Make a Decorative Horse Sculpture

This is an intermediate-level, faux-finish painting project and a good chance to practice dry-brush blending. Start with a brick and a toy horse.

I found this plastic horse with a velvet flocking at a thrift shop for $2.00 and the brick from my garden. I removed the mane and tail and glued the horse to a brick.

I shaped the tail with modeling clay and used a wooden skewer that I cut to about 1-1/4". If there is no hole in your horse where the tail can go, make one. Insert the new tail into the hole, and secure with glue.

I used chalk paint in just 4 colors to simulate a bronze/copper effect. Patchy areas of green-blue and light brown paint are blended together using a mostly dry brush. I lightened the blue and brown colors with off-white and yellow as needed.

The green-blue lightened with off-white was my predominant color. Light brown (called "Truffle" with Waverly paints) helped blend in the green-blue patches.

I shaped a mane out of modeling clay and used tweezers and scissors to add texture. Let the clay dry and use glue to attach it to the horse's head. Paint it to match the horse's body.

When the chalk paint dries, use metallic colors such as

gold and green to highlight. if you've over-done your gold, like I did at first, blend the blue-green and brown paint on top, to tone it down.

The horse looks wonderful on the mantel just as I imagined it would. We are restoring a 200 year old house and doing a lot of decorative painting throughout. If you'd like to see some of our progress, click here.