Searching for materials that work well to use for my final piece.
On paper the clay dried and cracked quickly, dropping off because there was little texture to stick to.
Mud and horse poo worked really well when watered down and spread onto the paper in a paste form, the texture of the mud was grainy and bitty which felt so much more fitting to the horse. Even though horses coats are smooth in physical form, the grainy texture created a more accurate representation of the horse's spirit, it's personality and individual characteristics. The dirty, bitty paste says a lot more about the way the horse is tossing it's head, what it's thinking and feeling than chalk or graphite lines could.
Laying the clay on thick, I felt made the work a lot meatier. The clay is like the horses hide, it's flesh, fat and body. Caked on it looks really great when you can see the individual layers.
This was just a 3D experimentation using clay as thick as I could to see how it would look as the flesh of the horse. The layers aren't smoothed into each other so that it's clear to see them individually as I really like the texture it makes. It's also really interesting how heavy the clay makes the piece, it makes it feel more solid and horse like. Horses are half a ton animals and I don't feel like paper can capture that aspect of them.
