 Hi there! It's DJB and in today's video I'm going to be teaching you how to sculpt mains and tails on a Briar custom model horse. In this demonstration I'm going to be using my drastic Ida Kiss custom and he is ready and sculpted in both the neck and body shape so that the hair can just be sculpted on top. So I'm going to break out my epoxy. I'm going to roll it into a snake and place it just on the forehead to create the forelock here. So you're just going to make a couple of different snakes of how you want the forelock to fall. So after that I'm going to take my smonde just blend out some of that area creating both thick and thin strokes to create texture within the hair. And then I like to take a wet paintbrush over top to make sure that everything is smooth and you just repeat this process until you get a feel that you like. I find using the tool when it is damp and has a bit of water you can see me dabbing it in the water helps glide the tool along the snakes of epoxy so that you don't get any flaring from the clay. Just go slow create the texture that is best suited for you. Now when working with the edge of the mane you want to taper it out against the neck of the horse so that's just kind of comes by pushing away some of the clay to create a point at the end of the piece of hair. Let's just repeat this until you feel like there's enough detail. I find letting the epoxy sit for a little bit helps with adding the fine details. If you let it harden the marks aren't as prominent in the clay that works really well. If you make a mistake you can just pull off the clay that you don't want anymore and just keep brushing over it with a wet paint brush and eventually you will achieve the desired effect that you're looking for. Concentrate on not making straight lines but rather lines that would move in the flow of the hair. If the horse is a Mustang and he's got mats he might have twisted coily hair. If it's a show groomed horse he's going to have straight hair but there's still going to be a direction in which the hair is flowing or moving so don't make your lines straight down because that's not realistic. So now for adding tails or raised mains it's a little more complicated. If you have any part of the model such as a flowing mane, a tail, a unicorn horn or anything that's coming off of the model even reattachments of legs you want to reinforce them with wire. So for the tail I just take my drill bit on the end of my mastercraft dremel and just drill two holes in the butt area where the tail would come out so the base of the spine. You want to drill them about an inch apart and you want to make sure that they're big enough so that you can fit your wire in there. So I just stick an artist type wire, craft wire in the butt of the horse and you kind of just want to bend it into the shape that you're looking for. If it's a free formed tail, swishy tail and depending on the length that you're looking for. So I'm just putting this piece of wire in the top hole and bending it into the shape that I'm looking for. You also want to put a second piece of wire in the second hole. This is going to work as a dual reinforcement. Cut it about maybe six inches from the base of the tail so that you have kind of the base with a lot of enforced wire. Now I'm going to add a bit of super glue to that making sure that you get lots of it inside of the hole. If you're using a gel based super glue this is easy. If you're using a liquid kind of super glue I would recommend tipping the model up so that it doesn't drip everywhere. But this is all going to be covered by hair so you can make the glue drips quite large. And then just dropping some baking soda over top with that so that it cures immediately. Then I'm going to be using my blue multi-purpose scotch tape to create the outline for the tail. So you're just going to stick some of this on. You're going to stick it on both sides of the tail to build up a base for where your poxy is going to sit. I recommend using several layers of this so it's quite firm and you have a good foundation to sculpt on top of. After you're done it shouldn't have much give. It should be quite thick with the several layers of tape. And then you're just going to take a pair of nice strong scissors and cut away the excess tape that is not needed using a sharpie to kind of outline the tail structure that you're looking for. So creating the shape of the tail that you want to see on your finished model. Keep in mind the flow of the hair and the direction of the hair. You should have some gaps and some fading out at the ends because hair doesn't move in one giant clump but you don't want too many small pieces hanging off because that becomes quite fragile. So you're just going to take those same scissors and cut out the shape of the tail. Re-bend and reform as you go. You can do this several times. You can rip off all this tape and do it again if you don't feel like what you have is correct. So once you have a good feel of what you want the tail to be like. This is particularly a swooshy tail. You're just going to add some more super glue all over the base of this tail. So these little extra areas that I have flying off the main piece of hair. I'm adding lots of super glue so that it can harden it up because the tape on its own is too flimsy. Quite a bit of this. Make sure that you have good full coverage so the tail feels really firm and stiff and it's not going to move around when you start sculpting. So once the glue has dried and you're happy with your tail you're going to bring out those epoxy snakes again and just add them in the direction of the hair. I find that this masking tape baking soda is not super sticky so you have to kind of force the clay on. Don't rush the process. You're not going to get large chunks of the tail done at one time. I recommend doing small sections at once. So we're just doing the one side of the tail for now. Whatever we work on isn't going to wreck what we've already accomplished. So it's just going in here and making those detail lines. Don't be afraid to let the section dry before moving on to the next section. I'm using that brush to smooth out those details. Cheap dollars for brushes work great for this. Once you let the epoxy cure then you can start on the second side of the tail. For this it's the same process and the tail should feel firm when you're working and it shouldn't move around or crack at any point. If it does then you need to address that crack because it will show up in your paint work. I have a full tutorial on epoxy, how to use the tools, what tools I use when working with epoxy and I would recommend checking that out. The link to that video will be in the description below. So that is how you sculpt mains and tails on a prior custom. Now there's plenty of different styles of mane and tails that you can work on. If you want to do a flowing main I recommend using wire reinforcement. The masking tape method works great. Some artists have also had success using a type of wire, sculpting wire. Some artists have had luck using old credit cards. Just some kind of base for the epoxy to be sculpted on is very important and make sure that you use wire to reinforce the model in any circumstance. The great baking soda and super glue technique really helps create a solid foundation for whatever you're sculpting on and so that your model doesn't crack. Thank you so much for watching and happy sculpting. If you have any questions or concerns feel free to send me a message. If you want to be a part of the DJB Studios mailing list, check out my website, subscribe to the newsletter to see the most recent updates on sales pieces, YouTube tutorials, and commission slots.