Wallace & Gromit - closing chapter on ceramics

Since my last three posts were fresh material, I'm going to revisit my final ceramics project. At times I look at its flaws and think I would do so much better now, but we will never know. The closest thing I will ever get to ceramics after this point (January 2001) is modeling with polymer clay- something I will probably experiment with again sometime.

Before I get to the pictures, let me make this disclaimer- I was rushed into entering this into the "Youth Fair" that didn't think this was worth an honorable mention. I regret that because I was left with the loose characters and needed it to be one piece, forcing me to seek an alternative from my original design. I wanted to design their living room with tacky wallpaper, side table with cheese and tea, pictures on the wall, a rug on the floor, a lampshade, and all- something like this (not exactly):

The decision I was left with at the tender age of 16 was that I was to either enter the fair with a molded platform resembling a squashed barrel, or to not enter the fair and have a work of art. I chose the former, thinking I would inevitably make another, more superior version. I didn't. This is what I entered:

See the awful barrel thing? Ugh, I don't know what it's even supposed to be. At any rate, this old thing is riddled with errors, and I think ceramic clay is not the best for making cartoony clay characters like these- Wallace's sweater looks droopy, and his head kept tilting back (it was a balancing act trying to pose him with the soft clay) The end result looks like they are looking in two different directions. I assembled them in pieces (that's the key to making the whole thing look like what you want- there has to be a structure. For example, make the shape of the head, add the mouth, ears, nose; dimple the brow, add the eyes, etc.) Here are some pictures of the back:

Wallace's fingers fell off at some point and I had to struggle to get them to stay. All in all, for a project I finished 10 years ago- I was always quite proud of this, as I am with my quilt. There's a couple of other things that I enjoyed the end result of, so stay tuned for more of that. With the backside of W&G, I close the chapter on ceramics in this blog. It's like they're waving goodbye.