Armatures and finishing Whitetail

I know that we have touched base on armatures before but it seems that maybe everyone else is as bumfuddled with them as I was and still are often.   They are something that you have to be able to produce a molded piece of work but you can not let it dictate direction to you.

  In other words it has to be able to support quite a bit of movement and weight but yet give you enough flexibility to not have a pipe or wire sticking out where you do not need it to be interfering. There is nothing more frustrating then to find that after you start claying up, your animal looks really stiff because you have followed the lines or the demands of the armature rather than bending to the nature of a leg or neck and it will be  sickening when you already have it in metal before you wise up.

All starts with scaling your figure to where you can break it down into inches or 1/4 inches where you can be accurate.

This is a basic store bought armature versus a picture of one that can be constructed with pipes, T's, and L's and using wire that is either wound with more wire for strength or a single strong art store purchase of armature wire. You do not want something you can not move at all.

this is just beginning we already covered this in previous blog dated 5/5/15

several days later while trying to decide position I desired

 

this is trying to figure out exactly what I wanted in antlers

This is finished piece without the antlers actually attached because they will be molded separately.

I have cheated and upon finding a wire in a bad spot and needing to eliminate it I have waited until it is a wax and trimmed it where the wire was visible in the molding process. I don't suggest this if you are like me and are absent minded...it might go through the foundry process like that.

I don't care what anyone says you may change a piece or tear it down and redo five to eight times before finding the angle or position you want and that looks good to you. Remember my story about covering up a piece between working on it so that your errors jump out at you as in this piece it was redone many times because I chose a different position than ordinary, it is called the "sneak" so you have to change to accommodate the neck, head and entire body language  making it more difficult. It is the position of a buck when he is in pursuit of a doe. It is so beautiful to watch hopefully I got it to come across in clay. Much like having a baby this won't be out of the foundry for a few months and I will show the finished piece at that time. Thanks for dropping in hopefully I have shown something you enjoyed.