Saturday, July 26, 2008

Ain't No Cowboy - Foam and Saddle

The following takes place over two days. (Remember you can click on the photo's to get full size versions of them)
Once the foam has set up from Thursday evening, I get ready to carve away excess foam from the armature on Friday. Pictures below show the progress of this process. Foam takes space that lots of heavy clay would take up.


I decide I need to create the saddle first. Here is the saddle I'm creating for this piece. You can see a ruler with black tape on it. The black tape indicates the head measurement. Doing that in the photo helps me to scale the saddle. This saddle dates from 1934.


I plan to create the saddle in wax. It's more durable than clay. I have to do the saddle seperate from the figure so I come up with an idea for a saddle tree made from a soft drink bottle, wood dowels, and cocking foam.


Now I let it sit overnight to set up. Saturday I photograph the saddle, and print out photo's to work from then I put duct tape over the bottle just so the wax won't stick to the plastic. I start building the saddle in a abbreviated form of building the saddle tree.


Now I add the leather (wax of course) to the tree. I then check to see if the saddle is going to work out.


Well this is the last entry till I get set up in the Frank Howell Gallery in Santa Fe New Mexico next week. Going to be busy getting ready for a month on the road.