The process of digging up past projects that have languished unfinished for years is continuing here, now that I have my painting sensibilities in gear. For example, that customized Taboo I've been mentioning, that's been gathering dust and staring at me, has been dragged back out (above). As you can see, he has a new tail (thanks to my clumsiness) and also a broken leg (due to the same), though it's been pinned and is now sturdy as ever. He'll be getting some tweaks to his paint job, some minor and some rather significant, based on how I've evolved, and I'm anxious to see if I can pull off this difficult pattern and on this size. Scale will be everything for this piece, and so I've shrunk down my reference photos to his size, which really helps to keep me on track. When he's done, he'll go up on Auction Barn, though I have no idea when that'll be.
And here's another sneak peek at Ms. Haffie (above) after some major surgery! Suffice to say, I won't be making my deadline of having all her tweaks done by -- oh -- today, but I think after all this work, just a little bit more will be well worth it. The thing is, I redid her schnoze. I just got fed up with how her head wasn't exactly what I wanted and I knew, deep down, I couldn't force it to be when it was inherently a hair too short. On each piece I have certain non-negotiable goals that will be met even even if it kills me, and her head was one of them. So off everything came up to the end of her teardrop bones to be completely redone. Her head is now a hair longer and I'm immensely happy that it's now exactly what I wanted. Yay!
However...change something in a sculpture and you'll inevitably have to change something somewhere else.
And so because her head was now longer, the proportions of her legs also had to change -- they had to be made a hair longer. All of them. And not just in one area, but two for each leg -- each forearm, each gaskin and all four cannons. And so out came the dremel and off came the legs in eight neat little pieces. They all got re-pinned and what you see in the image above is a block of epoxy to fix it into place. Once that's cured, I'll dremel it down a bit and resculpt those areas to blend into the rest of the leg. It's not easy, and it's rather tedious, but when you want something done right, you have to make that extra effort. Otherwise, I'd always look back on her as a failure...of falling short (especially after all this work) when just another week could have made all the difference in the world to the piece, and to me.
"Get a good idea and stay with it. Dog it, and work at it until it's done right." ~ Walt Disney
However...change something in a sculpture and you'll inevitably have to change something somewhere else.
And so because her head was now longer, the proportions of her legs also had to change -- they had to be made a hair longer. All of them. And not just in one area, but two for each leg -- each forearm, each gaskin and all four cannons. And so out came the dremel and off came the legs in eight neat little pieces. They all got re-pinned and what you see in the image above is a block of epoxy to fix it into place. Once that's cured, I'll dremel it down a bit and resculpt those areas to blend into the rest of the leg. It's not easy, and it's rather tedious, but when you want something done right, you have to make that extra effort. Otherwise, I'd always look back on her as a failure...of falling short (especially after all this work) when just another week could have made all the difference in the world to the piece, and to me.
"Get a good idea and stay with it. Dog it, and work at it until it's done right." ~ Walt Disney
