Lauren's Art @breezytreez - Tumblr Blog

January 23, 2016

Cave bear is all finished! I had a lot of problems along the way with this piece that I had to work around, but I’m happy with the results. A lot of different resources and planning went into this. I used numerous photos of skeletons and drew the muscles over top to get an idea of how to build this thing from the bones, up. I used anatomical diagrams of grizzly bear musculature to get an idea of the muscles underneath and built those up little by little on top of the frame. It was baked once, and then I layered the fate and fur on top of that, and then baked again. Unfortunately, the front leg broke twice during the process and it didn’t get baked quite long enough after doing the fur, so it’s not quite as strong as I would like. I’ll just have to be careful with it.

I have a few critiques to make about it. Firstly, I don’t know that I quite captured the arched lower back that’s pretty iconic about this species. But perhaps that is obscured by the pose. I would also place the ears a bit further back, make the eyes smaller, and give it a thicker, furrier neck if I would re-do it. But oh well. I learned a lot from this piece and it gets me excited to try more reconstructions of extinct animals.

I have got to get my hands on some epoxy sculpt!

#cave bear #paleoart #sculpture #super sculpty #polymer clay #extinct

Progress on the cave bear. It's hardened and ready to paint!

#cave bear #sculpture #paleoart #super sculpty

Current project (as of January 14, 2016): a Cave Bear reconstruction in oven-bake Super Sculpty clay. I am excited about this one.

#paleoart #cave bear #super sculpty #sculpture

A ceramic Snow Leopard made for my Portfolio class. It was fired in September of 2015, but a few months later, I still haven’t settled on a paint job. I think I like the natural gray it was before it was fired, so perhaps I will just paint it that color. (Looking back now, it was perhaps not very smart of me to leave it unsupported like this while it was still unfired, but it came out with no cracks or breaks. Run-of-the-mill ceramic clay can be surprisingly resilient at times.)

#snow leopard #ceramic #sculpture

This is another piece of mine, called “Ancestral Equine” that is being displayed in The Hive Artspace through the month of January 2016. The piece is part of a silent auction, with proceeds going to benefit a local animal rescue group.

This piece is fired ceramic clay, painted with acrylic paint, and mounted onto a piece of stained pine. It is meant to depict an undomesticated horse, which I based on photographs of Prezwalski Wild Horses.

The texture on this piece was a lot of fun to create. I basically coated my fingers in slip and just dabbed it on. It was an experiment but came out well, and I hope to use this technique on future ceramic pieces.

#ceramic #sculpture #horse

Two of my pieces that are being displayed in The Hive Artspace in downtown York. They will be there through the month of January 2016. The pieces are part of a silent auction being run by The Hive and local high school students, friends of mine. Proceeds are going to benefit a local animal rescue group.

Unfortunately, I did not think to take completed photographs of the two pieces before fitting them into their frames. The top photograph is of “Jungle Beauty” which is acrylic on canvas. The bottom is “Dinosaurian” and is graphite and charcoal on tinted paper.

#art #animals

T-rex Halloween mask. This one was really fun to make. I started it on a whim, wondering if I could make myself a Halloween dinosaur costume from paper mache. It worked surprisingly well, with better results than I had initially thought. Overall, The mask isn’t particularly true to the anatomy of tyrannosaurus -- The teeth are too big and too few, and the eyes are a bit large, but I think it gets the job done, and no one would mistake it for anything but a t-rex.

I created this costume over the course of two months, finishing just a few days before Halloween. I estimate that I spent 30 hours on it. I started off with a cardboard skeleton, which I coated in layer upon layer of paper mache, beefed up with dry, crumpled newspaper. I used shredded toilet paper soaked in wheat paste in a kind of paper mache clay to created a lot of the little details like the nostrils, the eyelids, and the gums. The eyes and teeth are made of oven-bake sculpty clay. I created the teeth by molding clay around screws before baking them, and then twisting them into place in the mouth, with the screws as anchors. The scale details were created with about 2 large packs of hot glue sticks, which I dotted on one-by-one. It’s painted in acrylic paint, and has faux fur attached to the back and the top of the head to keep the mask on.

Currently, the mask is hanging on my bedroom door like some strange taxidermy piece.

#halloween #dinosaurs #mask #paper mache

“Big Dumb Dog” A quick portrait of a family member’s big female Irish Setter. Acrylic on canvas. Painted over the course of a couple of days in late May 2015.

#Dog #acrylic #painting

June 24, 2015

Pakicetus in oil paint. This took me roughly 5 hours of work spread out over 3 days. I find the early whale ancestors to be fascinating animals, but most of the time when I see paleoart depicting them, they are hunting or else being active and doing a more uncommon behavior. I like to see paleoart now and then or animals doing their more common behaviors like resting, grooming, etc. So that’s why I created this.

I’m fairly happy with this. I like the lighting and the way the colors interact with one another.

Mostly I’m not happy about the shadow of the leaves. They should be more solid in color and blending a bit at the edges into the color of the ground. That’s something I’ll have to work on in my next oil painting. I also don’t like the shadow on the belly of the animal. There should be less of a shadow I think, only showing up on the very lowest edge and blending slowly into the non shadowed color.

I wish that I had had better skeletal references for this piece. I could find plenty of skeletons in profile, but none showing the front of the skull of the animal and none in lateral view. I’d really like to go to a museum and get some nice photos of fossils from all angles to use as references. This is also where a database of 3D scanned models would be very useful.

#pakicetus #paleoart #oil painting #painting #art

Closeups on some interesting parts of my sculpture.

#clay #ceramic #art #sculpture

As my final project for my 3D design class, I was tasked to create a ceramic piece centering around the subject of the human figure. Me being me decided I would find a way to incorporate animals into because people are boring.

So I created this: A human climbing atop the roped and struggling bodies of a horse, a bull, and a sheep. The idea behind it is supposed to be a commentary on the way humans treat their domestic animals; forcing them to conform and settle into whatever lives we see fit for them.

Overall, I’m very happy with this piece. It’s definitely the most complex sculpture I’ve ever created. I think I did a good job capturing the anatomy of the figures, especially since I worked from my mind without reference. I’ve discovered that it’s much easier to recall anatomy when forming from clay, rather than drawing. I am especially happy with the pose of the horse. I spent the most time on it and I feel that it really shows its emotion.

There’s definitely aspects of this piece that I could have made better. The biggest thing I think is working on the other animals to try to make them as expressive and dramatic as the horse. I also very much wish I had made the sheep a pig instead. I think it was good practice creating this without aid of references to work from in forming the anatomy, but I do wish I had used some references, especially in the sheep. It needs help. Also, I made the torso of the human too broad. It doesn’t look right with the slim limbs and childish face. Lastly, there’s parts of this piece that broke off during the initial firing that could have been prevented if I had been more careful reattaching them when I would accidentally break them off during building.

I used the coil technique for this piece and fired it with clear glaze over top.

#art #sculpture #clay #ceramic

Wild Life

This year, one of the tasks in my 3D design class was to create a sculptural piece made entirely (but we could use some kind of non-recycled fixative) from recycled “junk” material. The best pieces would be entered into an art show hosted by the York Solid Waste Authority. They would be judged and the top three would earn cash for the artists and their schools.

I wanted to make something that looks very much like it was made from junk and really rely upon that charm, while doing something a bit risky- standing on its own without much support. So I chose to create a running horse. After about two weeks of digging through boxes of junk in my art teacher’s store room, I had created this.

In April, it was chosen along with two other pieces from other students in my class to be entered into the art show. I ended up winning 2nd place and receiving a $200 gift card for art supplies for myself, and one for my school’s art department as well.

I’m very happy to have achieved so much with this piece, but the hot glue that is keeping it together doesn’t hold up so well. There were numerous times where I had to go back and reattach something or add a new piece to it.

#art #sculpture #recycled #horse #earth day

Made this sometime in mid-May from tin foil, duck tape, and super sculpty on top. I’m very satisfied with how in turned out. It’s and Eastern Box Turtle with different stages of the May Apple’s fruit resting atop the shell. The purpose of it is to illustrate the ecological connection between the two species: Box Turtles relish the fruit of the May Apple. When the fruit is consumed, the seeds pass unharmed through the turtle’s digestive system and are plopped down in a new location where they can germinate. It would seem that the May Apple evolved with the turtle in mind as its main seed dispersal, as the fruit grow at a height perfect for the turtle to reach. In fact, in many areas the Eastern Box Turtle is the only dispersal agent of the May Apple’s seeds. These kinds of ecological connections fascinate me, so I may be doing more pieces like this in the future.

The main thing that I would change about this piece are the May Apple leaves on the shell. I don’t like how it looks with the rest of the piece. Perhaps I could have made some May Apple plants trailing behind the turtle instead.

#art #sculpture #ecology #turtle #nature #super sculpty clay