, costs about $100-140 and is well worth it. I’ve burned up seven ordinary $25 glue guns in the past two years. This orange beast can effortlessly put out several pounds of glue a minute. It requires specific shaped glue sticks available in 11-pound boxes. You can find great deals on the web.The Gentle Dragon
I am now about to embark on another great enterprise, The Gentle Dragon. For years I have been waiting for both the time and opportunity to build a large sculpture, this time in concrete so it can become a permanent outdoor piece. My ultimate dream is to rebuild my beloved Tree Troll in concrete, but first I want to test the idea on something smaller.
I am going to be making this new piece this month. Not exactly sure how long it will take, but that will sort itself out.
The Gentle Dragon will be life-sized, and unlike most dragons, this one is intended to be entirely friendly. Imagine a huge, sweet, grandfatherly creature that doesn’t mind in the slightest that children like to play all over him. He should be loving, protective, but slightly frail and very old.
What will make this sculpture unique is his eyes. I’m making them in glazed ceramic, the same color of cornflower blue my dad had. These glass eyes will make this sculpture come alive.
Maquette of The Gentle Dragon
I did this small (7-inch tall) water-clay sculpture in about eight hours. I did it to establish a lot of things, most importantly the gesture. The gesture is more than just the look and position of the figure; it is the feel, the emotional core – the “why” of the piece – and this either connects with the viewer or it doesn’t.
This message must be strong, unambiguous and dimensional. The Gentle Dragon is not merely cute; he is intended to be loving and caring in a grandfatherly way. He is massive, but also frail and slightly arthritic; protective, but quietly so. And he is most certainly intelligent, in the way only those experienced, worldly, and old can be.
To capture the fleeting nature of a clear emotional state, I did the work quickly, in one sitting. It helps to have a particular person in mind when starting. This is my dad. His face was lined with the hard life of logging and injury. He lived to see all his kids grow up strong and happy, and shared a life with a wife both beautiful and loving. He lived into his 80s, and passed on just a few years ago. His wife, my mom, survives him still.
Initial glaze tests on porcelain half-spheres
A local ceramic artist, Allen Ross, was able to build three sizes of heavy porcelain eyes. The small one will be the Gentle Dragon’s; the largest ones are meant for the Tree Troll. I chose five pair for the first tests. I painted them in oxides so it was easy to see what effect I was getting. They are now ready for bisque firing, glazing and final firing.
The results of the first tests and second try
Hmmm – that will teach me to use the precious porcelain blanks on an untried method of painting. The irises came out fine, but I layered too much black oxide on the pupil, so the glaze buckled over that area. Now, sensibly, I’m doing the second tests on simple tiles instead.
There are 18 tests, all different techniques, painting styles, and multiple layers. One of these is bound to look good….
A new Tree Troll
After a great deal of thought, I have decided to put the Red Silk Mermaid sculpture on hold for the time being.
The single biggest reason is the economy. If I were to finish her now, it is unlikely she would sell for some time. Instead, for the time being, I am going to make more accessible pieces. Silk Mermaid fans, be assured I am not abandoning the Mermaid, merely delaying her for a better time. My profound thanks to all the volunteers who have helped so far on the great lady. I will contact all of you personally as soon as the work resumes.
This site has become a way to connect with artists around the world and exchange ideas and techniques. This will continue as I document and construct another project very close to my heart, and also much less demanding to build. I have begun work on a new Tree Troll — a 12-foot-tall, two-ton concrete Troll for a children’s playground.
More about the new Troll, with many photos of the foil maquette, after the jump.
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Hands and harp
It took me 12 hours to rough out the hands. When I gave her the harp, I realized the harp needs to be thickened up a lot.
Hands are one of the great joys of sculpting. An aspect of the human form is the juxtaposition between the hard bony structure of, say, the elbow, and the soft fleshiness of the surrounding muscles. In the hands, the dance between these two textures is very complex. The bones are like stones in a river with the muscles flowing around them. There is movement, turbulence, and exciting interaction of hard versus soft, rigid versus pliable.
This difference gives the human figure a dynamic quality. Too much softness, and the figure becomes flaccid and uninteresting; too much hardness, and the figure is brittle. Each texture has to be expressed with clarity and distinctness. This is what makes the hands so delightful to sculpt.
Musical scales
I’m doing the back scales. Scales, strangely enough, are something I simply love to sculpt. There is a wonderful underlying pattern that transitions through the surface. The best way I can describe it is through music.
When I am sculpting, I have to hold in my mind a certain type of music — in this case a classical piece. The large scales near the dorsal are the oboes, wide deep complicated woodwind sounds. The tiny surrounding scales are the piano, a delicate accompanying sound, light and airy. The delineation scales, the ones that separate the top from the bottom, are the drum beats, distant and low. There are other instruments too, small and less prominent, to fill in the sound and round it out.
Working this way is a lot like being a conductor. You sculpt the sound. It is easy to see that the composition of these scales is not, say, a rock and roll beat, nor punk — but they could be jazz. By thinking this way, I find it easier to hold the thought of the patterns in my mind for long periods of time.
The fins, with the silk and lace, will be the violins. These undulating notes wrap themselves around all the other ones and give them unity.
How it happened
I have always loved the flamboyant dress-like fins of the lionfish. About ten years ago I realized that no one had ever done a mermaid based on the lionfish, so I did this one, “Coral Mermaid,” in Sculpey with vinyl fins and a coral base. It made a lovely little piece, all fluttery with crinkly edges. (Thanks to Mike Edenfield for the photo!)
The color was critical. Years ago I found a picture of a fish called hemilepidotus. This fish possessed the most glorious, brilliantly patterned fins and scales. It was a complicated dance of pattern and texture on a minute scale. This picture truly inspired me to make the first sculpture. My little sculpture did not do the photograph justice, though, and that bothered me.
Hemilepidotus
Skip forward 10 years. My business is successful, and my studio has made dozens of large scale sculptures. There are no pressing commissions and in the down time between paying work we try to stay busy. What are we going to build for fun?
Consideration number one: We must learn a new skill that can be applied to future projects. Hey, robotics! That could be fun! We could make something move.
Consideration number two: It must be spectacular. If you are going to take your precious free time for months and build something, there is no excuse for second rate work. You cannot claim client deadlines or lousy budget, since you have control over both of them.
Consideration number three: It has to be big. The opportunities to do the great defining pieces of your career come around once every couple of years. Are you going to waste those rare chances on a less-than-grand endeavor? That chance must be used to do something memorable!
So what to do? To solve this, I referred to my Secret Book of Wonderful Things — a catchall picture album where I keep clips from paper media: shots of furniture from Architectural Digest, crystal growth patterns from Scientific American, cute cards from Hallmark. If something for some reason looked pretty or caught my eye, I dutifully purchased it and clipped it for the album. The book is bursting at the seams with dresses, parrots, paintings, microscopic diatoms, colliding galaxies, and anything that has really pretty colors.
In this book I had saved the original picture of the fish hemilepidotus. Still gorgeous and texturally magnificent, it still inspired me. And I remembered I hadn’t got it right the first time. And then it struck me: a glittering image. Those textures are so similar to the Indian and Pakistani fabrics, the ones that are so heavily beaded and embroidered on delicate silks. My costuming friends has recently introduced to me the concept of layering fabrics to create visual depth. Now, if that moved….
It would be magnificent.