Poses

Just a quick snap shot of my latest WIP's, both commissions. The dog is on his billionth baking and just needs a bit of touching up after his final go in the oven and the cat needs to be finished painting and furred.




This got me thinking on poses. The easiest pose is a stand up one for me. I can just copy an anatomy or show pose pic for the breed. Nobody ever requests standing though. Pets are lazy, more often than not, they'll be lying down. So I need to get more used to sculpting laying pets. This seems easier in theory, but it's harder because usually in the photos you can't see all of the legs, so you have to guess where to put them, and then it makes your sculpt lopsided, or squishes a different one. Do you sculpt the whole 'invisible' leg or give in to a bit of artistic license? I like my sculpts to be 'complete' so when you turn them over they have all legs, all paws etc. I'm not sure if this is a fault of mine but it sure makes my life harder!

I've had a couple of people comment that the legs might be too long, I have measured them against my anatomy model and the bones are right, but maybe by eye they look too long. I have taken to trying to arrange my critters in the poses to compare, but they don't seem too keen. I wonder why? lol!

Cats on the whole tend to give me less trouble with posing them, maybe because they are a bit more elegant and athletic?

All part of the fun learning experience!