White Unicorn

Like I promised, here is the process of the white unicorn in pictures. It was, like I mentioned many times before, just an experiment, even though I would not call the finished head an experiment. But I did not know how I wanted the finished thing to look like, which is why I changed some things pretty late (like the hair).

I started with an aluminium foil, wire and sticky tape armature. It looked good at first but it was not stiff enough, so when I added the clay I kind of ruined the armature because the Magic Sculpt hardened while I used it (Magic Sculpt is a two part epoxy clay, it hardens through mixing resin with hardener) and I had to use force to get a smooth surface.

First pic shows the rough surface, on the second one I smoothed it down a bit (mostly with my finger nails and water) and decided for a place for the eyes.

Added more clay to the upper side of the head (I had to sculpt the head in two parts, since it had to dry on one side first). This part was pretty much finished, until I decided to try to get some fur texture in it, since I worked with that on two of my three dolls and it would be important to know if the clay was still soft enough for that.

I added the the texture with a pottery needle. Some parts were still pretty soft, others were hardening pretty fast, which made the whole process a pain in the butt. It all worked out in the end, but it stressed me out because working on the texture was a timed event. I should not have been any slower.

The horn and ears were very useful for working on the lower side of the head. I was adding the fur texture starting at the seams to the upper side so they were not visible in the end.

This is the finished head. At first I thought this was it, but for some reason (I really can't remember the reason) I decided it needed some hair.

It took some time to find the right kind of hair, I tried different things, but in the end I used some silvery gray plastic extensions. The picture above shows a bit of the hair. It was not that easy to add the hair because Magic Sculpt is hard as a rock when it has completely hardened (which takes about 6 hours). In the end I just added the extensions which left a bit of a bump, but it is not very obvious. I used white gesso as a base coat for the acrylics I usually use to paint the faces.

Painting at night has its disadvantages, one of them is that colors sometimes turn out all wrong. The first paint job of the fleshy parts turned out very yellow-y, so I added some pink. And I gilded the horn at the tip because I love to use that gilding wax.

And this is how the head looks in the end. I am very happy with it. And the long hair and blue glass eyes gives it a magical look.

There is still the process post of the black unicorn incoming, which won't be that exciting because it was pretty much the same process. Only that I added the hair straight at the beginning. But more on that  in the post itself.