The Gargoyle Head
As you all know, gargoyles are creatures that grard homes and grand churches. Our assingment was to create a gargoyle head, and as extra credit we were to either make a body for our head or create another head. Some of my classmates decided that they would take a human approach to it and make a more human like gargoyle, while some others took the animal path and make animal's heads. I went for the more traditional way. Not quite dog-like, but more dragon. If mine were to have a body it would have the traditional wings, tail, arms, and basically everything. I didn't go for an entirely fierce look either. I went with what I thought would look nice as a paperweight. Creative right? I still wanted mine to be different in some way though. After looking at it for awahile I finally thought that maybe I should paint some kind of design on it. It did look a tad bit plain. Since the head was going to be one solid color I thought that I'd put some type of swirl design all over it. All over its ears, face, jaw, but not on its crest, mouth, eyes, (if it had any) or on its little horn on its nose. I thought it might ruin it but. . . hey, thats a part of art, if my idea ruins it, at least I know not to do it again. That's the fun part about art!
1) Gray clay
2) needle tool, metal rib, sewing needle.
3) glaze, or acrylic paints.
1) Gray clay
2) needle tool, metal rib, sewing needle.
3) glaze, or acrylic paints.
Trying to start it...
I figured that I'd start with a big blob of clay and just go for it! That's usually what I do anyways. I don't draw my plans out because they usually end up changing anyways! But, since I'm still in school, my teacher insists that I make preliminaries. Go figure. I just cut open the oval blob of clay that I had and started making a hollow mouth and identations for the teeth. I realize that there are much easier ways of going about this but I felt like doing this my way. I later created a tounge for it and quickly attatched it to the back of its mouth. The next part took me awahile but I managed to make four individual sets of teeth that would fit the mouth perfectly. Before I put them in though, I had to smooth out its 'lips' so that way I wouldn't have to mess with it later. I added other things to either side of its mouth, but I don't know what to call them. Watch jurassic park, that might tell you. After adding all of that stuff I finally started wowrking on the outside and smoothign it all down till I could think of what to do next.
Finally, after working on this for many days I finally manage to finish the gargoyle head. After its right ear broke a total of 3 times, its head 5 times, the crest broke, and after the many times when both the crest and its horn fell off, it was finally put through the kiln. I was pretty proud of myself, but I'm definetly not ready to do something like that again. My problem was that I couldn't work on it fast enough before the clay dried and when I took it out it had a large crack going from the back of its eye to right under its ear. I will not glaze it due to the fact that the cracks will still be visible. I'm just glad it didn't shatter entirely.