Hmm... *swing and a miss*

[merimask]

Okay, maybe I'm being harsh with myself but I'm just not happy with my newest creation.   In the interest of being honest, I have proof here that I don't always get it right.   Anatomy of a swing and a miss:

First I did this sketch, and it came easy and I really liked it.  

I colored it in nice and bright and thought "jewel tones for a change!", just to get away from the black and do something different.  Also, I thought of it as a warm up exercise for the Wave Dragon I'm doing next (I'm shaping the big guy right now, tonight!) which is very very blue-green and vividly jewel-tone-ish.

But!  I violated my own cardinal rule, which is "If I can draw it I can build it".  Hence the detailed sketches in full color; I know if I like the drawing I'll like the sculpture.  Like I said though, I got to work and started changing things right away.  Picked a teal suede for the background (mistake), increased the number of fish (mistake), and totally got away from the reed motif.  I was intrigued by the idea that this was a little round pond and it was being viewed from above...so wouldn't it be cool to have branches in the foreground like they were hanging over the pool?  That was my thought anyway.

But it wasn't in the sketch and so I was winging it, and before I knew it I got carried away with the details of making maple tree branches (which was admittedly a hoot) and I lost the design overall.  It just looks like...a bunch of stuff with no coherence and no flow.  *sigh*

See what I mean?  I lost the point.  Even doing different fish patterns was a bad idea, because there was something about the symmetry of three fish with identical markings that really worked in the original sketch.  But like I said I got carried away with the minutiae and lost sight of the overall design.  Just because I can do really neat stuff with leather doesn't mean I always should...sometimes less is better.

So, not happy.  I've been doing pennance and trying to rectify the situation with a second smaller simpler koi plaque.  It's better but still not quite right.  Did a second sketch too, just to be safe and be sure of the new design, but it's better than the plaque too in some unfathomable way.  

*sigh*  Maybe I need to step back from it all and just get back to work on my dragons, but NOW I'm a little deflated and unsure of my plaques.  *pout*   I hate being unsure of myself.  It infects everything I do and nothing feels right.  Like, right now I hate my hair...why?  It's not especially bad hair today, but I hate it.  

On a totally different note (*changing subject* ) I'm trying an experiment and listing some masks on E-bay.  Good time of year for it, and I thought it'd be good exposure to a wider market so...*shrug*.  I put up a black wolf, a gray wolf, Anubis, and Bast.   Of course in my present mood I'm a bit trepidatious because I know people are often looking for bargains on E-bay and I'm NOT going to play that game...my prices are my prices (though just 'tween us chickens I am setting my reserve below my usual asking price on my personal website...so I suppose someone may see that as a bit of a bargain).   They've been up for a day and I have a number of bids on them already, so that's cool I guess.  At least people are looking at them.  Guess we'll see how it goes.

Keep your fingers crossed.  I know it's a little thing really, but to me it's just another thing that could potentially go wrong and I need a little success sometime soon.  It'd be nice.  :-)

Comments

[merimask.livejournal.com]

You're absolutely right about everything. That teal is awful with the reds and oranges...just awful. And the fish do look flat. They look like what they are; a bunch of flat leather appliques glued onto a flat surface...flat flat flat. I wanted them to look like fish in a pool, but they just look like random pieces of stuff. *sigh*

It's just too much and too little at the same time. There's no sense of composition. Grr...

I liked the maple leaves too, though. I think I still have something there, and making the croggly twisted branches was fun. I'll have to re-visit that sometime after I wash the taste of this one out of my mouth.

[golden-meliades.livejournal.com]

I realize I'm deranged, but...

Could you make the fish *dimensional* somehow? Place something under them and curve them up so they look like they're swimming *just* under the surface of the water? That would be so awesome :)

Or maybe the water could have more than one dimension. the wave patterns could be raised or something. Of course, I know nothing about leather, so nothing I say has any technical merit. :/

But even just reverting to something more exact to your drawing in colouring and fish pattern/etc would be great.

[golden-meliades.livejournal.com]

Um...perhaps just their top fin could be sticking out? *went to look at drawing again* That probably wouldn't be as hard. (?)

[merimask.livejournal.com]

That's a good idea and I even tried it out on the second plaque, but it still looked fake. I guess fish might be the basic problem. They're a funny shape and not dynamic enough as a sculpture...they just look like torpedoes. At least with dragons I get all kinds of motion and expression.

I'm just putting the fish aside for now. :-/ They frustrate me.