Second day of researching for the Rhino bust

I’m coming close to having a good concept sketched out for my Rhino bust. I started with my own 3D model of a pre-historic Rhino shown in an earlier blog post and I’ve been adapting him to suit. 2, horns or one horn. Weird shapes horn of standard black Rhino horn. All still to play for as I’ve not locked down the final concept yet. What I often do at this stage is rough out a low polygon digital model to allow me to mess with the overall shape or form and with this project it will allow me to actually see the different horn solutions without committing to clay.



Having made a few `novice` mistake with my recent King Kong Clay sculpture I am hoping to do a much better job with this creature. Again, I am planning to use a water based clay stoneware clay from Eric Tiranti in the UK and not a polymer clay like sculpey. I used far too much clay on the last project and that was mainly because I didn’t build a decent frame to add the base layer of clay to. This time I have draw out my armature and supporting rods and I intend to make a fairly accurate Rhino head from the wire armature, paper and maybe a bit of tape. My intention is to keep the maximum depth of clay to less than 1 inch on any part of the model. I am aiming to make the model roughly 26-30 inches long and roughly the same height to the tip of the tallest horn. If I make the clay too thick this time I will get serious cracking as the piece dries.




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