Our six-year-old grandson is staying with us for a few days, and knowing how fond he is of art I’ve prepared several projects we can do together. We had a good drawing session yesterday, and this morning we tried modelling with clay–with mixed results.
My plan was for us to both do hedgehogs, because we both know what they look like and they are a pretty simple shape. (Anyway, he knows how dotty I am about hedgehogs.) “I’ve done one of those”, was his immediate response. We had been talking about the fox which turns up in their garden regularly, so he elected to model a fox. Too late, I realised that this was not such a good idea. A hedgehog is a simple shape, but more to the point it has stubby little legs that don’t present much af a structural problem.* We had not been at it for long when it struck me that it is not possible to model a fox without using an armature.
I was sufficiently quick-witted to realise that the problem could be solved in part by having a seated fox. The remaining issues were tackled by using the plastic “straws” that form the basis of cotton-buds, to provide rigidity. Problem solved, more or less, but given my relative inexperience with modelling perhaps this was a bridge too far.
The result is, in the event, respectable. It certainly looks more like a fox than the cow my wife said it resembled at one point. I’m waiting for her to try it!
It’s contact prints tomorrow, and we paint the clay models on Friday.
*Yes, I know they don’t really, but you can get away with that in a clay model.