Continuing on with the ram, more work is done to refine the shape of the head, ears and horns. You will also notice in the following views that I have cut in under the body a bit to help define the overall shape. I don't cut through all the way for many reasons. Mainly, for a short competiton,it's not worth the extra time. If it's a longer comp. or you have time enough you can gain extensively in the difficulty area. But for this lesson, I simply use shading with a torch to give the illusion. Unless your close to the carving, it's not noticed.
Here I have worked more on the rocks and how they should appear. If you have ever tried to carve rocks that look real you know that it's just as tough as the ram itself... Most of the time I will just break off of the ram from time to time to give myself a break and work on the base for awhile. It seems to work itself out best that way.
These two views reveal the fur that I cut in with the saw. This is also an art in itself. You can use direction changes in the animals fur to aid in devining muscle definition, legs and things like that. Study the real thing and this part gets easier.
These views show that I have located the eyes, nose, mouth and cheek bones on the face. Make sure you get those eye socket bones on the top of the head to be somewhat pronounced. It helps to define the inverted funnel shape of the head when viewed from above. I also begin to shade many of the features. This step even further defines shoulders, muscles, eyes and other features stereotyped into the "look" of a big horned sheep. The horns have also been finish sanded in preperation for the grooving steps that make the horns even more appealing. I sand them with a 4" angle grinder and 36 grit. Also a Milwaukie band file belt sander with 1/2" wide belts in the tight spots.
Some of you had asked about the base coloration technique. I purchased cheap black spray paint for the deep crevices to add depth, some olive drab green here and there and to top it off I used both black and light grey stuff called Make It Stone spray paint. Cool stuff. Use black and dark colors where you need to emphasize shade and light colors anywhere you need highlites. (mostly top surfaces of the rocks)
Robert W. King