Poor Toby. All his life he had to compete against his cousin. His cousin is bigger, his cousin is fiercer, his cousin has the book deal and he got to play in a movie with Gregory Peck!
Toby is not amused. His mood does not improve when a boat comes by and they fire off harpoons. Toby has had it and makes it clear. Lashing out with his fail tin once and there goes the boat ...
This is my second piece for the Polymer Clay Smooshers challenge "Oceans". At first I thought about a kraken picking up a ship in his tentacles, but I was running out of time, so I settled for Toby. He has been frustrated enough, this should be his hour of fame, if not fortune ;-)
Toby is 0.4 inch high, his little waterworld is 2.75 inch in diameter. The ocean is made from a silver shimmering blue, the water is made from clear resin. Yes, so basically I know what to do with resin now.
Since I was a child, I loved Andersen's fairy tale about the little mermaid. Of course I always had to swallow my tears when I came to the end. Many of his tales are so bittersweet and I myself am really drawn to happy endings, if not in life, then at least in stories.
I make an exception for Andersen, though.
When the poll result for the monthly Polymer Clay Smooshers' challenge was "Oceans", I thought of fish first, but then I saw one of Dori's layered pieces and the mermaid came to my mind. I started out with a disk of blue clay and wanted to make one of my bas-relief pieces, but suddenly I had the idea of a rock coming out of the sea.
The rock was pretty lonely for a few days because when I started I had not thought about how I wanted to make the mermaid. Then I just started with her upper body and head, then continued with the fish tail, her arms and last her hair. I love long hair (ask my hairdresser, our motto is "as much as necessary, as little as possible" for my own hair) and I love how it flies in the breeze or looks floating in water. So she got a pretty wild hairstyle.
In the end I wondered if I should varnish her, but I liked her much better like this. So now she is sitting on her rock, waiting for her prince or maybe just a friend to have a chat with.
Oh, I forgot to say that the whole sculpture is 1.2 inch high - or low ;-)
