Current Project: Life in a Goldfish Bowl

Now that the Dragon's Eye is done, Gary has started work on another of his favourite themes....fish.

I don't know what his fascination is with dragons and fish, but they are a recurring theme in a lot of his work, and are often combined with celtic knots.  This one doesn't appear to have any knots in it, but it is far from finished.  He is planning on making a clam-shaped sculpture with chipcarving accents and two-sided coloured pencil drawings.

What he has done so far:

This is the base for the clam shell, and you can see that the sides are supported by his all-time favourite hardening agent, Bondo!    For those who aren't familiar with Bondo, it is a car-repair material that is extremely fast to set up, is very hard and can be carved, sanded or painted.  It also smells awful and makes an incredible mess when sanded!

 

The photo below is one of two halves of the clam shell.  Each will have a chipcarved rim, which will be painted. The centre will be gessoed and have a drawing of a gold fish done in coloured pencil.  Again, he will use Prismacolor. 

 This shows the central ring that will separate the two halves of the clam shell. It will be chipcarved and attached to the base, and the two clam shell halves will be attached to either side.

 

                                               

This is a sketch that Gary drew for the small Inlace medallion carvings  that will be accents for the sculpture.

 

When working with Inlace, he mixes it up in a small paper cup and there is always a bit left over. He saves these blanks and uses them to make medallions.  Below you can see one blank, and one finished carving.  It's hard to see the fish design but it is there.

 

This is one of the three medallions that he has completed.  This one was made from a blank that had green in the bottom and white poured on top.  He sanded the white down until it was thin enough to carve a relief of the fish.  It is easier to see the design in this one.