Keeping the Faith

I have recently been working with a beautiful, curly Schulte.  It has been a real challenge for me to turn all those lovely curls into a recognisable teddy bear face.   This is probably due to having working with straight alpaca for quite a while which is a breeze to scissor sculpt.  The mohair does not have an obvious direction to the pile.  It goes everyway possible!

I have really had to take a deep breath before cutting into this curly mohair.  Too much brushing and it loses its lustre.  Too little cutting and the face has no definition.  I think that if I had tried using this mohair a year ago, the head would probably have ended up in a box of failures. 

However, by wetting the muzzle fur and using a hairdrier I have managed to straighten the fur enough to scissor sculpt the muzzle, at the same time avoiding brushing the rest of the fur that I want to remain curly.   He just needs a body now!