Studio Visit, Remaking to Get it Right

Yesterday I cut a section of a palm tree with climbing flowers out of clay. This is a part of this large mural project that is consuming my studio life these days, and if this is new to you scroll down for some photos and links to previous posts to offer some context.

I proceeded with my plan to carve out the date palm sections with texture and to round them with the form of the trunk.

After a few hours I stepped back and looking I was not sure if it works as well as I hoped. It had the possibility once glazed of looking too broken up and not cohesive. In such moments I usually call Rob (Hive account@greyhawk) over to take a look. It's very helpful to be able to check his impressions against mine in case I am not seeing things as they really are.

But even after he said he liked it I still felt “eh” about it. It just doesn't look great and could be difficult to understand what one is looking at so I decided to try a small area of another approach. I wanted to try to maintain the rounded form but without the texture.

I drew up another section and 3 hours later - cutting/carving areas is not what I would call a speedy endeavor! - I had enough to judge from. Here are the 2 styles to compare the look:

and … I like the new approach to the left MUCH better so I went back and recut the first area + some more.

This morning the first thing I did upon arriving at my studio was to look at this cut tree with flowers. I'm so glad to have listened to my instincts and taken the extra time to create a better look. This kind of reworking is part of what makes these hand made mosaic murals so time intensive but I also love this learning and process of figuring out both the art and the craft of making an image, a concept come to life in 3 dimensions!

Some photos from this 6 month project showing the original drawing of the whole piece in process, cutting from wet clay, glazing and putting sections together:
drawing sf.jpeg