Octhamology
Feb. 8th, 2020 06:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
offcntrI'm taking a break from heavy production this week. Reading a few books. Cooking. Baking bread. (Unsuccessfully, as usual. Of course, I ran out of yeast, so that might have been part of the problem.)
And working on a sculpture.
I try to fit one in every winter, so I have something to put in the gallery at Ceramic Showcase. Sometimes I scramble for ideas, but this time one popped into my head sometime around December, giving me plenty of time to cogitate on how hard it would be to make.
My creative process is weird.
It always seems to work this way. I'll think of a project. Stress about how difficult it's gonna be. Put off starting it until the last possible moment. And then, once it's underway, there's this tremendous relief, a little excitement, a thrill at how well it's coming along. It's been that way as long as I've been making sculptures.
This one has the potential to be adorable: a toddler (paddler?) mermaid, with her best friend, a Giant Pacific Octopus.
I can think of eight ways this could go horribly wrong.
But Friday morning, I finally shifted from procrastination into Go mode. I'd put the clay out to firm up overnight on Thursday (the last stage of procrastination), so in the morning, I got rolling.
Rolling out slabs, of course. Smoothing them, then texturing with my random bumps dinosaur-texture roller. I rigged a support from a couple of bowls, covered with fabric from an old t-shirt.
I cut out a fan shape from the slab, wrapped it around the lower bowl to begin the, I guess I'd have to call it a skirt. The part that transitions between the head and the arms. Join together in the back, using the texture roller to hide the seams. Flute the edges, making sure to have eight ripples in all the right places. Then start attaching the head and mantle, one piece at a time. Push out from the inside to form the eye sockets, adding clay as necessary to plug holes. Lift up as necessary to model the eyes, then score and slip the whole thing together.
Form the mantle from more textured slab, shaping from the inside, Then attach to the head. Note the piece of sponge supporting it, taking pressure off of the join. The bisque roller in front is my random texturizer. (I think it was at this point that I knocked it on the floor and broke it in half. Fortunately, a little white glue put it back together with hardly a seam.) Cap off the front of the mantle with a bit more slab, then come back and add siphons on either side, helping hide the seams. Wrap everything loosely in plastic and take the afternoon off.
Go read a scifi novel where the bad guys are space squid with tentacles. (jimhines' Terminal Alliance and Terminal Uprising. Hey, it's research, right?)
And working on a sculpture.
I try to fit one in every winter, so I have something to put in the gallery at Ceramic Showcase. Sometimes I scramble for ideas, but this time one popped into my head sometime around December, giving me plenty of time to cogitate on how hard it would be to make.
My creative process is weird.
It always seems to work this way. I'll think of a project. Stress about how difficult it's gonna be. Put off starting it until the last possible moment. And then, once it's underway, there's this tremendous relief, a little excitement, a thrill at how well it's coming along. It's been that way as long as I've been making sculptures.
This one has the potential to be adorable: a toddler (paddler?) mermaid, with her best friend, a Giant Pacific Octopus.
I can think of eight ways this could go horribly wrong.
But Friday morning, I finally shifted from procrastination into Go mode. I'd put the clay out to firm up overnight on Thursday (the last stage of procrastination), so in the morning, I got rolling.
Rolling out slabs, of course. Smoothing them, then texturing with my random bumps dinosaur-texture roller. I rigged a support from a couple of bowls, covered with fabric from an old t-shirt.
I cut out a fan shape from the slab, wrapped it around the lower bowl to begin the, I guess I'd have to call it a skirt. The part that transitions between the head and the arms. Join together in the back, using the texture roller to hide the seams. Flute the edges, making sure to have eight ripples in all the right places. Then start attaching the head and mantle, one piece at a time. Push out from the inside to form the eye sockets, adding clay as necessary to plug holes. Lift up as necessary to model the eyes, then score and slip the whole thing together.
Form the mantle from more textured slab, shaping from the inside, Then attach to the head. Note the piece of sponge supporting it, taking pressure off of the join. The bisque roller in front is my random texturizer. (I think it was at this point that I knocked it on the floor and broke it in half. Fortunately, a little white glue put it back together with hardly a seam.) Cap off the front of the mantle with a bit more slab, then come back and add siphons on either side, helping hide the seams. Wrap everything loosely in plastic and take the afternoon off.
Go read a scifi novel where the bad guys are space squid with tentacles. (jimhines' Terminal Alliance and Terminal Uprising. Hey, it's research, right?)