Sunday, June 7, 2009

Designing cats in Lampworking...

This week in the studio, its raining cats.. signed up for an exchange on wet canvas... this is always a great way to try something new.. and who knows start off on a new vein of glass art.
I tried several different kinds of cats.. to the left here is the sculptural affect of having the cat shape.. I am still wanting to perfect that.. I want a slick smooth line. I think if I try to do these again.. I will stick to just one color and just work on the smooth lines of what a cat looks like.. the shape not so much the detail of the face and eyes.. so not very successful but still have the "vision" in my head i'm working towards..which is the essence of cat..





I call these maggie kitties.. lol.. She has perfected this type of sculptural cats.. and there are other lampwork artist who do amazing work.. Just thought I'd give it a try... they are fun and lets face it you can do so much design wise with these kitties... check out Yoda Kitties by Maggie...

The face only.. was fun to do! But I need to do more to add more detail.. I think I will post a link to a couple of lampwork artist who have this down pat! Like Paula at Island top Glass, check out some of her kitty's... so cute..she does great puppies too! check them all out..



Ok this next bunch.. I had a vision in my head.. of what I wanted.. these two where the first
attempts... not what I was thinking.. it was a start..














Each of these had a slightly different design to it... which involved how to add the head, how to create the feet, make that curved look underneat between the feet...
out of all 4 My favorite was the bottom one with the orange spots.. the face... the body tail placement ..














Alas... cute as he maybe he had issues.. see picture below.. when hung on a mandrel... he flips upside down... lol.. so putting such a big head on top, messes up the glass distribution. Its ok maybe I can use that as a design element... make the feet meet and the cat can be hanging on the chain...
The dark brown spots one well that one is a little crooked... the orange kitty upside down.. the blue... stays perfect.. so design wise... the blue one wins out..

The winner is ... blue kitty... Soooo..
next torch visit.. I will add the face /head to the body have
the hole coming out of the side of the head... and yup

the other hole.. :-00 the other end.. but I want to shape the bottom more to have more of a cresent shape... also separating the feet... like the orange kitty... I like that scuptural element.. Plenty of body space for design... colors and themes.. so this is a bit of the thinking process.. you go through in designing.. I'm sure the next litter will be more to my likeing. Well have a great day... Diane :-)

2 comments:

  1. Diane this a great post! It's fun to see your cats progress - too bad about the orange one - he was my favourite too. I'm sure people who aren't beadmakers would never think of the work that goes into a design to make it hang right. I wonder if you gave him a bit more weight in his body and feet if that would solve the problem? I really like the shape of him and how you added his little feet - he's a really good looking cat bead!

    It looks like you're having a lot of fun with the exchange, all of the cats are so colourful and fun!

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  2. Like Louise, I love seeing the progression and play (know it's a lot of work also) that goes into your cat designs. You have some great ideas in the works and are perfecting your own style.

    Love seeing the Maggie cats! Yours are as good as mine.

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