I love elephants!

As elephants are my favourite mammal, it seemed logical to have a go at sculpting one or two of them. 

Elephant One

Without having a clear idea of scale, I made a large-ish stripped steel wire armature, and built the body up with Green Stuff. I made tusks from Green Stuff and dried, before building the head up with Fimo (1:1 MixQuick). Small antiqued glass beads formed the eyes. One I baked the head I was very happy, particularly with the trunk, and sculpted the rest of the body from Fimo (1:1 MixQuick). This took a bit more work, with lots of sanding and replacing with ProCreate, until I was reasonably happy. The flexure lines on his skin haven't worked very well, despite trying to stick to nature, so I will treat them more like human flexure lines than pachydermal. I ummed and ahhed about manipulatory appendages, particularly how anthropomorphic I wanted him to look, before settling on what you see, made from ProCreate. The idea is that - eventually - he will wield weapons or other instruments in each hand. 

Overall, very happy with Elephant One. He stands 35mm tall, 27mm to the eyes, and I think very much in proportion. His trotters are buried in the base, not least because I became lazy and didn't finish them off properly.

Elephant Two

I made a batch of stripped steel wire armatures, using StormTheCastle approaches to including a tail, for some more Loxodonta. This elephant's head is very different from the last, despite being made in the same way, although again I am very pleased with it. Unfortunately, his legs are too short, so he might have to be mounted on something other than his legs, when finally finished. His body is Green Stuff and the head is Fimo again, over Green Stuff. The back of his head could do with some improvement work, as the flexure lines aren't great and the overall shape is too uneven to be natural.