Apparently my creativity does not extend to blog post titles.

Ahem.  Anyway, I thought I’d give a little preview of what I’m working on.  I’m into maskmaking these days.  I love the idea of wearable sculptures, of becoming a whimsical creature, if only for a few hours a year.  When you’re not wearing the mask, you can hang it on the wall and enjoy the art year-round.

Pictured below is not a finished wearable mask, but a (roughly) half-scale prototype, in polymer clay.  I wanted to work out the design and form before committing to the full-scale piece, which is what I’m working on now.  But, once the mini is painted, I’m thinking it’ll be a pretty cool finished piece in its own right.

I’d love to hear what you think, and also, tell me what other kinds of masks you might like to see me create!

I really wanted to get this lovely couple finished in time for Valentine’s Day, but they’re pretty persnickety about what they want to look like.  The sculpting is finished, and the painting is under way, but there’s much color detailing yet to be done.  I wanted to give you a sneak peek, though, and my camera caught them in a cute cuddly moment.  Behold, the “Partners in Slime”:

"Partners in Slime" WIP preview – Dragon Snail couple on Valentine's Day (a OOAK sculpture by Eirewolf)

Mean Old Goat closeup

Here she is, at long last! I’ll post full photos of her in a week or so, when I have them done. Right now she’s nekkid and scary! Appropriate for Halloween, I suppose. All I’ve left to do for her is stitch on her leather vest, put her pipe in her hand, and do her final photo shoot.

I’ll be trying to enter her in a local sculpture show, which will last for several months if she gets accepted. If the ol’ lady is rejected, she will be very sad. No, not really… She’s universally cranky anyway. She’ll just go straight to my Etsy shop, to look for a future victim to berate with cantankerous cries of “Get off my lawn!”

So I haven’t posted in quite a while.  This is for several reasons –

(1) I have nothing finished to show quite yet… though I’m getting very close.

(2) I have been lazy about taking WIP pictures, so I have nothing unfinished to show either… though I have several WIPs.

(3) I’m a bad, bad blogger.  *slaps self on wrist*

But I posted a long response to a question in somebody’s journal on deviantART, and figured it might as well do double duty and get thrown on my blog too.    As you can see from the following lines, she asked about unfinished projects.  And though I have no pictures to share just yet, I do have words.  Many words.

I have a large paper maché dragon head that’s been in the same state of unfinished-ness for, literally, several years now.  It’s sitting on the floor of my studio, looking at me with forlorn and baleful eyes.

The piece I’m desperately trying to finish now is an old satyr woman.  She’s nearly done, but I’m putting hair on her legs.  This is the most tedious thing I’ve ever done.  (Scratch that.  It’s the most tedious thing I’ve done since a certain project in a 3D design class, in which I had to make a functional weight-bearing chair out of nothing but newspaper and glue.  Seriously.)

I have another piece (a new Dragon Snail, with a mushroom environment) which is also nearly done; I just have to paint the display shelf and put a bit of fake moss on it.  Why didn’t I just finish that one before trying to finish the satyr?  I dunno.

And then I have several abandoned pieces (most are broken, some I just got bored of), and a few armatures that are waiting for me to save them from their nakedness.  I’ll get to them someday.

But once these WIPs are good and done, I’ll be starting a whole new art form — maskmaking.  I’ll still do polymer clay stuff in between, but I’ve had this bug for a while and I *need* to get started.  So I’ll have some unfinished things sitting around for a good long while. 

Fear not, however… I am truly almost done with 2 full projects, and a couple of little experimental things.  I’m saving them all so I can photograph them at the same time.  Soon… Very soon. 

(See the previous post for what the heck I’m talking about…)

As promised, here is my (very rough) sketch of what I will be sculpting for Matt Dangler’s monster contest. Hopefully the sculpture will be much better than the sketch… I’m no illustrator!

The inspiration comes from several of his creatures, not just one. I tried to get a feel for the whole body of work and then put my spin on it.

Details may change as the sculpture progresses; they usually do. I’ve made the armature and done rough mock-ups of the shell and the mount’s head. Next comes bulking up the armature, and then the “real” sculpting shall commence. Stay tuned!

The Sheep Project™ continues apace. She wants painting, and then she shall be finished! I hope ewe like her. ;-D

This is my sheep-in-progress. Doubtless she shall receive her name when she is finished and reaches her owner, because Carol likes to name things (and she’s quite good at it, too).

This is a follow-up sheep to Jacob’s Lamb, who was later named “Felice.” Felice was put out to the proverbial pasture, I’m afraid… I noticed while I was at her owner’s house recently that her wool was coming off, and so I offered to fix it. Once I got her home, another friend noticed that her ear was cracked! Now, I sculpted Felice before I knew that Not All Clays Are Created Equal. I won’t name the nefarious clay, but let’s just say it isn’t so “super,” at least in my experience. (I know that some others have used it with success for a long time, however, and I hope it continues to treat them well, but the stuff has been banished from my sculpting table after repeated disappointments and screaming fits of frustration.) Seeing as how Felice was now half-deaf, and her wool refused to patch nicely anyway, I decided to sculpt a new sheep for my friend, with her blessing, in the stronger clay that I now use. (I know someone will ask… it’s Puppen Fimo.)

In the above picture, her hind legs are only roughed out, her head needs work, and she is completely deaf, but all of that shall be remedied this week if all goes well. In the picture below, she is trying on a new pair of eyes. I think she likes them….

Aliens bleat among us…