Here is the third entry in my ongoing series of Monster Heads. These have really been fun to work on! This particular design actually started over a year and a half ago. I had been kicking around the idea of a full-on fight scene inspired by two rivals from the world of college football. You can read about that original post here: "King Hog vs. Bullzilla!" However...I may never get around to finishing that sculpture. So in the mean time, I thought I'd see if I could get inspired with just doing the head of one of those monsters.
As usual, I start with a wood base, with a nail wrapped with wire. This time I did not use a pre-made piece from the hobby shop. I thought I'd try a base that looked like boulders. I added aluminum foil as the core of my armature. Once I gave it a "skin" of Sculpy, I baked the basic shape with a heat gun.
Next came the teeth, which I sculpted and baked. I didn't want to keep bumping the teeth in the process of sculpting, and had already decided to have the mouth closed.
I began to play around with various profiles. I had intended on making this creature look more like a mutated BULL (a Texas Longhorn to be specific). However, it started to feel too much like the "minotaur" from ancient Greek mythology. So, I decided not to lock in to being so literal with the details of a real bull, and just let my imagination run free.
Here are a few pics of the development of the back of the neck. It just sort of grew into more of a spine, with the bones showing at the surface. I roughly blended the forms, leaving the linear texture...then smoothed it out by painting on oderless paint thinner.
After adding the basic shapes of the face, I continued the process of smoothing things with the thinner. But I tried to keep the wrinkles showing. After I was basically done with the face, I thought it would be nice to add some battle scars! Then I finished out the details on the horns.
The next images show the rock and sand mixture that I put on the base of the creature. I'm not sure I'm so happy with how it turned out. I would have done better to just use sand on the sculpted rock base...the bigger gravel bits obscured most of the details of the form. Oh well...live and learn!
The paint job came next. That is one of my favorite parts of these projects. I had decided to try to keep with a burnt orange color palette, to match with the Texas Longhorn school colors. However, in the end, the paintjob wasn't quite true to those brighter colors.
Here are a few "turn-around" shots of the final sculpture!
I will continue to add more to this growing little family...probably the next one will be a version of "King Hog" inspired by the Arkansas Razorback!
5 comments:
I thought of a Texas Longhorn, so I wasn't far off. Quite a character! How large are these fellows? Mom
Well, if you mean in "real life", he's as tall as a skyscraper! (But the sculpture is only about 5" high.)
This is fantastic. So detailed! I would never have thought to "cook" the sculpy with a heat gun.
Yeah, that heat gun trick is something I picked up from other sculptor's blogs. Some have isolated an area on part of the sculpt with aluminum foil, so they could harden up part of the piece, but not cook the whole thing to allow them to keep working on it.
Can't wait for King Hog!
Woooo Pig Soooie!
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