The new 'do

In the process of removing the few remaining bits of Fiore's mane, I managed to break him off of his base. Go me! That should be an easy enough issue to deal with later, so rather than fight with it, I'll be sculpting sans base for a bit.

Onto the braiding of the mane. This is pretty much my usual technique:


I start by creating the roots of the mane. This involves a long bit of rolled clay pressed onto the horse's crest. It should actually look kind of like a pink worm.



Next I flatten out the worm and score the basic hair pattern into it using my stylus tool. As you can see, the mane looks two dimensional and not very lifelike at this point.



What we need now is some high and low points to give the mane depth. I press these in gently with a pointed clay shaper (or an old paint brush when I can't find my clay shaper which happens about 70% of the time. Today, I actually found it!) If needed, I'll go back in with the stylus and restore any hair texture that got smooshed. Sometimes these two steps need to be repeated half a dozen times to hit the right balance between the two tools.



Now comes another worm which will soon become the braid itself.



Using the clay shaper again, held at about a 45 degree angle to the direction of the braid, I alternate pressing into one side and then the other to create the interwoven strands of the braid. The stylus then comes in again and adds the hair texture. Basically I use the tools in the reverse order of what we did above.



Into the oven he goes so I can keep working without fear of squishing the new hairdo.