I redid her tail three times before I was happy with the texture.
When I finally get her cast in Bronze I plan on having a blue/green patina applied to her tail and lower body fading into the standard golden bronze for her upper body and then to have her hair in an even darker sea blue.
Now you may have noticed that her tail is even thicker and heavier than before, yet her base is set flat and she's still upright.
I didn't reinforce the wire support. What I did do however was to bend her in several ways to reposition her so that the weight of her tail was ballanced properly over the top so that she wouldn't fall over. It took a bit of playing around to find the correct position, but now she's self supporting.
The Wire I used was aluminum covered copper wire. I bought it at an art store, but one can save money buy prchasing wire elsewhere.
It's the same type of wire that I use for Bonsai training except that the bonsai wire is most often coated a bronish bronze color to make it less noticable on the trunks of the trees it's wrapped around to help train branches to grow in the direction that you want them to.
Now I've also salvaged copper wire from electric wiring used for houses, by stripping off the rubber coating the wires with a sharp knife then heating them with a blow torch until they are red hot, then quenching them in a pot of cold water.
You see the trick is that by heating the wire and cooling it quickly you make is easily bent by hand afterwards. However after you trigger the metal by bending it around, it starts to become stiff again and holds it's new shape quite solidly, so within a day or two your metal wire armature is very strong and supportive. While still bendable, it will required a lot more pressure to achieve the bending of it.
So if you are doing smallish sculptures you can get scrap house wiring or just purchase a small length of it. There are two or three strands of seperate copper wire in the wiring and you can twist them together afterwards to make a thicker and stronger wire to build even larger supports.
One thing I had neglected to do was to sculpt the sea shell that she was reaching for in my concept sketch.
I think I'll sculpt it and keep it for when I have her cast. It will give the piece more meaning and direction.
Notice how her tail sits almost directly above her head and her hair where it attaches to the base.
This is what I was talking about before, finding the ballancing point that keeps her from wanting to topple over.
If you want to see more of this and other of my works, feel free to visit my site at
www.johnhoulefineart.com
try photographing her against a DARK background maybe....... you are a very talented artist.
i am impressed........
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