Progress- of sorts

Firstly, I have been playing with paperclay and have made my first sea angel head. This is for a Christmas exhibition at the Johnston Collection, a collaboration of all the arty groups in Geelong. I began with a foil base on galvanised wire:

Following a tutorial here, I added the paperclay, beginning with a basic shape and then adding the details. This was great fun and Claudia joined in, making a Little Miss figure.

As you can see I have not yet added the ears, I’m wondering if they are necessary as she will have long hair. The pictures of ship’s figureheads which I have are the inspiration for the sea angels, and they all have ears so I had better add them. She is not quite symmetrical, but I plan to paint her in colours of the deep (a la Maggie Grey), not realistically, so I think she will look fine. Most people have slightly wonky faces anyway!! I have another to do as yet.

Here are my ‘killed catalogues‘ in progress.

This one I plan to embellish with gum tree type features; leaves, gum nuts etc.

This has a combination of quink, moonshadow mists, starburst stains and shimmering mists sprayed.

The next one I embedded some gauze and lace fabric in the gesso, then painted the same as the one above.

I was inspired by Heather’s fantastic chessmen and the gap in the middle for this one. It will be based on Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass and have text and WSP heads. A friend has a concrete statue of Alice just the right size, so I hope to  borrow it to do a paper cast.

Next month at the Creative Fibre arts group we will be playing with water soluble paper and paper clay so hopefully I’ll have all these finished to show.

Cheers