Adding Muscles to the Carousel Horses

 Last blog post I showed pictures of how I made the carousel horses three-dimensional.  The sides of the horses were still flat.  Today I have pictures of how I gave the horses some muscles to make them seem more realistic.  

This is a photo of the horse before I started adding the musculature.  Notice that the edges of the horse are hard edges.  These edges will get softer as more layers of paper mâché are added.  

The horse's legs look very dainty at this point.  Unfortunately, they will look somewhat larger as more layer of paper mâché are added.  They may require some paring down to keep the legs from looking too large and heavy.  There will be more on that in a different blog post.  I am trying to have all of the animals up to this point before I move on to the next stage.

I made two horses.  Having two horses gives me two ways to experiment on how I want to proceed with making the animals.  (I say animals because not all of them will be horses.)  One method will be building up the musculature using just my usual method of building up with just paper and paste.  The other method will make use of small bits of foil and tape to form the muscles.

The first method, using just paper and flour paste did build up the animal's neck, shoulders, and haunches, but it took a long time to get the animal to have the shape I wanted.  It is hard to see the thicker areas in this picture, but there is definitely more shape to the horse.  With paper mâché, you should only add two layers at a time.  If you add more layers than that you run the risk of having the object start to develop mold, especially if the weather is raining or humid.

Actually, in all my years of working with paper mâché, I have only had one project develop mold.  I treated it with 91% alcohol, then dried it thoroughly by sitting it in front of a box fan.  That took care of the problem, and it did not continue to form mold.  However, it took a long time to get it to dry, and I was always wondering if the mold would reappear.  Although I kept that project around for years, it did not change the paper, and no mold ever showed through the paint.  

The second method was to use bits of aluminum foil to build up the shapes.  In this photo the neck, shoulder, and leg have had bits of aluminum foil shaped to resemble muscles.  Then they are taped over with masking tape to keep them in place.  The rump and thigh have already had the foil and tape in place.

It is important to remember that you build up the muscles to almost the size you want them, but not exactly as large as you want them.  There will be multiple layers of paper mâché on top of this and this will add more bulk.  The paper mâché will also smooth out some of the wrinkles you see in the picture.

I stopped adding foil at the thigh because extra layers of paper mâché will add enough bulk to the lower legs.  If I added foil to the lower legs now they would appear oversized.

This photo shows the two horses side by side.  The one on the left was the paper mâché only method.  The one on the right was the foil method.  

The horse on the left is bulkier and heavier than the one on the right.  It needed a lot of paper mâché to build up the muscles and I had to add a little to the middle to make it look right.  I am thinking at this point that the left horse might turn into a Clydesdale.  The other horse might be an Arabian.

All in all, the foil method was much faster.  This is important to know going forward.  Making a carousel is a long-term project.  Anything that can cut the time is helpful.

I will be working on other animals in the near future.  I will be blogging about them as they are being made.  My plan is to get all the animals to the point that they are ready for sanding and painting.  Then I can take them outside to do the sanding.  It will help keep down the mess in the studio.  

I will be taking a couple of weeks to work on my other long-term project.  I find that if I continue to work solely on one project for months at a time that I start to suffer from burn out.  Switching back and for between projects helps keep me interested and not getting stalled on any one project.  

My other project is a Green Man paper mâché pumpkin.  I have to get it started because it will also take months to complete, and it is already April.   I will be blogging on the beginnings of that project for the next couple of posts.  Check back next week to learn more about this project.  After a few posts on that, I will be back to blogging about the carousel animals.