The world needs more…

Swimming horse sculptures.

Today I asked myself, “how do I make my horses look more buoyant”. I was looking at the fabulous work of the “MadSculptor” (link) and wondering how I might make a horse look as if it’s defying gravity. I looked through many photos of my bucking/leaping & otherwise generally cavorting horses & said… meh. It’s all so ORDINARY.

Then this little “ding” went off in my head. Well hells bells, I mean if I WANT to make ahorse look like it’s floating in water, I should simply sculpt a horse .. in the water, no? Floating (swimming).

The motion of a horse swimming just thoroughly captivates me. It’s a VERY unique quadrupedal movement; 1, 2, 3, 4 unlike the canter or the trot. It’s extremely punctuated and literally striking! :) Individual jabbing motions of each limb while the others return to a tucked position. If I were to animate a flying horse, I’d use these motions rather than land thrusting motions, the action of pushing against the fluidity of water is utterly unlike any other.

I’ve been lucky enough to go swimming with a horse. (& Interesting side note, DO NOT SIT on your horse, allow yourself to float. Otherwise you’ll drown him! It’s VERY hard for horses to keep even their little noses there up above the water!) Anyhow, it had been one of my “bucket list” items of my childhood’s “things I hope to do with horses someday”. Of course inspired by this scene above from The Black Stallion.


Which is frankly where my inspiration for this sculpture comes from. THAT said, I don’t think I want to go with Arabian. I am unsure what breed so far but I”m thinking more Warmblood in build. I want to have very clean chiseled legs… it will have to be smaller. To at least work in resin form. Small classic perhaps, much bigger than say my dinky duke sculpture was. I’ll have to investigate scales but I can see this working with a nominal attached base & bits of acrylic that would get glued on after the sculpture is finished! On my little sketch here I’ve done some notes on how to make a base that actually can hold up said sculpture.

I should really note too that in the end my “final vision” actually involves taking something like a cold cast bronze & encasing it in a block of Lucite/clear acrylic of sorts.. with bubbles throughout. That’s not exactly a hobby resin sculpture I can sell but sometimes making something with a goal of where it will sell is NOT the way to go with art. I have a vision. I hope I can figure out a way to fund it. And that’s that!

Off I go! Weeeeeeeeee!!!!!