First mount, please critique! Lots of photos!

Wow Im not familiar with whitetails but this looks awesome, not to mention for a first mount??!! My first mammal mount was a hare's head and you DO NOT want to see it, believe me , you should be proud of yourself

 

Well, there is nothing correct on it. Good news is,,, this is the worst deer you will ever mount, as the rest should be better if you study BEFORE you do another. The ear shape is bad, the ear butts are not close, the eye shape is to round, look at all of the skin in front of the eye, that has to be taxied into place, look at a live reference eye photo and look how the skin should be compared to how you have it stretched out out of place. The lower lip is huge, only a sliver of lip should show. Guessing is ok for the first one as you are learning. The arm pit hair you have on the outside of the leg, that all goes on the inside of the leg, pack it in there. That is why it drummed, you have it all taxied wrong. And the nostrils are not the right shape, you need a weekend lesson instead of guessing and wasting materials. The best investment is a lesson, gleaning from here is just soft tips, you need someone to show you so you can get better faster, instead of guessing.

 

Sorry to be blunt but you need another taxidermist to learn from. Students reflect teachers abilities and sorry but a lot of first mounts have been better just by watching Rick carter's a to z video. I would highly suggest getting that video.

 

Congrats on getting your first done! As far as tear ducts go, the right on is not even tucked enough and the left is way too open. You should see hair to hair when you tuck the skin into there. If you see skin tuck until all you see is hair. The ear butts are too long and lack muscle shape. as T said, eyes, nose, lips need work. It looks like the average first deer, not as bad as some and not as good as some.

 

Did you take it to your teacher for a critique when you got it done? I would have to agree with all the points that Low T touched on. Like he said,, they will improve. It's a good first attempt! Don't take the critiques as personal. Learn from them,, and don't give up!!

 

You don't need to use any pins on the lip line or anywhere else on the mount if you do things right. Thin the lip skin properly, cut a thin lip line and not some huge thing gashed out with a Dremel bit, and use a good glue on the lip skin. Bag the head for the first couple days of drying so that things don't dry too fast and shrink. If your skin fits the form and you rough up the mannikin and use a good glue, and babysit as things dry, you don't need pins anywhere else either.

Definitely try out Rick Carter's Whitetail A-Z video and study your reference. Good luck! I took the antlers off my first deer head and threw the rest in the trash, haha. They will get better.

 

DVDs are a great way to learn. If you can't afford classes that could run into a lot of money, DVDs are inexpensive and are there to teach you over and over. In five years from now you will look at this deer head and the one you just finished and you will be amazed at how far you have come from the this first one. My first one had the hair patterns close. That was all that was positive on it. Twenty nine years later, I think I have made some improvement. Do not get discouraged, keep learning and they will get better each one you do.

 

Your teacher failed you. If he was any good, your mount would have been a whole lot better. No excuses. Even if he has been in "business" since the 70's, his skill is still in the 70's. You need to find an award winning teacher, not an economy mount teacher.

 

You are locked into the taxidermy "process" and not the proper anatomy. A lack of anatomical knowledge prevents you from identifying proper shapes and locations. The best start for beginners is to already be a good artist. If you have no artistic abilities you are bound to fail miserably at taxidermy. The next step in the right direction would be about $500 worth of reference materials including a couple hundred up-close photographs, skulls, carcass heads, musculature diagrams and 3-d references. Don't just skin out an animal without measuring and checking to see where everything came from as you skinned it out. Without this you are taking a trip to nowhere without a road map. You are driving the car without a determined destination.