Math to the rescue

Once upon a time, I was a math major. Well, art and math double major, I took the math classes for fun. And one of the things I remember from math is this: conical forms are self-similar.

What this means is, if you take a regular cone that's, say, six inches high, and slice off the base an inch from and parallel to the bottom, the second, truncated cone is proportional to the original.

Or, to reverse the process, if you continue a cone several inches, following the same angle, the new, bigger cone is also proportional.

This is the surviving, base section of my quail sculpture. You'll note the top of the piece. It's conical.

Well, conoidal, actually, a teardrop in cross-section. but the angle is consistent, so if I could extend it by the correct amount--about a quarter inch, by my calculations--I should have a base proportional to the original, wet-clay version of this one. That I can build a complete replacement quail body on. I'm thinking thin, flexible cardboard; Denise always has a stash with her bookbinding supplies.

Watch this space...

What a difference a day makes

So, I rolled out two big slabs of clay Saturday morning and left them on drywall to firm up. Jury-rigged a thin cardboard cap to the bisque leg assembly, wrapped strips of clay around it, trimmed to size with a cheese cutter.

...and left everything for two days. I'd planned on starting in earnest Saturday night, but then discovered that my favorite bookstore and music venue was hosting TREK Theatre's live performance of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Working from the original radio scripts. They were marvelous, by the way; did episodes 1, 2 and 5, and totally nailed it.

Then on Sunday we priced, inventoried and packed up ten boxes of pottery and brought them home from the studio. Which left me barely enough energy to go get groceries and trim soup and serving bowls before falling exhausted into bed.

I had Showcase emails waiting for me Monday morning, so I finally got back into the studio around 9:30 am. Pulled the plastic off the slabs, discovered they were the perfect consistency, and started work.

It was actually kind of fun, redoing the piece. I'd made some bad decisions the first time, had some weird proportional issues (head too small, for instance) that I really should have fixed. Starting again from scratch gave me the opportunity to address this.

This is what the piece looked like around 11 am.

The tail and wings were built hollow from the start, and better integrated. I'm just starting to slab up the transition from breast to neck. By lunch-time I'd enclosed the whole body, and roughed out a cylinder for the next and lower half of the head. The only problem is, I was having so much fun--and had built up so much momentum--that I forgot to take pictures. The next time I remembered, it was 2 pm, and it looked like this.

Yeah, that's pretty much done. I still need to scrape and smooth a few spots, once the clay is firm enough to take that treatment, and I'll have to fabricate and attach the saddle, but I've basically finished Mumfrey II in one working day.

Now I just have to get him dry enough to fire in two weeks.