More on The Nautilus

Saturday I went in to the FIA to donate a box of glass bits to the kids mosaic glass and took these photos of The Nautilus while I was there. It always feels like I am getting so much done but, when you see how much there is left to do, it looks like I have hardly begun.
I am still SO PISSED that I have the tentacles (not legs or arms, I now know--though tentacles with no suckers, so unlike octopi and squid) coming out of the eye area instead of to the left, the large part of the shell. ARGH! In theory I could bust all the glass and do it correctly. Sniff. I can't think about that.

I do like the green stripes (so far) that are on the shell. I bought every damn shade of green glass in existence, cut each up into little pieces (about 1/8" by 1/2" or so) and then set to it. It's surprisingly satisfying working up a color run all within one color shade. And it looks pretty good, too.

Meanwhile, The Nautilus

My glass class at the FIA continues. This picture is AGES old (from the first day, I think, back in the first week of January). The board (just 3/8" wood attached to a 1" x 1" frame with knots and other uneven bits wood puttied and then covered with primer) is 3' by 4' and so weighed about 4 pounds naked. I wanted to do something rather abstract, but not completely detached from reality. I have always like patterns on shells, in particular nautilus shells, and so thought a massive nautilus would be a cool thing. I happened to have this piece of wood and so used it and, since I wanted to have it be very close up I didn't worry too much about the image ending up assymetrical. Now that I am farther along, I am worried and wonder if I should have done it on a 4' by 4' board. Well, too late now. Here you can see a few of the legs (arms? appendages? not sure) at the bottom and the start of the eye. I had it in my head that nautilus eyes (cephalopods and relatives of squids and octopi, apparently) were simply big, black circles, but they are actually quite complicated and beautiful.

Here is the pupil up close and personal. I intend to add a few more legs/arms/things in a while, but just got sick of doing them and not feeling like I was getting anywhere with this guy. By now I have the eye done, a horn/beak sort of thing done (not sure what that is, but will find out) and have started on the shell. If I remember to bring my camera to class next week, I'll get an updated picture then.
I am very peeved that, because I was so rushed the first week of class (my semester has started that week, too, and I was already desperately behind and disorganized) that I didn't have time to print up a picture of a nautilus to take to class to use as a basis for a quick sketch. Going by memory, I plotted out what I wanted to create. Then, a week later, I did get to looking at photos of the real things* and I was really cheesed to find that I had inverted the things in a really stupid way. I had the legs coming out of the main opening of the shell, and then had the main curve going up the right, over the top at the left, and then down and around. WRONG! Of course, they fact that the legs aren't really blue and green doesn't bother me at all. I immediately remembered Gary Larson (The Far Side) writing in some preface or another, that he was really annoyed with himself for drawing bananas growing down on a banana tree, when in fact they should grow upwards. The fact that he draws cows standing up, talking and wearing horn rimmed glasses, is entirely tolerable. There's a rich philosophical analysis waiting to be created here that will explain the rules of these things.

*My now favorite nautilus is the nautilus macrophalus, otherwise known as the "bellybutton nautilus". They are cute as buttons!

Glassy Eyed

The lack of updates is not because I have not been working on this. Here is a photo of The Thing from about two weeks ago. Filling in the orange spaces is surprisingly quick work. It's also enormously satisfying to give the body some size and heft. I switched back and forth between the speech bubble and The Thing. Since the glass pieces for the letters, bubble filling and outlining are so very, very small, I couldn't work on too much at a time without bumping and shifting all the pieces. So I would do a few letters then, while they were drying, work on a few more orange patches, and back and forth.
Here is where I am as of right now. Since I am officially on winter break (spring break for the rest of the world, 10 degrees F here in Flint makes it winter break here) I hope to really get to this and completely finish The Thing by the end of February.

Here is the speech bubble. This was far more tedious than I expected, and I was expecting it to be pretty grim. One the one hand, working with black and while tiles was very pleasant because it looked so clean and stark. It reminded me of the bathrooms I once saw in the Hot Springs, AR health spas from the 19th century--medicinal yet luxurious. Makes me want to toss around a giant leather medicine ball. One the other, it was very annoying because it's so important to make sure the letters really look like letters, can be easily read, and also accurately protray the three kinds of font so as to capture the tone of the speech.

Resolutions

So how am I doing? I haven't had a single nap in about 15 years. So a big F for that one. No homemade icecream, either. Not one spoonful. I HAVE added more art to my life in that I have decided to take a handbuilding clay class at the FIA, which started this past Monday. The class runs from 1-4 in the afternoon and it felt really weird to sneak out of work to do something utterly self indulgent. Also nice was the fact that there were only 3 of us in the class (though 2 more are alleged to be there from now on) so we had the whole room to ourselves. My only experience with clay is with wheel throwing classes which, though interesting, never seemed like art but did seem like a lot of work to fill the house with very heavy bowls of all sizes. I have never attempted handbuilding and am determined to make nothing practical or useful in any way whatsoever. The first project is using coils, which are surprisingly hard to make properly. (You know what it is if you have ever played with Play Dough. You take a glob and roll it on the table until you get a long, even sausage. The tricky part is that it must be a sausage that is perfectly even, smooth and tubular, not wobbly, lumpy or with flat sides.) Addie must be an excellent teacher because my clay rolls were things of beauty. I decided to make something REALLY BIG (of course) and so am attempting a thing that has a 14" roundish base and will have coiled sides that gently curve outward for about 12", and then cut in and close off and curve around. I have in mind something seed pod shaped but that has a flat bottom. (I am worried about that--should I have started with a bowl shape so it would be more like a gourd than something that looks like the top half of a gourd?) I built it up to about 5 inches on Monday and so am giving it a rest while the walls get stronger so I can add more. It's all rather exciting, in a very calm and heavy sort of way.
As to the other resolutions, well, I think I need to get to it. Fortunately, I will be on winter break starting in about 124 minutes, which is when my law class ends today. And, as we all know, winter break is when not only will I get caught up but I will be 6 months ahead of schedule!