The Swamp of Creative Juices

Well here is my head cut in half. Well the clay head I made, not MY head….LOL. Mine got stuck on the plastic, but I got it off eventually.  Here it is all flat and funny looking.

Caption: Front Half of head removed from armature.

And here is half of the head turned over so I could scoop out the excess clay.  This is where you try and make sure most of the walls are the same thickness.  You need to add wet clay to the inside with slurry where the wall is too thin.  Wow it sure looks funny. Having them off the armature like this meant that they spread out a bit making the task of putting them back together somewhat harder.  Plus I ended up with the back of the head flat. LOL  Flat Head…..rotflmao.

Caption: Scooping out excess clay.

I did some repair work, mostly around the neck that needed building up to support the head better.  Smoothed out the worst of the rough bits, and did some more work on matching one cheek, cheekbone and jaw line with the other on the other side of the face.

Finally I started working on the eyes, eyelids and folds around the eyes.  It took me all day to get one eye looking at least similar to the other.  It was either too low or too small or just TOO  something.  That was the hardest to fix….the TOO SOMETHING….LOL cause it took a long time to figure out what the something was.

As you can see it wasn’t easy.  The one on the left was great,  it was just trying to get the one on the right.  oh well, I think Ive got the worst of it done now….

Ill be back to post some more photos soon.

Yes it was an expedition, not an exhibition.  LOL cause we had to transport the egg on a trailer.  It was too big to fit into any car. LOL….

Anyway I won first prize for my Eggstatic Egg in the “Recycled Article” section.  Not hard really as there was only ONE OTHER entrant.  (See photo).

And I won first prize in the “Ceramic” section cause I WAS THE ONLY ENTRY. Ha ha ha.   I had a lot of interest… everyone wanted to know what was underneath the tiles of motherboards.  I had a card for each item with the credit line outlined on it, but it had my name on as well and that had to be removed….they don’t want the judges to be bias.   I should have just crossed the name off.  I did have it on the entry form but I don’t think anybody bothered to look it up for people.

Anyway I was happy and I came Home with a whole $10.00 whopeeee. 

I love this shot I took at the Mission Cemetery.  Which is also the old site of the  Otamataha Pa before becoming the burial site of the Church Mission Society – 1835 – 1881 and then also the burial site for the soldier’s and sailer’s who fell in the Native Land Wars of 1864-186, both Maori and European.  This place is a lovely green quiet spot by the water right in the heart of the city.

The hard lines of the rusty aged iron pickets casting shadows across the concrete and the soft wispy leaves symbolising life just finished but not yet decayed. The age old cycle of life.

Today Im going to have a lazy lazy day and maybe go to the pictures and maybe just do some more painting.  I think Id like to do some work in my art journal as well….maybeeee or maybeee not.  LOL Heres a photo of my baby brooklyn greeting me this morning

Happy Happy New Year

Appropriately I have been babysitting some baby thrush birds over the last few days.  My neighbour found them under a tree and decided to hand rear them and then let them go into her garden.  They were to young to leave and old enough to be able to hand feed them.  I don’t know how good an idea it is, as they say to leave the young birds and the parent bird will be back to help them out.  She did leave them for a couple of days but they weren’t looking to good.  Anyway its been fun feeding them and watching them fly around the room.  They sure are cute. Here are some photos.