Elephant Sculpture: "The Matriarch" is in the House!!!

Some 80 hours, 14 ounces of wool and many wrinkles  later, photos of the Elephant Matriarch follow:
(Ginny Weiler, Photographer)

 

She measures 8.5 inches tall x 13 inches long (trunk to tail). No armature was used. All wool!!

Imagine a 14 ounce pile of fluffy Suffolk down wool needled tightly into this shape.

The tusks were the hardest part of all!

I loved adding the wrinkles here, trunk, sides, back legs, flanks, ears, etc.

The Quarter is there just for scale.

In the Studio: Elephant

Houston, We have Ears!

Ears and gray really helps!

Don't know when I'll ever embark on such a large sculpture again!

 

The Elephant Just Before Details Are Added

The completed "core" of the elephant. Next comes adding the ears, end of the trunk (with a surprise), color, wrinkles and other details.

This has been one mammoth of a project!! (pun intended of course)

Quite funny looking without the ears and tusks!

Here you can see the opening of the ear around which will be the huge flaps.

A very strangely shaped creature, I must say. I'm excited to see it finished!

The Elephant in the Middle of My Life!

I'm working 8 hours a day trying to finish the elephant for Hampton House Gallery's Small Art/Big Heart show and fundraiser. It's due tomorrow. Eeeeeekkkk! Here are some photos: where I started yesterday and where I start today.

Basic Shape, after the bones

Basic Shape, after the bones

Looking more like an elephant. Right now he is 6.5 inches tall and 9 inches long.

Today I hope to finish the entire sculpture in the core white and only have to add gray and details tomorrow.

 Did I say "only"?

When I started this project, I had no idea how large it would be. It just wanted to be huge. What could I do? Sometimes the pieces have a mind of their own and I just allow them to take shape.
If I finish this in time, it'll be a miracle!

Skinny Elephant or just the bones

This is the largest all wool sculpture I've worked on. This is the "skeleton".

A bit different scale!

Sculpting an Elephant

Elephants' bodies are truly complicated. Much more difficult to understand and recreate than cats, dogs, bears, turtles, etc. I have an "idea" of the elephant body, but once I began really LOOKING at elephant pictures, I noticed how wrong that idea was. The joints are quite different from dogs and other four legged animals we're familiar with. The front legs are much longer and the spine is lower in the back. Last night I recorded a PBS show on animal communication which included a segment on elephants so I could refer to them moving as often as I like. 

Because I am making the Elephant nearly 3 times the size of my usuals and because I'm so unfamiliar with this body, this sculpture is taking much longer than I thought!

It is a fun challenge, though!