Eva Funderburgh

So, far too early tomorrow morning, I will head off to Seabeck, WA for our woodfiring.  I’ll have my iphone, so it will be my goal to post a series of small updates during the firing.  I will apologize in advance for the spelling, since the wordpress iphone app lacks any form of spell check.

Here’s a shot of some of my preparations.  I have three giant bins this size, along with a milk crate of tiny pieces.  I’ve taken to using pillow stuffing to protect some of the delicate wings of my critters.  However, in this shot, I think laziness played more of a role than prudence. They do look like they’re taking a nap in a cloud, though.

I’m quite excited about the firing coming up in late October.  I’ve had some extra time to get pieces together for it, and I feel like it’s paying off.  I think I’m on track to make enough work for my galleries, and have a holiday sale at my studio.  I’ll post dates and stuff like that once I have them, but in the mean time, here’s more of a sneak peak at my drying shelves.

These are the ones that I finished most recently.

Also, in my studio, I have a big white board.  I use it to make random notes to myself, sketch ideas, and just doodle stuff.  I really like the idea I have on there now, but I’ll have to wait and see as to how it comes together.  I’ve been big on antlers recently, but I don’t know how well they’ll survive the firing.  They might just droop.  To avoid that, I’ll have to make them very stocky.  Also, do you you recognize the guy in pink?

When I did my demonstration in Pittsburgh, I decided it would be nice to show both teeth and horns.  I did a quick sketch to see what it would look like. (There’s a bit of a ToDo list in the corner.)

Here’s what the finished demonstration beast looked like.  I ended up only having time to finish one of the beasts, and that was even after having taken several shortcuts.

After I got back home, I decided I really liked idea of the two horned beasts.  The interaction of the two beasts was a really interesting problem.  The horns made it difficult for them to fit together, but I really liked their potential.  I decided to start another pair of them back in Seattle.

At this point, the legs are attached, and I’ve pretty much gotten their shapes down.  I really like them!

They have a cute little tails.  This really shows the lean of the one on the right.

Here, they’re pretty much done at this point.  I just need to finish up the horns and the teeth.  The funny thing is that while I originally sketched them out with lots of teeth, I just didn’t think the teeth worked right this time.  In the end, I gave one tooth to each.

It’s pretty funny to see how these guys developed from that first sketch. I’m very happy with them.  I can’t wait to see how they come out of our October firing.

Before this last firing, I filmed all the steps in sculpting one set of beasts. I’ve been calling it “Trio”, but in some ways it’s also “Cuddle” #2. I liked the beasts I made for “cuddle” and wanted to see a larger arrangement of them. It was surprisingly hard to figure out how to make the three fit together. Anyway, here’s the timelapse video fully tracking them from beginning to end.

I really like arranging my beasts in groups. And this sort of lumpy, toothy form really appeals to me. For a bit, I’ve been meaning to make a pile of 10 or 20 guys. Maybe next firing I’ll have time.

I broke my camera (a Canon SD700) a bit ago and replaced it with a SD850. It’s the exact same camera, but with more megapixels, and, as I discovered, a time lapse video mode. I’m pretty excited about this, and have been making timelapse videos of making sculptures. This is my first one.

This is the process of putting teeth into a big guy that I was making. He’s since turned into CityBeast 2.0, a bigger and more elaborate version of an earlier sculpture. The video covers a hour and forty minutes, as I make the teeth, arrange them, and then secure them. Following is my second video experiment.

That was just just put together with the tools I had on hand (Windows Movie Maker). I’m not completely happy with the captioning, but it’s still pretty fun, all in all. I’ve since had time to follow some creatures from start to finish with the camera. I just need to sort the video and put it together, which I’ll hope to do sometime in the next few weeks. You can be sure that it will be here once it’s done!