08.12.20 - Drawing and Sculpting Sea Creatures & More Deconstruction

 Today I continued looking at ancient sea creatures and started with some sketches of a horseshoe crab, giant isopod and a deep-sea angler fish to familiarise myself with their shapes and practice tonal drawing. I enjoyed making the clay isopod last week and decided to make some slightly bigger forms based on the horseshoe crab and angler fish. 

The clay forms are too thick to fire, and the angler fish will be really difficult to cast so I might let it be its own thing; it would also be difficult to make the lure coming out of its head but I used a piece of cable in place for now and it fits quite well especially because it is a similar colour to the clay. I think it will be possible to make a mould of the horseshoe crab if I put wire through the tail to stop it from snapping when I make concrete or plaster versions. I think they would make really interesting ceramic pieces if I glazed them so I will take this into account when I make more creatures. 

Something I wondered was how to incorporate my initial ideas about hybrids, mutations and unnatural parts into the clay figures, however it might turn out that they are enough on their own as simplistic forms. I think they work in terms of the fossil idea though because clay is a naturally occurring material and the monotonous grey reminds me of stone, so they are really organic looking.  

After I made the figures I went back to deconstructing objects and took some plugs apart. When I took the metal pegs out and stood them on end they reminded me of the monoliths that have been appearing around the world over the last couple of weeks, which I expect are being installed by an anonymous artist. They also reminded me of Stone Henge and other mysterious, ancient monuments and I think it's strange how something modern can have a historic aura about it - I want to capture this feeling of transcending time in my project so I think it will be important to look at the language of the materials I decide to use.


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