Little Monsters
About 4 years ago, I made a sad eyed little dragon chewing on its tail. I intended to go on and make a series monsters with Margaret Keane big sad eyes. I had some problems with my construction methods and set the project aside after a wing kept falling off and the some of the colors faded in the kiln.
Recently I decided it was time to stop decorating plates with fossil shapes. I picked up my sad eyed dragon and decided that there was still something in the idea that appealed to me. I like the contrast between monster and cute. These young monsters would have the cuteness of children, puppies, and kittens. It's like a tiger cub. It is all fluff and fun, but you wouldn't want to meet it a few years later.
When I started, I thought that I would have to make a lot of different forms, dinosaurs, chinese dragons, english dragons, gargoyles, etc. I thought the different forms would make them different and hold my interest. I quickly found that I could explore the dinosaur through a large number of poses. I will probably continue to experiment with other forms and see what poses they lead me to.
These little monsters are built with the aid of molds. I made a separate mold for each body part so that I can create a new pose for each monster. I really like this method for two reasons. First, since it reduces my work time to about a day per piece, I have more time to experiment with new poses. Second, the molded parts quickly firm up to become a sort of armature that establishes the pose and allows me to move on to finishing details.
I have also enjoyed working with low fire clay. After the first firing, the monsters get three coats of colored underglazes and two coats of clear glaze and then the final firing. Since these are low fire, it opens up the possibility of brighter colors and more defined regions of color.