Pulling Away The Vines

I suppose there comes a time when circumstances ask us to contemplate what we're doing and why. If creating art is a journey then perhaps these introspective moments are akin to pausing on our path to survey the surroundings and check our bearings. Sometimes we may even opt to cut a new trail entirely, forging into unknown territory altogether. Every so often, however, our journey can be about rediscovering forgotten trails, retracing erstwhile steps, or uncovering old paths tangled over by the dense overgrowth of our everyday. They wait for us to wander down their twists and turns again…wiser, beleaguered and perhaps seeking solace in remembrance. Not all new trails are cut fresh!

I've returned to such a trailhead. It was around 2011 when life first introduced me to the experience called depression. Entirely new to me, it took me by surprise and laid waste to nearly two years of my life. And while I thought I'd left it behind me early last year, the subsequent backslide proved it still haunted my psyche. What to do…what to do. But does anyone actually really know what to do with depression? We have an assortment of stopgaps, but an actual cure still seems to remain elusive. (Though modern science is certainly spearheading that effort! SCIENCE!) Nevertheless, some good has come from the ordeal much to my surprise, one of them being a stout rethinking of just what the heck I was doing in the studio.

It's often the case for artists that identity and practice, that our sense of self and purpose in life are the very same thing. One just doesn't do art, one is an artist. So it is for me: I am what I do and I do what I am. I am my art and my art is me. That means creating my art isn't just a passion, a job, a joy, a pastime, a pursuit, or even a routine—it's me being alive. It's as natural and necessary to me as breathing, and so to stop is to literally stop living, to cease being me. This is both a blessing and a curse. Making a living at what reaffirms who I am is wondrous beyond words and I'm grateful every day!

The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.

Joseph Campbell

But it also means that the very essence of my being can be vulnerable to circumstance. If life decides to get between me and my ability to create art then, I'm faced with a crisis well beyond missing work. This being so, the vacant detachment imposed by depression not only threatened what I am but who I am as well…a frightening proposition. A rescue mission had to be launched post haste, to save not only my productivity but my personality too. But in deploying that salvage operation, I was stunned to excavate rediscovered treasures almost forgotten in the dark deep of myself. Bringing them up from the brooding depths, I never suspected how these bygone imaginings would breathe new life into me and conspire to save me from drowning in that abyss of ambivalence.

So in a roundabout way, that melancholy drudgery, that yawning bleakness did offer a great gift. And though wrapped in howling indifference and topped with a soul–sucking bow, it was a great gift all the same. Depression may not be the best wrapper of presents, but…hey…it tries. And by "gift" I mean this: I realized that I'd been working almost exclusively in equine realism for about thirty–seven years. This isn't so incredulous once you realize that time, effort, dedication, and sacrifice in freakishly large quantities are necessary for this demanding art form. And I've relished every moment! The single–subject and focus isn't a limitation in my opinion, but an enthralling challenge. To explore the possibilities and interpret variations has truly tested my mettle each time I've touched tool to clay, and has only served to intensify its appeal.

But still…that's a long time to be single–minded about anything! When I was my typical crazy–busy self, I was probably too distracted by all the goings–on to realize my creativity had developed an itch—one that would need a pretty good scratch too boot. There's nothing quite like inertia to pinpoint the deficiencies in one's trajectory. Slowly becoming aware of a restlessness in my creativity then, I diagnosed a need to be wanton again, to wallow in a kind of innocence found only in unfettered imagination. Strange that in the midst of spirit–snuffing insouciance, one last little spark would want to detonate itself into a thermonuclear bomb of emotion! 

So there I was, armed with a sizable mental library of anatomical rules accumulated over nearly four decades of intent study—and now my insides wanted to pitch it all into the wind?! What gives? Did my creativity want to expand on familiar themes because of its expanded appreciation for the subject? Hmmm…could be! Then maybe my insides pined for this kind of exploration as a way to complement and puzzle over those learned for realism? Quite possibly! And just what was this new compulsion for artistic abandon in the studio? Where the holy heck was that coming from? As I peeled back the smothering layers of depression, there in the gooey amorphic center, grinnin' back at me like a cheeky Cheshire Cat, was the repressed need for…

Play. Play? Yes—PLAY. Whoa! How wild! OK, then—play! Ta-da!

Apparently I'd been creating "by the book" for so long, my creativity simply wanted an opportunity to concoct new rules, or even play with existing ones in new ways. But this would be risky! I took pride in pushing my skills in the accuracy department, in duplicating real life as closely as possible, and my work was known for this careful attention to technical detail. And now my guts wanted to just make stuff up?! What?! My production schedule was in total chaos, too, no thanks to the apathy induced by depression. So the wad of existing work that was waiting for my attention was obviously far more pressing, right? Only now my creativity wanted to switch gears to—from this perspective—waste time?! Perish the thought—NO! Absolutely NOT—no no NO! Shut up little spark! Was it out of its mind?! (Don't answer that!)

But…but…perhaps there was method to this madness, a lunatic wisdom. Hmm. See, those two gremlins—risk and backlog—were highly skilled at spinning a pointed and powerful guilt–trip each and every time the urge to focus on something different sprung up. So "play" just didn't seem justified—so it wasn't and I didn't. And I'm a working artist too, darn it! It's unacceptable that my drive could be so capricious and easily compromised. I should just get down to work, efficiently and effectively, right? Buck up, Mink! Geez.

Yet I had to admit that the more I forced the "real" work, the more frustrated I became. Few things turned out as desired, and what was once effortless and joyful was now browbeaten toil. I found myself uncharacteristically rationalizing more and more, and so the studio sat empty and Minkless more and more each week. Bit by bit then, that natural impulse to continue creating simply evaporated. Depression had made creating art hard enough, but then having to battle these self–inflicted guilt–trips of "I shoulds" made for a kind of emotional agony. It's so true that only we know how to most cruelly torture ourselves.

Smoosh that whole seething mess together and what have we got? Yep…a terrible negative feedback loop. One that was becoming ever more entrenched and powerful every day, too, and that's bad bad juju for a working artist. And if that wasn't enough, being attached to my identity and sense of purpose also meant that I faced some rather unwelcome and unsettling deeply personal implications. I became desperate. Frantic, really. The life I saw before me was without art—was without me being me—and it was unfathomable. How do you deal with a future so unwanted and unlike you, but with you still stuck inside it? I didn't want to be a prisoner in my own life! And I certainly didn't want to be that kind of broken person for my family and friends either!

Things eventually reached critical mass, a kind of fork in the road. Going absolutely nowhere, I was stalled out with real work on one road and preventative guilt–trips rallied a gauntlet on the other. Wounded, frightened, despairing and bewildered, another meltdown was imminent. Then outta nowhere some forgotten advice popped into my head, neatly summed up thusly…

Action is the antidote to despair. 

Joan Baez

When stuck, moving in any direction is—by definition—being unstuck. If my insides simply refused to create real work then it was the guilt–trips that had to crumble. So I began to wonder…what was my psyche trying to tell me all this time? And why had I deafened myself to it? Had I become so accustomed to internal mental combat that I simply forgot how to stop fighting? Rather than swallow play as frivolous excess perhaps I should see it instead as the storied "spoonful of sugar"? As therapy? So would indulging play prime my parched creative pump? If play really was rehabilitation, would it regenerate and release that torrential, unstoppable gush of possessed creativity so typical of my drive before depression? Or would it backfire catastrophically to sink me forever in an endless ocean of hopeless despair? Would it finally and totally break me? How the heck did I get to this point?! How did I become so afraid?! Why did I doubt myself, and so blithely? And when did I become so distrustful of the one thing I'd always been most certain about—making art?! BAH! That's not me whatsoever! Even so, I had to move. 

So I gathered myself up, took a deep breath, riled the maniac minkie moxie that served me so well in life…then looking it square in the eyes, I steeled myself and gave that smug, disapproving, overbearing conscience The Bird. Take that you putz! GET OUT! And clean the dirt behind you! So I metaphorically tossed my red curls, spun around and sauntered back to creativity's waiting, warm arms, feverishly and rebelliously embracing the whole crazy idea of play. Play play PLAY!

Nothing happens until something moves.

Albert Einstein

Then a curious thing happened: the moment I allowed myself to embrace this idea, to give myself permission to play, something shifted, clicked on and loudly sputtered to life—rusty, smoking, grinding and clanking at first then…FLASH! BANG! Clink clink clink *POP* WHHHHRRRRRRRRR…my creativity and enthusiasm snapped into synch and in one mad instant, catalyzed an explosion of superheated liberation, generating a massive, supersonic shockwave of eager, joyful, shining fervor that instantly leveled and vaporized the diseased, gnarled landscape of depression. For a moment I was blinded. I actually physically felt a cool, calming wash in my brain (???) then all of a sudden, clear as day, I opened my eyes and knew exactly what to play with…

As a girl I spent hours filling my sketchbooks with horses and ponies, painstakingly drawn with as much technical accuracy I could muster in those tender years—which was…well, pretty darned lousy, to be honest. But we all gotta start somewhere! Created alongside these spirited steeds, however, were teeming herds of imagined animals—fantastical creatures of all kinds. Scales, horns, feathers, claws, antlers, fins…these beasts evolved within a creative landscape governed only by my boundless, youthful imagination.

So now that I was finally listening to my creativity, I realized that these bizarre creatures tickled and amused different parts of my creativity, exercising bits that were equally and uniquely important for my creative well–being. It dawned on me then that these wild things could represent different aspects of my creative drive, different totems in a way, and they needed attention, too. In a sense, they were spawned in my depths whereas my equine art was about diving into the depths of another. 

But somehow and quite unintentionally, I'd forgotten to feed this extraordinary menagerie so they'd simply wandered off, in a manner of speaking. Out of sight, out of mind. After all these years though, this pressure point became exposed like a shrieking nerve, laid bare by depression. Along with truth and reality then, my insides yearned for its dreams and delusions, too. And that's no small matter, mind you, because the difference between duplicating biological rules versus simply making stuff up is like night to day. One is like a vocation and the other like a vacation! 

Now I suppose I should have figured all this out earlier, and had I actually been paying attention to my creativity, I would have. The zeal I relished when sculpting Mr. Pony…

The cheer in spawning the little clay critters for BOYCC…

The glee spurring my spirit when creating the Chemo Critters…

And the wine–soaked revelry in painting Godzilla…

All the clues where there. With these projects came no strings, no rules, no expectations, and all adventure. Had I been honest with myself I would've accepted that more of this mayhem was needed in my art life. Had I been respectful of my insides, I could've admitted that other inspirations weren't to be dismissed, but were instead equally rewarding and equally necessary for keeping my creativity stoked and burning white hot. Had I been attentive to all the parts of me, it wouldn't have taken the emotional silencing of depression for my guts to finally get it through my thick skull that what was real and what was unreal were two sides of the same coin. That each would inform the other to combine into a luscious, piping hot artistic plasma of higher energies and greater purity than either one by itself. Who knew?! Just whip into stiff peaks and serve! Sweet synthesis!

Now granted, the (ongoing) rigorous workout with all the anatomical rules is obviously essential for equine realism, by definition. One must master the rules first before gaining the authority to bend or break them. And these aren't complaints! I keenly remember those frustrating early days when I lacked this kind of insight and was forced to clumsily fudge and muddle my way through ideas. I can't tell you how much I disliked this. And when my efforts would predictably fall short of my soaring ambitions as a result—well, I still feel that sting despite the interim years. Oh, how I bitterly resented my child–mind's inability to grasp for the rings I so desperately wanted to pocket because—yes, I admit it freely—even at that tender, wee age I expected a great deal of myself. So when equine realism introduced me to serious anatomical study later in life, it was like being handed an actual treasure map promising a wealth of structural credibility just waiting for plunder! I threw myself into it, of course, with all the wild abandon of a starving dog at an unattended picnic. I gorged! The potato salad didn't stand a chance.

But it seems now that the tables have turned. My current predicament can be described as the very same frustration but only in the opposite direction. In other words, since my creativity now has a firmer grasp on the rules, it wanted to jettison them! Bah! Seriously?! So no longer having to fudge things out of ignorance meant it wanted to just make stuff up again?! Really?! I swear, the art life can be so goofy. So many quirky drives to feed! How ironic though that the fantasy and frivolity born of my youth would come back full circle to sound the rescue, to add balance to an adult life weighted so heavily on facts and reality. Maybe our craziest visions really are our most loyal minions who, like gargoyles, can chase away pesky demons prowling our inner landscape.

All considered then, my depression revealed a curious idea: it wasn't enough to simply create more work, I needed to work more creatively. After following Nature's rules for so long, my insides had made it quite clear that it needed balance, an expressive conduit where anything goes, just from time to time. When I was a child, I wanted to create as an adult, but now that I'm an adult, my insides wanted to create as a child again! So there ya go—my gut instincts speaking loudly and clearly. Where does this put me now though? 

Right back at those old sketchbooks, that's where! Musty, dog–eared, spiral–bound sheets stuffed with dragons, pegasi, unicorns, seahorses, hybrids, monsters and all manner of incredulous critter dreamed up by the quirky imagination and naiveté of one very enthusiastic child. It was time to go back and find that Sarah again, for that healing infusion of her raw, unpasteurized, primordial energy. And how better to grab her innocent, wide–eyed attention than with a custom–targeted version of the Batsignal? A Unicorn signal! Ah HA! Gotcha girlie!

I've long been fascinated with Unicorns. Drawings, paintings, illustrations, sculptures, architectural flourishes, books, Coat of Arms, logos, movies (remember Legend?)…everything "Unicorn" fed my enchantment. Besides their beauty and strangeness, their cultural appeal charmed me, too. Like the Dragon, the Unicorn holds a unique position of deep mythological significance across a wide variety of cultures, each interpretation custom–fitted for its parent belief system. From this perspective, understanding the nature of the Unicorn in any given culture is to better understand that culture—and that's cool! This phenomenon also caused the Unicorn to morph into countless variations, each one stranger than the last—and that's even cooler! Not many other fabled creatures can boast this kind of universality and influence, except perhaps the Dragon. All this meant, of course, that huge swaths of people throughout history believed this creature was real, adding another layer of intrigue to the mystique—and that's super–duper cool!

Yet from the very beginning, the Unicorn wasn't simply a white horse with a horn. Nope. To me the Unicorn was a most exotic being with a variety of characteristics such as cloven hooves, twisty lion tails, antelope–like ears, bizarre eyes, or any manner of oddity I fancied. I thought if people could be alternately charmed and alarmed by this beast then it was probably quite extraordinary, right? Almost alien. Even evolutionary traits derived from specific ecological niches were fair game, and got me studying real animals in similar habitats for inspiration.

The Unicorn has walked beside me as guide, muse, guardian and totem. Looking back though, perhaps most curious was how I imagined his nature. While childhood peers interpreted this animal as innocent, gentle, sweet and benign, that cloying image never resonated with me. To me the Unicorn was fierce, free, strange, wise, ancient, and ethereal, with a tad of menace and danger. These were immortal, other–worldly, magical beings with abilities, senses, and priorities wholly unlike anything familiar to us. They walked between dimensions at will, observing, viewing time in eons, tuned in to energies and presences beyond our coping mechanisms. Coming from a primeval world homo sapien became dumb to long before memory, the Unicorn is a sacred harbinger, herald, bearer and keeper, a sentinel waiting for us to wake from our collective fog to see them again. Being so full of potency, mysticism and indescribable power then, would it really end well for us if we encountered one? I suspect not.

Yet at the same time, the Unicorn is closely associated with comforting memories from my childhood. The feel and smell of a new sketchbook and eraser. A sharp pencil. The aroma of brush cleaner and oil paints. The rich, warm musk of a freshly cleaned bridle and saddle. The sound of birds and squirrels squabbling over the buffet growing on the apricot tree in the backyard. The sweet sanctuary of my bedroom and soft cushion of my twin bed, with the wall pressed against my back as I thumbed through my "Horse Of Course" magazines. Daydreaming. My pet rattie bruxing on my shoulder, his warm, fuzzy body pressed against my neck. I could feel him breathing. Sharing my cookie with him, watching crumbs bounce down my arm. The look of my riding boots shined up in the corner of my room. The eyes of my Breyer® horses peering at me from my bedroom shelves. The aroma of Mom cooking dinner. The sound of my brother softly playing guitar or playing the Atari®. Our Budgie bird chirpin' and warblin' contently. The creaking of Pop's chair as he sat outside for his evening cigar. Yes—this elusive, rare beast has tread quietly throughout my life, bearing deep symbolism for me each step. 

Who better then to guide me out of this darkness? Heck—that horn points the way! So I snatched the Unicorn armature that sat here for the better part of two years and with a blind madness flowing directly from childhood, I threw myself into the clay. This was play—serious play, of course—but play nonetheless. 

And it's felt great. Indescribably great! Fantastic!

The creative flow—which until now had to be meticulously rationed—all of a sudden burst forth in a deluge, flooding my insides with the lunatic enthusiasm my soul devours. To say I was astonished would be an understatement. Here I was hoping for a mere glimmer, but what I got was a psychological Hypernova! For the first time since depression blew apart my spirit, I felt whole again. Truly happy. Content. Joyful! That cursed negative feedback loop evaporated too, replaced by a positive loop now ramped up to speeds that would make the LHC blush! 

In the depths of winter I finally learned there was in me an invincible summer.

Albert Camus

I really shouldn't be so surprised that this Unicorn has materialized so easily and naturally—but I am! Heck—my hands can barely keep up! I'm so thrilled, in fact, that I've actually missed sleep some nights, and not because of anxiety or dread, but because of delirium and devotion. My soul sparks and buzzes with high–tension creativity, and to my thankful delight, that hypnotizing, euphoric Zen my essence craves is back full throttle, with time zipping by unnoticed just like before my mental implosion. I couldn't ask for a better outcome. I'm not just as good as new—I'm better than before!

And here's the weird, cool thing about all this: I'm more than me now! A synergy of Sarahs, I'm like Sarah³: the child–Sarah + the pre–depression–Sarah + the now–Sarah = Sarah.2. We three are fused into a kind of creative chimera with each informing, embracing and advocating for the other. A sisterhood made up of three phases of my being, I'm recharging, reshaping and reinventing myself right along with my art. 

All the struggle and angst that plagued my guts are now totally gone, replaced by a bristling of exhilaration—just as it should be. I can't wait to wake up in the morning to get into the studio, a feeling I thought was gone forever. Two years of being the droning living dead can suck it—I'm alive again. Rejuvenated and renewed, the Unicorn has healed my wounded soul. Even if this creature exists only in my dreams—I believe. And I intend to continue accepting the hallowed medicine this uncanny creature delivers.

So this Unicorn heralds the beginning of a new series, one that draws from the youthful happy–go–lucky zeal of my childhood to enlighten my ambitious and determined adult future. Each Unicorn will also serve as a retrospection, a culmination and a declaration, reclaimed every year.

As regularly scheduled playtime then, each new Unicorn will explore a different physique, each accompanied by a little Moth friend. I love Moths with their big beady eyes, plumed antennae, array of unusual wings and big, fat, fuzzy bodies—what's not to love? But don't be surprised if a Dragonfly or Butterfly show up from time to time too! Symbolic accoutrements for each Unicorn will also be available (as separate purchases) such as ornate collars, special wreaths, other companions, or whatever floats my boat at the time. It's playtime, remember—I can do whatever I want! That said, I do hope to keep the scale of the series more or less the same for everything to be interchangeable to some degree. I think that would add to the narrative fun for all of us—you get to play, too!

Joy is but the sign that creative emotion

is fulfilling its purpose.

Charles du Bois

So here I am, reflecting on the past couple of years and I see now that the whole mess wasn't such a waste of time. Truth be told, in some ways it was even beneficial. I may be bloodied and still blinking in the radiance of glorious new potential, but clawing out from the bottomless pit of depression entailed an act of will that reclaimed my life with renewed affirmation. As only hardship can beget, a fresh perspective now permeates the studio to imbue my efforts with more reverent substance. Bright days are ahead, made even brighter by this brush with darkness. 

Today is my birthday as I write this—July 31st. I'm 46. Curious how all this good stuff oozed to the surface just in time for this day of reminiscence. Perhaps I have two Birthdays now—one for my birth and another for my rebirth. In honor of this new occasion then, I've decided to give myself a long–overdue gift: the permission to play. So stay tuned for the debut of Unicorn I and steady yourself for the madcap onslaught of Sarah.2!

And serving as rich symbology for me, the Unicorn does so again…fearless, impassioned and truly free.

"Whoever wants to understand much must play much." ~ Gottfried Benn

Pulling Away The Vines

A Passion for Porcelain

As I mentioned in the previous post, I'm having a torrid love affair with slipcast porcelain. As I also mentioned in that post, I got a crazy hair beyond just casting the unicorn. My eyes wandered over to my other bas-relief molds and gave me fiendish, Grinchy ideas. Hey, why not? What else are fiendish, Grinchy ideas good for?

So ta-da! Here are the fruits of our passions...

 Here's a set of my Rune Horses in porcelain, beaded as a set.

 Here's a selection of the four Rune Horse "C" pieces, beaded in different ways. Two great things that go better together: porcelain and glass!

 And here are the three Rune Horse "B" pieces given the same treatment. 

A note about those Rune Horses: these designs are being retooled for tile pressing rather than slip casting. This means they'll be redesigned into the standard 4" circle (and another version will be reset onto a 4" square) to allow for greater versatility with the end product and to open up the the possibility of installations. That means these staggered smaller sizes will be discontinued very soon because the molds are near their end and I won't be making replacements. Anyhoo...onward...

 

 Here's a trio of busts, now in porcelain and beaded as a set.

Here are more, only sold individually. The piece on the far left has a hook in the back for easy hanging on the wall.

Finally, here's the selection of small rectangle plaques with beadery. Each will be sold individually.

Its so exciting to be slipcasting my bas-relief work in this marvelous stuff! It opens up new ways to offer these and future pieces, which is such a tantalizing prospect for the bas-reliefs coming down the pike. All of them will be available for purchase in my Etsy store tomorrow, so stay tuned! 

Also stay tuned for the Reflective plaque in porcelain, to be debuted in the next post...

"All we are given are possibilities – to make ourselves one thing or another." ~ Jose Ortega Y Gasset

A Passion for Porcelain

The Myth Made Real

All packaged and ready for new homes!

It's been a steep learning curve here the past month, exploring the nuances of slipcasting porcelain. Phew! The cliff notes to this two month epic: I'm passionately in love with this stuff. A torrid, shameless love affair! Wanton! My passions were aflame, my breasts were heaving, my loins were...well, OK, I'll spare you. But this clay is definitely as magical as the subject matter I chose for my first foray - a unicorn. 

I made an open-face plaster mold and just poured the slip in, letting it dry and firm up just enough to pop out easily. Using that "button" technique with a piece of porcelain clay really helped matters, too. I was able to cast about five unicorns a day with this approach.

The tools of the trade, with some greenware made earlier that day. The extra greenware porcelain is put back into the dump bucket and used for future castings. Ceramics are wonderful - very little waste and lots of recycling!

 

Here they are all lined up, (left) original oil clay from which the plaster mold was made, (middle) greenware casting and (right) fired porcelain casting. Pretty impressive shrink rate between them!

 

Here's a close-up of a greenware casting (left) and the finished fired porcelain result (right). Each piece required a great deal of cleaning and tweaking to get just right. A labor of love.

 

And voila! The finished result! Well worth all those long hours and determined effort. I decided to leave the piece bisque to showcase the sculpture itself and preserve all the details - I vastly prefer bisque porcelain to glazed for this reason. To my eye, it's an ideal medium for highlighting sculptural aspects, so elegant and lovely.

All packaged and ready for Etsy this weekend! 

I am absolutely thrilled to have completed this ambitious project successfully! Slipcasting porcelain opens up entirely new horizons for my work, especially for my bas-reliefs. In fact, I got a bit wild n' crazy along those lines, but I'll leave that for a (soon) future blog post. I also found that certain post-fire flaws can be fixed, along with contriving a solution for the warping problem (again, I'll leave that for a future post). Indeed, the experience was so positive that I decided to make this unicorn ornament an annual series, so next year I'll come out with a new design. 

I gotta say, though, this project relied on my aggressive naivete and militant optimism. I had no idea what I was doing, simply forging ahead with what I knew about slipcasting earthenware. What surprised me after it all was how non-scary and accessible slipcasting porcelain ended up being. I still have some glitches to iron out with bigger pieces, but overall, you can bet more of this luscious stuff will be popping outta this studio! 

Now, back to the mud for more tiles, that Friesian ornament and other clinky goodness! MUSH! 

"One of the things I learned the hard way was that it doesn't pay to get discouraged. Keeping busy and making optimism a way of life can restore your faith in yourself." ~ Lucille Ball

The Myth Made Real

Trouble Comes in Pairs

Shavings ruled the day with the "Suncorn." Lots of 'em.

This past weekend, I dove into that project I mentioned in a previous post - a pair of unicorn plaques with a sun/moon motif. You'll find that motif pop up in my giftware quite a bit because I'm attracted to the the idea of paired opposites. Of one not being able to exist without the other. Yin and yang - that sorta thing.

Anyway, this was my first expedition into sculpting pairs, and I thought it would be a cinch. No biggie. No big whoop. 

But it turned out to be a project that involved far more royal-PITA work than I ever imagined, and all because they were paired. I didn't realize it at the time, but being a pair presents challenges not found elsewhere in sculpture, and which tend to complicate the cogs of creativity in truly maddening ways.

OK, here's the moon version roughed out, in the middle of the process (left) and at the end (right). Took a day - easy as pie. Now I had to sculpt its partner, the sun version. Here's where things get stickier than bubblegum on a hot sidewalk.

The encouraging, pristine block of cut-out clay for the sun plaque. It seems to be smiling at me, benign and enticing. Oh, how it lies!

 

Using a pair of locking calipers, I measured the side rim of the moon plaque and locked it, then used that to calibrate the thickness of the sun plaque by punching "measuring holes" along the rim. Being a pair, both had to be the same thickness. Seemed simple enough, but - wow - did it prove to be more annoying than I anticipated.

So here's the blank being shaved down. I start along the rim first, using the ridged side of a "squared" sculpting tool. However, I don't pare down directly to the measurement, leaving a little bit extra for wiggle room.

For the middle, I used the half-round because it rips off more clay faster.

 

Once all that's done, I laid a printout of my sketch on top of it. Using a stylus (any kind will do, even a dull pencil works well), I trace along the lines, pressing firmly. All my bas-relief pieces start from simple line drawings this way.

Traced in. Now I could have pared the block down completely and added clay "inside the lines" to build up the "outy" features - and in hindsight that perhaps would have been the better strategy. But squishing on sticky oil clay too much can make my finger tips sore, even blister them, so I often opt to pare down rather than build up.

Starting to cut out the design.

I used an old airbrush needle to poke holes at certain points in the moon plaque, and used a Sharpie to mark the needle for depth. I swear, I could write a book on the 1,001 uses for old airbrush needles.

 I then poke that needle into the sun plaque to compare depths, and add or pare down accordingly. This process takes a surprisingly long time.

  

 Here I am rechecking. You have to recheck constantly because it's easy to veer off-track without even knowing it. As for the outer border, I really liked the flat-side of the squared off tool for evening it out.

So I get almost done with the sculpting the unicorn, but I somehow got off-track and made him way too thick. It happens. I remeasured with the needle and ended up having to pare him down almost completely, erasing all those hours of work. Argh! But it's important not to get too married to anything in sculpture, because if it's gotta go, it's gotta go. And well, those front legs are looking weird to me, too. Hmmm.

To complicate the deal, they not only have to match in terms of thickness, but also in dimension. BAH! Comparing things side-by-side works, but well...our human eyes just aren't that precise. I used my calipers and developed suspicions, but I wanted to be absolutely sure, mostly as a means to train myself. The more hardcore I was in this, the more my Eye would have to learn. So I took a picture of both plaques and loaded them into Photoshop for direct comparison. Here I've used the paintbrush tool to trace along the lines of the moon plaque in black (in a new layer so I could copy it and overlay it onto the sun plaque).

But it doesn't end there! No siree. Along with all the matchy fiddly work, I also had to stay true to the original design. All these constraints! Ack! I want to pull my brain out! So I loaded the original design into Photoshop and traced along the design with the paintbrush tool in white (also in a new layer).

Through a series of Photoshop comparisons, between the two unicorns and between the sun plaque and the original drawing, I could objectively discern where I went wrong and decide where to make adjustments. Interestingly, the dimensions between the two unicorns was very close, but I was way off compared to the original drawing. This was why the front legs looked so odd to me. (Here the colors were switched, white being the moon unicorn and black being the sun unicorn.)

What's handy about having a sized drawing to work from is using it as a template for shaping clay. Here I'm using snakes of clay to outline the flow of the tail.

Here are some of the tools I used. I love the loop tools for clay, with "U-turn," round and square tip shapes. But I also use that curved blade a lot, especially for carving edges or cutting in eyes and mouths. That longest one is my standard sculpting tool for all media. Its simple shape is deceptive - I find it a perfect sculpting tool for practically everything! 

Another challenge I encountered with this project was "handed-ness." Unless we're ambidextrous, each of us are "handed," either left or right handed. Well, the same applies to sculpting - we usually have an "easier" side sculpting, especially when it comes to detailed bits like the head. This is why you sometimes hear a sculptor imply one side was easier to sculpt than another. In this case, I had to sculpt essentially the same unicorn, but flipped over, as each plaque had reversed unicorn designs. This definitely proved to be interesting.

It's easier to get around this glitch in a 3D sculpture because we can move it around to gain better access with our tools. Not so with a flat bas-relief. The backing tile totally gets in the way and so our handedness is shoved in our faces rather shamelessly. Indeed, sculpting that sun unicorn's head and mane became a real chore. Interesting.

Anyway, after much trial and tribulation, I finally finished the pair. They each measure 4.5" and are destined for tile pressing, which is why they've been sculpted in flatter style. I also aim to resin cast them, probably in colored resin to be sold "as-is" while still remaining paint-able by cold-painters.

I didn't want to make them exact, but slightly different, to be individuals. Even their horns are a bit different. But as a final check, I overlaid the sun plaque onto the moon plaque in Photoshop (hooray for the "opacity" option) and both were of near exact proportions, and surprisingly exact in the head. Woot! Mission accomplished - finally. BLORG. I debated about sculpting flourishes inside the border, or even motifs, like stars on the moon plaque and flowers on the sun plaque. But in the end I decided that would be distracting and such motifs would make them too kitschy, something I definitely wanted to veer from with unicorns. Simplicity often works best.

All said and done, the sun plaque took twice as long as the moon plaque, and only because of all the matchy-matchy adjustments. It near drove me nuts, though it was a good exercise. I've never had to do that before and it taught me quite a bit about process and perception. I think it's important to learn the discipline of sculpting, and there's no better way to learn than having to duplicate things, especially in reverse.

"It's a true test of discipline to remain in control and to not let the temptation of color force unwanted decisions." Scott L. Christensen

Trouble Comes in Pairs