Work-in-progress Neapolitan bitch original sculpture

Here's a quick pic for your amusement of a Neapolitan mastiff bitch I started yesterday night to test a new putty I got. She'll become a sick and sorry showdog companion to the beautiful working Neo I have by Deseo - around the same scale, but of a very different type.

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Her head's too large at the moment (albeit the camera angle magnifies it further) and the epoxy underneath prevents reduction without my misshaping the skull in the process, so I may just lop off and Frankenstein the head onto a male Neo eventually. In which case I'll have to make a male Neo first. And then I'll have a whole pack of varyingly grotesque Neapolitans, at which point I'll no doubt feel compelled to also supplement it with a historical specimen of the past Cane Corso type. Oh, dear.

I shall add pictures here as the sculpt develops (or, as they uncontrollably multiply the further in over my head I get).

Absolutely fabulous      

I hope you will let us follow the development of this beauty queen   

That head sculpt is amazing! Yes, I want to see more!

Wow !! , It is very nice what you wear process. Congratulations Lea !!  

Miguel

Wow, soooo many wrinkles. Fantastic job so far, can't wait to see it done!

Gorgeous sculpt, perfectly grotesque dog. That sounds mean, but I mean it in the nicest possible way!  I love the way you sculpt the craziest things we do to animals without glamorizing them.

Very nice dog      

Wow      

Sumo wrote:

Gorgeous sculpt, perfectly grotesque dog. That sounds mean, but I mean it in the nicest possible way!  I love the way you sculpt the craziest things we do to animals without glamorizing them.

I think this comment by Sumo is also something what I feel. This is grotesque but it's your art and I love it (even if I wouldn't like to see real dog in such extreme) Can't wait to see next steps!

koniminiatures wrote:

Here's a quick pic for your amusement of a Neapolitan mastiff bitch I started yesterday night to test a new putty I got.

Your sculpture is looking great, is this an epoxy putty which air hardens? Looks interesting.

Thank you all for your comments! And there wasn't even a single OMG WHY WOULD U; I am pleasantly surprised (and likely just used to a far bitchier Internet climate).

Sumo wrote:

Gorgeous sculpt, perfectly grotesque dog. That sounds mean, but I mean it in the nicest possible way!  I love the way you sculpt the craziest things we do to animals without glamorizing them.

Ana wrote:

I think this comment by Sumo is also something what I feel. This is grotesque but it's your art and I love it (even if I wouldn't like to see real dog in such extreme) Can't wait to see next steps!

I'm particularly heartened by these two comments; you get it, too! I wouldn't want to see animals like these being bred either, like I don't want to see Tennessee Walkers sored or invalid goldfish bred as room decor; depicting them (or collecting depictions of them) isn't automatically synonymous with unreserved adoration, though. This has proven a surprisingly difficult concept for many to grasp before.

elephas_maximus wrote:

Your sculpture is looking great, is this an epoxy putty which air hardens? Looks interesting.

Thank you! The sculpture has an epoxy core over a wire frame (the epoxy is air-drying, yes); the beige stuff is a polymer clay that needs to be baked. Below are some pictures to clarify. I was too stingy to waste polymer clay on the entire thing, so I thought I'd try it like this first. If the sculpt's destroyed in the baking, I won't be shedding tears over it; at least I'll have learned what not to do and saved three euros while at it.  

Here's a wireframe dog like the one I started with for the Neapolitan:
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Here's the Neo's epoxy core. You can see I made the head too close to its final size in epoxy already - when I laid the polymer clay on top, I had no room to carve out skull cavities into it because the hard epoxy lay just below the polymer surface.
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Here I'm starting to lay the polymer clay on top and have sketched the facial features on the soft clay to easier preserve symmetry.
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And here's where the sculpt is at now. The other side is pretty echorché as of yet with just overdone muscling, bone protusions and a hanging gut...
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...While the other side has the fascia lain atop, but no skin or fur on yet. It's all very rough still and more drawn in place than really sculpted, but you can see what I'm working towards. Basically a blind canine blob of dough.
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koniminiatures wrote:

Thank you! The sculpture has an epoxy core over a wire frame (the epoxy is air-drying, yes); the beige stuff is a polymer clay that needs to be baked. Below are some pictures to clarify. I was too stingy to waste polymer clay on the entire thing, so I thought I'd try it like this first. If the sculpt's destroyed in the baking, I won't be shedding tears over it; at least I'll have learned what not to do and saved three euros while at it.  

Thank you for the explanation regarding your process, I hope you will continue to document your sculpting of this dog and share the pictures here.  Your knowledge of animal anatomy is very good, I hope to see more.

For your reference:
I bookmarked this page a while ago but it may be useful for your dog model.  It is a 3D scan of a whole dog (possibly greyhound) skeleton which can be viewed online.  You can rotate the whole skeleton 360 degrees or individual bones for study.
http://www.real3danatomy.com/bones/dog-skeleton-3d.html

She is gorgeous in her own unique way. I love the way you make the wrinkles and tone the muscles. I am excited to see her progress.

This is so exciting

Wow Lea, she's looking amazing, the muscles and creases in the skin are fantastic!

elephas_maximus wrote:

For your reference:
I bookmarked this page a while ago but it may be useful for your dog model.  It is a 3D scan of a whole dog (possibly greyhound) skeleton which can be viewed online.  You can rotate the whole skeleton 360 degrees or individual bones for study.
http://www.real3danatomy.com/bones/dog-skeleton-3d.html

Thanks for linking this Andrew, this will be really helpful for me too.

Thank you everyone, again, for your comments! I'll continue to take pictures as I sculpt on, and will post them here for your entertainment. She might not progress much for a while, though; commissioned work takes precedence over her so I can only sculpt her in between other pieces.

Also, thank you, elephas_maximus, for the link! I already have a similar program in use with the musculature and major internal organs configurable aside from the skeleton, but this one has a much more detailed skeletal scan. It'll be very useful, I'm sure!

He looks great. The result will be probably great.    

Oh Lea, I am so excited to see this!

I love how detailed she is already ,and you are doing a fantastic job!

I loved your Neo by Deseo so so much, now I will be very thrilled when you make this one also!

Congrats, what an amazing job!

Very interesting project! Can not imagine how difficult it must be doing all these wrinkles!!

The head is gorgeous! I'm excited to see the final product.

Thank you for these additional kind comments, Florian, Miss Jane, Shanti and Scott! Sorry I'm replying to them only now; it took me a while to notice them, apparently. The Neo's been successfully baked now and remains awaiting a hind end (there's just the epoxy armature there for now; I left it uncoated it to handle her by while the polymer clay was still unbaked). I've made no other progress on her due to priority being given to commissioned sculptures. Until a better update, I'll leave here this silly shot of her in the (amazingly clean-glassed...) oven:

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Ooooh she is beautiful!
     

Sculpture look great and I find this oven a surreal surrounding for her. She looks as she travels in space or it's all happen in a dream     

    

I'm back. I think I shall keep watching and watching for he to be finished... so eagerly.