Backtracking

Yesterday was busy. Club Mud meeting at noon, and a bazillion other little errands around it. Go to the library to pick up a reserve book. Stop at the bank, pick up some bread, get a long-overdue haircut. Denise has some books and clothing to donate to St. Vincent de Paul. By the time I get home around 2 pm, I'm exhausted, and crash on the bed with the kitties for a couple of hours rather than risk messing up the sculpture.

Honestly, though, it's already messed up. I can't help feeling like the head is just wrong. Over-sized, ill-proportioned, features either too young--the eyes--or too adult--the indents on either side of the forehead. It's almost a caricature of an elephant's head. I greatly fear I'll have to take the whole thing off and make a new one.

I finally drag my butt out to the studio around 5 pm, pull off the plastic and take stock.

I decide to see what I can do with what I have. I start with the paddle, flattening out the bulging eyes and knocking back the roman nose. It helps, some. Punching a hole in each side of the skull, stretching out and patching the deep indents is an improvement as well. An old credit card works well as a scraper, taking off excess clay from the skull and upper trunk. I have to resort to a fettling knife under the chin to slim down the jaw profile. Followed by patching, paddling, and more scraping.

I spend some time on the reference photos again, then sketch in a smaller set of eyes further back on the head. Pinch in eye sockets, and when they look okay, set in eyeballs and model the eyelids into position. What I end up with around 6 o'clock is a more juvenile head, much better suited for the body, and the story it's based on. Still don't quite know what to do with the mouth. Think I'll come back to it fresh in the morning.

But before I go, a pair of head shots:

I know you rider

In the studio this morning, making short work of the elephant's lower lip. And then it's time to tackle little Marjorie.

As you can see here, there's just barely enough detail to tell relative sizes and get a little sense of what little girls were wearing to the zoo in 1967. Which is, really, all I need, since this isn't intended to be a portrait.

Like the elephant, I start the rider in pieces, bottom to top. Shorts first, then legs, torso, and shoulders. Everything is still hollow, vented together internally. Legs are slab-formed around a pencil and bent to shape; arms use a bamboo chopstick.


The head is sculpted separately, hollowed over a blunt modeling tool, features modeled from tools mainly made from more chopsticks. Bamboo has a hard, smooth surface that takes sanding well and holds up against the grog in stoneware clay.

Final details--sneakers, pony tail--are modeled solid, scored and slipped to attach. The whole piece will go under plastic later this evening, and I'll see what final detailing needs to be done tomorrow. Then it's a long, slow dry before it goes into the kiln.