australopithecus

Say what?

For those of you who aren’t evolutionary biologists, the australopithecus is basically this:

When I was a kid, I had nightmarish images in my head of this thing just running at me screaming.

So now, thanks to Marty, I get to carve a australopithecus skull ring.  We’re going to use a lot of photo reference here . This really isn’t a shape I’m familiar with, so I might fail gloriously.

 

You can see that the jaw is massive, but deceptively narrow.  The eyes and nose are kind of on the same plane and the head is very very small.  All in all, not a good-looking dude.   Remind you of anyone?

Yeah.  Nothing fucking terrifying about THAT.  Spend too much time in an isolation tank and I’m pretty sure you turn into one of these things.

I started the wax over the weekend and have just now gotten it to where it’s not just a blob.  You can see that I’ve started working on this the way any sculptor tackles a foreign shape: by working on the major planes first.

I began with the side profile and then started cutting in angles based on all of the photo reference I was able to collect.

Not braggin’, but if you look at the pictures of the skull, you’ll see I’ve pretty much nailed the profile and am very close to finishing the front view.

Although we still have a very long way to go, getting to this stage is actually a huge weight off of my shoulders.  See, we’re not just dealing with a sculpture here.  What we’re dealing with is an intersection between the complex diagonals of the skull and the rigid parallel lines of the inner shank.  If they don’t mesh, they don’t mesh and there’s not much you can do about it.  Sure, I’ll have plenty of opportunities to F this up on a spectacular level, but so far we’re doing just fine.

On a sadder note, I’m sold out of Big Voodoos.  Just sold the last 2 today.  I’m going to cast more, but it won’t be until after the Xmas break.

Stay tuned.