A New Venture

I am excited to begin working in a series (or, more likely, several) of little animal sculptures centered around an imaginary place, in this case, Milkweed Manor.  Each sculpture will be an illustration of part of a story of what happens with the characters there.  The first piece in the Milkweed Manor series is this pair of squirrel sisters, Lily and Effie.  My London-born grandmother's name was Lilian and one of her older sister's names was Effie.  It means a lot to me to name these characters after them.

I want these to be among my higher end sculptures, so I've taken a lot of time with detail which is time-consuming during the sculpting but even more so in the glazing.

I would like to find a better gray glaze for the squirrel glaze, but this will do for now.  The true grays that I see seem flat and lifeless, so I chose this one that settles into the texture and breaks both blue gray and a reddish color.  Some squirrels, after all, do have that reddish coloring, especially the English ones.

I will accompany each of the sculptures with a little book with their hand-written story from the woods behind Milkweed Manor.  The image above - a watercolor I painted - will be the front cover.  On each one, I will add by hand touches of beautiful micro glitter on the milkweed seeds.

This is the back cover - again, one of my watercolor paintings.  This is Colwyn the Gray, the Chronicler for Milkweed Manor.  He, of course, will have his own sculpture and stories.