A new rider for EAE

 

Now that I don't have to think about college projects all the time I can feel my creativity coming back full force when I'm at home. (All I've done recently is lie in bed and play Skyrim, heh)
Today was no exception; I spent the majority of the day finishing off a new rider for my yard I started yesterday and used the rest of the afternoon to photograph him alongside some of the herd.

I sculpted his head, hands and feet with Super Sculpey over a tinfoil and wire armature. I always leave the wires long so I can wrap them round the pipecleaner limbs later. I'm still getting to grips with sculpting at this scale but I have a few ideas on how to improve so I expect I'll be making a few more people this summer...

I meant to give him a proper neck but I forgot so he's now stuck with a ridiculously proportioned head. Oh well. XD

His body is made up of stiff pipecleaners and jewellery wire. I probably should have padded his legs out a bit as he looks really skinny but when I've tried to do that in the past they've all ended up looking like they've got some kind of fluid retention which isn't quite the look I was aiming for. :P

Once the Sculpey was baked I added some subtle shading with pastels and clear matte varnish. I'd run out of spray sealer so I ended up using some brush on, liquid varnish which, to my delight, didn't smear the pastels at all. I'm really glad I didn't skip this step as I think the pigments have given him a much more realistic skin tone than if I'd just left the Sculpey in its raw state. When it came to painting his eyes, I discovered that one of the plastic beads I'd used for the eyeball, had melted slightly from the heatgun getting too close and there was now a small but noticable bubble on the left one. Rather than trying to sand it off - which would have resulted in carnage I'm sure - I decided to use it to my advantage and use it as the position for the pupils. This meant that he has an interestingly quirky gaze as he's not looking directly ahead; something that I think I'll be using on future figures as I really like the effect.

His jodhpurs are made from chamois leather and may need replacing in the future as I found it nigh impossible to stitch so I caved and went with the lazy option of gluing the seams instead.
The top was based on a rugby shirt but I totally failed to make the stitching look anything near neat or subtle so shhhh, just pretend it's part of the design!

It took me a good while to choose his hair colour but I finally settled on red. I marked out his hairline with acrylic paint to act as a guide...

...then chopped up some suitably coloured mohair into a very fine flock and applied it with PVA glue. I needed to touch it up in some places but overall it seems to be holding fast!

 Practically as soon as he was finished, a name popped into my head and so, let me please introduce EA Equestrian's newest recruit: Rory Burns!

 

He's 13/14 and a very keen showjumper - so much so in fact that he's hoping to get our resident SJ pony Digby out on loan over the summer, with intent to buy if they get on well enough.







(and judging by their performance here, I think that's very likely!)

Rory has joined up with some of the other young riders (Izzy McDonald and Kelly Martin) for the yard's Junior Showjumping team, so watch this space, methinks they'll be bringing home the silverware soon!

Bonus points if you spotted the new poles. :P (Plastic rod and electrical tape ftw!)