equally important for a convincing equine sculpture, to
create one that looks like an actual living animal rather
than a static reproduction. Put it all together, we can call
it The Goo Factor.
Well, horses have goo, too! Their fleshy muzzles and eyebrows are obvious examples, as is the fleshiness between
their forelegs. Other examples are wrinkles and folds
at the neck and at strategic areas of bending and twisting. Their muscles can be gooey as well, especially the
pectorals, which distort, mush and stretch in relation to
foreleg position. They can even jiggle and wriggle in motion, too. The neck is also quite gooshy, being amoebic in
articulation, seeming to gain length when stretched and
to shorten when tucked. If we play close attention, too,
we’ll even see the neck muscles ripple and swing in unison with inertia, say around a tight turn, or over a jump.
KATHMAN
It dawned on me some years back as I was pondering
how to take my sculptures beyond the lifeless illustration
of an anatomy chart and into the world of fleshy, kinetic
animals. Then ta-da! I had an epiphany of sorts, inspired
by oogling the goo on my plump ratties—it was all about
goo. I realized I couldn’t just sculpt the muscle masses
as I understood them, or as they were depicted in all my
anatomy charts—I had to sculpt as they existed in life.
And that is very different from a chart. Flesh does not just The missing factor
hang on the bones like an inert mass nor is it always taut
and firm. It has a life of its own, a resonance with move- But there’s another kind of goo often unnoticed, but viment and moment, which must be infused to capture that tal nonetheless: fascia. This magical stuff usually gets the
look of living realism.
short end of the stick in dissections and anatomical illustrations, being treated like a disposable connective
ti