'Ear, ear! - Unicorn Project update!

Another big bumper post for you all today! (I meant to post this last week so it'll be swiftly followed up with this week's progress report)

The last time you saw Mr Unicorn he was bald, blue and without eyes or ears and I'm happy to say that he is now only one of those things! This week I managed to get his ears in and while they look too big in some photos, in person they actually really suit him.

The eyes were just shoved in for photos, they weren't glued until later on.

I painted him with a mixture of plaster and white acrylic paint to smooth over all the bumps and imperfections in the blue foam. The paint acted like water would for the plaster, only instead of going off within a few minutes, it took a lot longer so I had more working time in which to use it. This meant I could treat it as something of a sculpting material and fill large areas and build up 'muscle'. There were still some rough areas from where I'd taken too much off of the foam and had to patch it but once the fur's on it won't be too noticeable.

It sands beautifully too which is very handy for me as the muzzle and around the eyes won't be haired and I want to get a really nice smooth finish.

I hot-glued the eyes in very carefully (trying to line up the pupils was...fun) and then started pondering the design of the horn.

I really wanted to do something more akin to my secondary source of inspiration other than the tapestries - the wonderful 'real unicorns' of Oberon Zell-Ravenheart   (Goats with surgically transplanted horn buds that formed a single horn instead of a set)

 I made a couple of mockups of thicker and more goat-like horns which didn't really suit the rest of the model so instead I settled for a more traditional look of a spiralled design; although I tried to make it more like that of an antelope rather than a narwhal tusk for realism's sake.

This was just a really simple mockup to gauge the relative size and shape - I'd make the final horn at home from sculpey.

I managed to resist the temptation to emulate Glasgow's own resident unicorn; proudly ridden by Wellington just down the road from the college... XD

 Next to be dealt with was the eyes. The sockets were terribly uneven and needed bulking out if I was to avoid it looking like it was ready for the eyes to pop out at any minute. I covered the glass eyes in a few layers of latex to protect them before mixing up more of the paint 'n' plaster mix and building up the structure over a period of hours.

Much better!

Next update: the fur goes on!