The week didn’t go exactly as planned. A deadline was temporarily moved up causing me to panic. The date was moved back after a couple days but I had already become determined to push through the Cat Light I posted in Instructor to the mould making stage. I am not quite there yet and will be continuing to split time until it is.
Splitting the time worked very well. When one needed to cool down, I could switch over to other while it cooled down outside and so on. There was less down time than when you work on one thing at a time.
Images and discussion of the Cat Light will be posted under Instructor.
It was good to step back from the project a little. It allowed me to look at the work so far in a more objective light. The huge tree is not right for this garniture in its present state. It is visually too heavy for the space I am trying to create. It overpowers the subject. I have a new idea for it that will work better with the overall composition of the garniture.
The biggest, grandest elm I know of in Winnipeg was in King’s Park out by the University of Manitoba. I visited the park often to take in that magnificent tree and photograph it in different weather conditions. Then one day my eyes scanned the horizon as I drove into the park and there a hole where it had been. When I walked to the site, all that was left was a stump that measured seven of my feet in diameter at its widest point. Dutch Elm Disease apparently. The elm at the end of my driveway met the same fate recently.
Idea now is to cut this model down to a stump. Let it become a symbol of the trees we have lost but also open up the space to give focus back to the furry.
I am modelling some more restrained trees being mindful of how big they can grow if you let them. The double paths from last week were too limiting when it came time to consider the composition.
My good intentions of saving on the wax and number of moulds needed seems to be falling by the wayside. I have never worked on anything this big with as many parts as this before. I need to see all the forms evolving side by side to have them relate to each other in the right way. Need another case (30 kg) of wax.
It’s actually a pretty normal part of my process to change my mind, reconsider ideas and do things over again even if it means discarding work I have already done. I do not consider this lost time. I consider it part of the learning process. I often think of it as editing.
