I’ve been interested in combining flora and fauna together as one being. Here is one of my first attempts. Though I am really critical of this drawing I hope to get a little more creative with the flora composition on the beasties to depict a wildly whimsical beast worthy of some more eye time.
I’ve also been experimenting with mark making, so I’ve produced these couple or drawings in the past week, distributing the right amount of dots and triangles as you can see, practice makes perfect!
I really enjoy drawing in people’s cards, the thrill of completely messing it up is enormous which is quite stressful, but this stress I interpret as a push to really create something memorable. Using ink in cards is a particular favourite, as using cotton buds you can often remove layers of ink creating tone, I emphasise this by streaking on white acrylic paint. Excuse the handwriting!
In lieu of my next Aesop fable illustration, I’ve made my own little long eared bat from rolled up tubes of masking tape and carrier bags. I really enjoyed making my masking tape cat when I was at Kingston University, so I thought I’d get the tape out and get busy with making another weird luminous green sticky creature.
Aesop’s Fables are the most beloved fables of all time! To draw attention to the less well known ones I set about about trying to illustrate them. The fox and the grapes was the first one I was drawn to.
I designed three images to match the fable and I played with different ideas for each one, I can’t leave watercolour alone at present so two feature a watercolour element.
Illustrating these fables will allow me to build up a portfolio of work so in time I may well be able to approach authors to show examples of my work, plus I can get in lots of illustrative practice!
“A hungry Fox saw some fine bunches of Grapes hanging from a vine that was trained along a high trellis, and did his best to reach them by jumping as high as he could into the air. But it was all in vain, for they were just out of reach: so he gave up trying, and walked away with an air of dignity and unconcern, remarking, “I thought those Grapes were ripe, but I see now they are quite sour.”
My dad loves hippos! So I made him one.
Initially I was going for a full hippo sculpture, big and bulky.
I made a flimsy wire support skeleton and sculpted wads of clay very roughly over the top. I decided on just going with the top half as the sculpture would have been too heavy and too time consuming to meet the deadline of the 16th of June, Fathers Day!
I enjoy leaving my sculptures grey as I love a more natural vibe to my sculptural work, but I had to keep it exciting and vibrant as my dad unfortunately doesn’t have the longest attention span. I thought giving it a bit more of a colour boost would make my dad appreciate the gift a little bit more.
I sculpted the hippo by hand using wire throughout to keep the beast together.
When air drying clay dries it can be difficult preventing breakages, using tiny pieces of wire in the ears, jaw and teeth were vital to make sure they didn’t break off during handling. After all his bits and pieces were sculpted I then after much experimentation painted him with red acrylic which further strengthened and sealed it. As always I gave him a final layer of PVA to give my hippo a glistening finish.
This was my first attempt at my hippo which proved a chunky challenge and probably would have not suited the boisterous Bennett household.
My second attempt completely naked!
I sculpted this clay maquette by hand, using a thin piece of wire, it took a day and a bit. I coated the maquette with PVA to harden and give him a sheen.
I work with air drying clay, and if you don’t skewer it with lengths of wire to act as a skeleton and seal it with something such as PVA it will crumble and crack. The safest thing to do is to make a structurally sound wire skeleton before you even think of claying. But I’m a glutton for punishment and went ahead and didn’t make a skeleton for this maquette as I am impatient and was rushing to meet a Kingston University deadline.
The proportions of the body is off, the head is too big for the body and it looks too much like a teddy bear. It’s not a bad start, I hope to get back to this project in the near future and really work hard to finish this hairy chapter.
