Dredging in the Primordial Ooz

I finished my drawing only to find out that it was really only a warm up exercise and it's not really needed at our joint crit on Wednesday. So, I spent about a week working on a warm up exercise!

I started a self-portrait today. The first one is based on my high school (1973) graduation portrait, (which I chose, at the time, not to purchase because I thought it was too ugly) and the second one will be based on a current portrait of me. I'm going to try and replicate the same expression on my face now that was in the high school portrait. I don't know, I think I look sad, or shall we say winsome(?) in the high school picture.



I tried to post a picture of me now (which was really quite awful anyway) so I'm not even going to try that. I've got to get my middle aged butt to bed.

Here's the final drawing and a quick shot of my studio space with the beginnings of a self-portrait (from the 1973 high school portrait.)







Maybe I look so angry in that last self-portrait photo because I ended up the day at the foundry trying to fish half of a silicone mold out of the bottom of the wax pot. It fell out of my hand into the black ooz of unmentionable sludge that's used to make our wax molds.


I tried, in vain, to fish it out and in the process unearthed what looked like the remnants of a latex glove, a wooden handled metal scraper used to clean up wax, some unidentifiable globs of stuff, a metal strainer and possibly the bones of Jimmy Hoffa.

Oh, I forgot, Jimmy's holding up one of the pillars on the Pulaski Sky way.