Thursday 25 April 2019

Aurochs model: Horns & finish

The shape of my aurochs model made from air-drying clay is finally finished and ready to be painted. I added the curly hair (the mane and forelocks) and the horns. Adding the horns was a crucial and fun step as they are quite an important part of an aurochs' life appearance. 

The reference specimen for the horn shape and size were the Sassenberg, Berlin, London and Baikal specimen. I checked each millimeter, so the dimensions should be correct. At first, I sculpted the bony cores as they are in the original skulls. I started by adding wire of the right size and curvature: 
Then, I started to sculpt the "horn core": 

If you look at fossil skulls, I would say those horns turned out to be very accurate
Before sculpting the "horn sheaths" I painted the horns with red acrylic colour, in order to distinguish them from the new material. The angle of the horn cores to the snout is exactly 65°, which is within the average for northern Eurasian aurochs (Sassenberg: 65°, Lund 60°, Kopenhagen 50°, Vig 85-90°, London 70°, Berlin 70°(?), Baikal 70°; deduced from photos). 
Then, I added the horn tips which would add about 30% to the length (average, but there is great variation) by following the curvature:
After that, I added the thickness of the sheath. As original aurochs horn sheaths are known to have added about 1-2cm in thickness to the bony core, it would be about 2-3mm in the model, which is what I did: 
Then, I completed the shape: 
And sanded it with sandpaper: 

The result resembles the horns of wild yak greatly, which have horns nearly identical to those of aurochs. I think about adding a bit to the thickness of the horns, looking at live yaks and preserved horn sheaths. 

This is what the (nearly) finished model looks like at the moment. I will start painting it as soon as I can: 
The head and horns look a bit huge due to perspective, by the way. 




7 comments:

  1. A good progression and looking very plausible in the last photo.

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  2. Beautiful! Among the surprises are the legginess; the front-heaviness; the heaviness and length of the horns and the very long face. I do hope it might be "published" as a 3d printing equation. Or better perhaps as an addition to a company's range of models.

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  3. I liked it too., Good work.

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  4. Yes, a deal needs to be made with Schleich!

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  5. I think it's likely that this creature would have been in the range of an Auroch, regarding the proportions.
    But i would wonder if all Auroch's would have had this elegance.
    Maybe it could make a good idol for breeders, lively an immersive as it is.

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    1. The elegance is partly also due to the photo. I'm going to present qualitative photos of the model as soon as possible ;-)

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  6. A new paper about the evolution and population diversity of bison in Eurasia hot off the presses; hard to keep up with each new paper with new findings and which dismiss the findings from other recent papers about bison origins.

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