Bonnie's A-Z of Dog Sculptures- Update Abruzesse Sheepdog!

Thank you Taos!

One very nice video of an veeeeery tallented sculptor.
It is on spanish, but we can learn a lot watching it
Here it is :

WOW! That is incredible! !
When she put on those veins! It looks alive! Thank you so much for sharing Kosta, there is a lot to learn from that!

It is really marvellous.

I love that you introduced an Asian breed. Most we see are European or American. Both models are lovely and they have beautiful faces.
It is also a big joy to see Harriet here and you 're surely lucky of having Harriet and other talented members to give you some good tips. You deserve it because you are clearly motivated and your talent is unquestionable. I only have a suggestion and it is not based in my inexistent talent but through my experience following emerging talents as yours. It is really impressive what you did in such a short time but something you will find among more experient collectors is that they always give a lot of time to their figures. In this stage you are surely anxious to see your results and it is good to keep a good ratio to develop your learning process but later you'll find what I mean.
I used the chance to subscribe Miguel's Youtube channel. Video Kosta is suggesting is really good and of another very talented member on forum.
If there is any part of the video you're interested to know what is Miguel saying, just tell me and I translate it for you. :)

Roger wrote:

It is also a big joy to see Harriet here. :)

Thanks Roger, it’s good to get back on here a bit

Thank you so much Roger ! And yes I am very lucky to have all these amazing sculptors giving me tips! And thank you for the advice, I think I'm getting a lot done at the moment because I work on them all day every day, but I am definitely noticing that for each model I am taking a bit longer because I try and get it even more perfect than the last! I am sure once I'm busy at school it will take me much longer to do each figure!
And thank you so much for subscribing, and I will definitely ask you if I need any help with translation! And another talented sculptor on this forum!

I love Miguel's work, he’s so inspiring

I missed the Afghan  
Ohh, Bonnie, it is a wonderful model, I am truely impressed , and I love gazehounds, as you know

A reason I would never consider an Afghan ( and the fact that it is an extremely strong dog, with a rather hard temperament ) is that the show-and-pedigree-world has completely deformed this athletic, strong and elegant breed of hunting dogs into a haystack

I am the happy owner of 835 pages thick book from 1985, a reprint of the original book from 1930 - 1032, about gazehounds.
It shows how the "best" dogs looked back then

Here are two of the top-winning show Afhan dogs :
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As you can see they were still DOGS and not huge stacks of fur, that you can not let live a natural life !  

But of course this does not make your model less wonderful, - you surely have lots of talent.
And as Roger writes, - with people like Harriet and Kosta to support you, you may go very far

Thank you so much Susanne !
And I completely agree, they have turned them into haystacks- how could they possibly run with all that fur? And thank you so much for sharing those pictures of those Afghans, they were so much more athletic then and it just shows how much they have changed! I just love dog encyclopedias and have a growing collection of them, but I particularly love the older versions as you can see how all the dogs were before they were ruined by the show world I was actually considering making the original type- but it was quite hard to find good photos on the internet!
Luckily salukis like your Fidda have managed to stay relatively unchanged by the show world and still have their original elegance and speed!
And I am so grateful to everyone who has helped me so far!

Great pictures Susanne!I too have a set of dog encyclopedia from the 1930s(Hutchinsons dog encyclopedias)and it shows the huge change in so many dog breeds and generally for the worse!

I have been searching for the Hutchinsons Dog Encyclopedias but they are quite hard to find! Combined, they are supposed to be the longest written book on dog breeds!

Thank you Andreas!

Going back a few places in the alphabet as I missed a couple of dogs- the Able Bulldog! A modern breed unknown by many, this is an attempt to create a more 'able' version of the current English bulldog, by only breeding from dogs tested for their working ability. The name 'Able' also comes from its two founding breeds- the American Bulldog (AB) and Leavitt Bulldog (LE). Mike May the founder hopes to produce a dog similar to the original type, by breeding for intelligence, drive and also a stable temperament to go with it, it is hoped this breed will be able to work and be a family companion.
This was a different sort of model as I had to try and show the muscles underneath, being a dog with short fur. Not only this, but I spent a very long time going over the entire body of each dog with tiny fur strokes! Annoyingly some of this detail seemed to get lost after it had been in the oven- maybe because it expanded? Here they are, father and son :
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Some pink paws!
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Lovely bull dogs! Your puppies are so cute.

@Susanne, that's the problem with lots of purebred dogs these days. They are bred for looks rather function. Thats why with my one purebred dog I am happy with him as his breed is rather undiscovered yet and so he should be very healthy over his lifespan since he hasn't become linebred or over refined for aesthetic.

And your third couple of homemade dogs , is ready to puts smiles on our faces
These two, looks very nice and you are getting better and better
Able Bulldog is a breed , for sure unknown by many ( including me ) .. I tried to find some info and photos on the net, and there is not so much.
I like how you did the fur details , for sure you got the advices from Hrriet and I am sure, with the next models, the texture you are creating, will be better and better.
But now, the fur looks a bit longer.
My advice is, when you are making a dog with very short fur, almost smooth ..like these bulldogs are,
to try even smaller scales of fur details ... and even not everywere on the body...
For such small models, when you want to present an animal , with very short and smooth fur, you have to be careful , because you know : the size of real hair is very small... and beeing presented on such small model, it has to be veeeeeeeery small
So, that being said, for the sculptors is not possible to make the hair so small to look accurate on scale with the model.. That`s why they skip it ... and showing it just on some places, but with very thin texture.
I don`t know if you understand what I mean... my English is not perfect, so I hope you got the idea :)

I also see, that you are good with the brushes.
And you will be better and better.
Painting of the model also can help to the sculpture, to look even better. Sometimes, when such small fur, can`t be sculpted, the way you paint the model, can help for that, to look more realistic :)
I like to repaint models, STS friends knows me with that :)
I also repainted some dog models in the past . If you would like to see them, here are some links :

The Papo Husky , repainted for Susanne. She call it Misty  
The same model Papo Husky , with other colours . repainted for Yvette :)
The Papo Greyhound , made in memory of the beloved Futte of Susanne.  
You can see how the fur look`s of this model, beeing very smooth and short.
And last to show, which is not a dog...it is a cat model, but just to see again how the fur it is sculpted and how it look`s with painting :  The Papo Siamese cat , made again for Susanne :)

I never heard of that breed before !!!
A great idea to make a bulldog which is not so deformed as the the present day's English bulldog, which is another example of wrong standards for a lovely dog.

Beauuutyful and charming models of the dad and son

Thank you so much Paige, Kosta and Susanne! And I agree, very little information on it!
And Kosta thank you SO much for so much help and advice, and such a good idea to do much smaller strokes, and even not to do them at all, because I realise now that to scale the fur would have to be really short! Which areas would you recommend to not even do any strokes of fur?
And WOW your repaints are stunning!! In each of them, it really looks as though the models have fur! How do you do it? It's so so good! And I see how you did it on the greyhound, making it have slightly jagged edges to the brown patches to look like strokes of fur. So much inspiration there, thank you!
It makes me realise that models from the major brands could look so much better if they had people like Kosta painting them!

And your repaint of Susanne's Futte was just so beautiful and it made me want to cry
Such a realistic repaint that I'm sure it looked identical and will be a very special memory of what was a very special dog

I didn't know the breed either and I like that your personal style promotes a certain level of appealingness to your models. If you wish, you can edit your first post and add the name of the breed anytime a new model is added.It will help us to know that you updated the topic.
I couldn't also resist to revisit the topic about the Memorial to Futte. Sometimes it is good to revive these moments on forum and see that the stars we see in the sky do really exist.

Thank you Roger !
And great tip, I'll update the title now- learning new things about the forum every day!
And I definitely agree, although I wasn't part of the forum then, it was so nice but so sad to see the memorial to Futte
But I'm sure that the beautiful replica will be a wonderful memory of dear Futte

Thank you Bonnie and Roger for your nice words  

Bonnie wrote:

And Kosta thank you SO much for so much help and advice, and such a good idea to do much smaller strokes, and even not to do them at all, because I realise now that to scale the fur would have to be really short! Which areas would you recommend to not even do any strokes of fur?

Hmm, maybe I can give you some examples with models, which we have...
I am big fan of the Papo dogs. They are my favorite from all major brands.
I don`t know if you have some of them in your collection, but for example this French bulldog , is very good example, how some parts has some very thin fur texture.. and some parts doesn`t. The parts, were the skin is flat it does not have any fur. And parts were are some muscules more vissible or were the skin has more folds , has some texture.
Other good example is the Bull Terrier . It has very thin texture too.
I don`t know if you have the new Safari Great Dane , which came this year... it is one of my favorite dog models.
It is a great example of a very thin texture.
This texture , can be done when you make very thin scraches with the tool and then using a brush with water, to make it more smooth.
So, my advice is, to watch some dog models, which you have ... it can be also from Schleich ( also not only dogs), which have smooth and short fur, to see how they look , and try to play with a thin tool on the clay, to find different ways of making the same texture :)

Bonnie wrote:

......
But I'm sure that the beautiful replica will be a wonderful memory of dear Futte

You are so right !!!!
I still miss Futte almost every day, and that model is ever so dear to me

Really nice set of a lovely looking breed!

Could you put them next to the following: Papo Husky, Schleich border collie (2016) and Schleich Yorkshire Terrier, thanks