From clay monster to clay puppy. This project had many challenges.
To start with, the size of the sculpture. Such a dimension in a piece to be made in ceramic needs to be hollow. I do not use any internal support so I start the project out of a large block of clay and let the thing flow into a modeled shape.
At some point the flow must be stop and put into consideration some technical stuff. As thinking that the piece will be fired at high temperature the risk of disaster is always open. I must plan a bit while keeping the freshness of a natural sculpting process.
The second challenge was to get the feeling of a PUPPY.
There’s that extra tenderness and cuteness that needs to be caught in the work. Such essence exceeds the understanding of any technical skill.
The other fact about puppies is that they grow and change weekly and so their outlook. Some breeds change extremely, as my very own schnauzers, just seeing them evolve specially the standard schnauzer, they pass through some stages, sometimes they don’t even look look like dogs
?Well, in this case I opted to work with a breed to which I have NO direct contact in a daily basis, but which I do certainly love. Before starting this project I studied the breed and also the group they belong to. I also studied the breeds that relate the most to this one in order to be able to understand what differences make each breed be that breed and not another being under a same or similar functionality.
So I opened up to FCI group 7 and studied several of the breeds. My breed of target here is the German Shorthair Pointer, of which I have created a sculpture of a dog in action (you may have seen the progress of that work in FB) that piece already had some challenges on its own, but the thing about an adult dog is that the shape is finished and specially the heads will say it all, but also the body structure etc…. no need to explain further on this topic.
But then doing this puppy and studying the GSP it turned out that when I studied photos of puppies in different stages of growth, it would be, except for the color, that the structure, behavior and look was almost identical to Weimaraner puppies.
I normally use black/white photos when I analyze them. And without color on my images the general appearance was really close!! And let’s not enter in details about from which lines the dogs came from, as even comparing puppies of the same breed from different countries would give more differences of pups type of the same breed than compared to Weimaraner pups.
Ohhh well, you see, a lot of work behind the scenes and we are not even close to be ready yet!! Next steps are dangerous and exciting.
The sculpture must dry slowly and then it will be fired at 1000C. After that I will apply color and it will be fired again, now at 1300C, I will evaluate the results and maybe it will be fired again, or maybe not! All this will take some 4 more weeks… Curious for the outcome? Keep tuned!
If you love following my work, join my Facebook group where I share daily updates of the progress of my work. Sometimes I even broadcast live while I sculpt!
https://www.facebook.com/groups/DogSculpturesbyAppleRain/
Until next time!
Barbara
www.applerainatrt.com
