(photo credit: David Gilford/complexify @ Flickr - thanks for the CC license)

This beautiful sculpture of the notorious albino sperm whale, Mocha Dick is by the artist Tristin Lowe, made in collaboration with the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia. It’s huge! – 52 feet long and 10 feet tall – and made of industrial wool pieced over an inflatable vinyl understructure. The gallery at the Virginia Musuem of Fine Arts shows some other great images including a close-up the barnacles.

This face is essentially calico over foam.

The following one is foam at the moment, but I am going to try a cracked surface on it.

Here are a few photos of how my tissue paper shell came out of the mould.

I’m really happy – Yiying Lu sent me one of her cool Fail Whale cards! Here it is with my little sculpture. Thanks so much Yiying :)

Chris Sickels at Red Nose Studio makes real figures and scenarios that are then photographed to produce cool 3D illustrations for papers, magazines and books.  The 3D illustration above is his cover for Cory Doctorow’s  story The Things That Make Me Weak and Strange Get Engineered Away. Before seeing this I had thought of 3D illustration as more a virtual rendering process.  In this real form it is closely, and interestingly, allied to my work making puppets and props. I recently had a picture of my 3D fail whale published as an illustration in the Japanese computer magazine WEB+DB PRESS. I suppose that is fairly close – the only difference is in your intention when you start making an object?

(via @LolaLulu)

I’ve promised myself to try to focus more on projects of my own, in between contract work for other people. I find it so easy to fritter time away when I’m not meeting other’s deadlines. So I’ve started back working on a big shell project I first started over 3 years ago. Back then I got as far as sculpting the shell out of clay, and making a ridiculously big and heavy plaster mold of it.  It’s about a metre long. Luckily I did have the sense then to make a cradle on casters for it, so I don’t break my back trying to maneuver is around.

A few days ago I sealed the plaster with layers of shellac, which turned it this beautiful golden mustard colour.

Now I am paper mache-ing it inside with tissue paper. I want it to look flimsy and papery and almost transparent, but I don’t know how few layers I can get away with, and still have it come out of the mold intact. The idea of using very fine fibreglass is tempting, but I am sworn off working with fibreglass.

There are a few more photos at Flickr, where I’m making a photoset.