads, one of all hooves, or this one of leg up shoulders:
The actual collage is much bigger with more photos, but even from this small snippet you can see how anatomical details will begin to jump out at you when you have lots of similar horse parts all together. I make the with Photoshop, and they grow larger as I find and add more photos. I zoom in and move around as needed to see what I need. This shoulder collage has shoulders from the side as shown, as well as from the front and back. If I need the 'other side' for a future sculpt I can flip the image. I almost never use magazine clippings now, I find having images on my computer to be far more useful, and they take up less physical space :)
Before I go back to work I have one last thing to share, another tip of sorts. I forgot where I got this, it could have come from a sculpting forum, a horse training forum, somewhere on a hobby board. It doesn't really matter when it came from, but I repeat it to myself as I sculpt to keep me focused, I think it should be the First Commandment of Life:
"Clarify thy intent"
