Now for a Ram

 I decided to make a ram.  This will be one of my "larger" sculptures, so I'm going to construct the body from slabs.

Still, I start with modeling the head from a solid lump of clay because, although this will be one of my larger sculptures it's still not large at all.  If I were really making a large one I'd made the head from slabs as well.

Anyway, in this first picture, I've molded the head.  It's really hard to resist putting the ears and horns on but I know that if I add them at such an early stage they'll likely get bumped over and over again as I work with the neck, body, and legs.  So, restraint is required!  (I would ordinarily attach the ears now, but since they're so close with the horns and the horns would definitely get messed up, I'm waiting on both.)  When I'm done with the modeling, I hollow it out from the neck end.

At this stage I've added two slabs.  The first was over the back portion of the neck.  The front part of the neck came from the lump I molded the head from, but there was no clay for the back of the neck, so I patched that.

The second slab was for the body.  It's just a large slab rolled into a tube that's the right diameter for the body.  I lapped the body tube over the neck, but still added a "snake" at the seam (which you can see in the photo) to give me plenty of clay to smooth the transition.

I'm leaving the tube a little longer than I need on the back end.  I'll cut away some of the bottom part of the excess then fold the top down to shape the rump.  After I've formed the body I'll sculpt and attach legs as solid pieces then close up the rump with extra clay if I need to.  I must remember to poke a hole in the belly to allow the air to escape when firing.

I should have taken more "in process" photos, but I got really into it at this point and forgot!