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Mamas Iguanabanas is finished! I ran into my second snafu during the completion of the final details. (My first snafu was with the tail design, which at this point seems so long ago.) Anyway, the idea was to have a glitzy copper engraving of the Mayan baktun between the two peyote cups. Well even with the thinnest copper sheeting I could find I just couldn’t get the engraving deep enough. I just didn’t think it was going to read as the glitzy Mayan or Aztec adornment I had intended. So, I halted that idea early…didn’t even finish the first glyph in the baktun.

Back to the drawing board. Don’t know if I’ve ever revealed this, but I throw NOTHING away. Good thing, because this dental molding (left over from a DIY room makeover in my last home in the states before moving to Mexico) was the perfect size for each glyph and would give me the dimension I was looking for.

Painted up with glyphs in gold leaf and some beads (again salvaged from broken belts and/or jewelry) this is more the glitzy center piece I had in mind.

And finally a small bit of authenticity. This is a beaded bracelet done by a Huicol artisan. The perfect ending to a very long tail.

It took about a week and a half to finish the yarn art. Certainly not as long as the iguana, but still longer than I thought it would take. Now 2 days past the week 14 mark I am beginning the baktun emblem in the center of the cups. The end is oh so near.

The iguana was finished at the beginning of this week – eyes and symbols down the spine.

Now I’m working on the bra portion of the harness. This portion of the piece pays homage to the Huichol, descendants of the Aztec. The technique is called ‘yarn painting’ (you may remember a similar craft project when you were a kid). The difference between the craft project you may be familiar with and the Huichol art is the weight of the yarn used. The Huichol typically use a very fine yarn, and in my attempt to pay proper homage to the art form, I too am using fine weight yarn garnered from recycled sweaters.

This is the beginnings of my novice attempt at yarn painting. The center of each gourd will feature a peyote flower – one of the most symbolic images used in the Huichol arts. If you’d like to see the immensely skilled work of the Huichol, I suggest you visit one of our local galleries, Galeria Atotonilco. To give you an idea of time involved, outlining the six-petaled flower with 3-strands of the dark green yarn and filling in two of the petals with the same color took 5 hours. I have a whole new appreciation for the Huichol artisans. I’m hoping to have the whole piece completed by the end of this coming week. Fingers crossed;)

At the beginning of week 12 I was a little tired of scales – imagine that! So I gave myself a break to take a photo I missed taking ages ago and start prepping for the yarn painted gourd cups.

This is the photo I missed taking before. While the iguana innards were sculpted out of various thicknesses of wire mesh; the body, like all my work, was constructed from recycled fabrics. The first layer (the epidermis) was made of remnants from a previous project, but the final layer (the dermis) was made entirely from this once ‘lovely’ large garment. The tag says 100% polyester, but this poly is ultra-suede – my all time favorite working fabric for sculpting. Well, this is what’s left of it….the sleeves were long and completely used up. Absolutely nothing left of them from which to take a photo.

And here are the recycled sweaters and the unraveled yarn from those sweaters which will be used for the ‘yarn painting’ on the gourds.

So now, back to scales. I’m so sick of scales, but at least only the tail was left to finish and didn’t take nearly as long as the head and neck.

FINALLY, FINALLY…COLOR! Have I ever mentioned how much I love my airbrush. It was by far the best gift I ever gave myself, although I was a little intimidated by it at first. It took me about a year after I got it to actually use it. Once I did use it though, I was asking myself why it took me so long to get it out of the box. I’m not a professional airbrush artist. So I still stick to regular brushes and artist acrylic paints for the smaller details. But for the larger areas to lay down overall color, shadows and highlights – well, nothing beats the airbrush.

Despite my break at the beginning of the week, the iguana was fully painted except for his eyes and the symbols down his back and tail by the end of the week.

Now that the long haul of necessary, but not always fun, construction is over, each new day is brighter and more fulfilling than the last.
Week 13 – bring it on!

The last post of 2011. The end of this week marks the end of week 11 of construction, and I am still doing scales. Initially I anticipated that I would be in construction for 3 months, but holiday commitments have extended my timeline a bit. So now I’m anticipating completion within a 14 week period.

As I prepare to enter week 12 the only scales left to complete are on the tail. The steps that follow (painting, yarn art, copper plate impressions, etc) I hope will not take as long nor will be as monotonous as sculpting scales….but what is a lizard without scales?

scales on a front foot

scales on the back

scales on a back leg and foot

Hope you are enjoying the holiday season. As you can see I’m stuck in the world of scales…and will be for a while.

This will be the last photo I post of the entire iguana. From here on out, every photo posted will be only close-up details. The only way to see progress of the entire piece is to be on my “friends email blasts” or check back after the show in October 2012. I will still be posting about the making and progression of this piece, but it’s against show rules to show the finished piece prior to the show.

Now on to the details…

gourds for bra portion joined with rebar wire

claws attached

scales started…this is going to take awhile. Although I may still be on scales by next week, check back . Hopefully I will be further along *sigh*

Actually I have finished more than of which I have photos. I finished today the dermis covering of the front hind leg and foot, but it was late when I finished and the lighting was not good enough for a photo. So that photo will wait until next week’s stream.

Completion of dermis layer on the head and creation of the waddle. Once I get to the scales you won’t see the stitching used to mold and accent the folds of skin.

Dermis layer of front foot. The ends of each toe have been kept loose so those flaps will cover the ridge of where the claws begin.

Dermis layer of front left leg and front right foot complete. Also notice the iguana’s weight is currently on its chest. However, I want the front weight to be on the right leg. Not only will it boost the iguana up a bit in the front, which will pitch the tail side down, I also want the right foot to mold around the model’s shoulder. Notice the subtle difference in the next photo.

The dermis covering of the front half is done. Notice how the front of the iguana now sits a little higher? That’s because the front right leg has now been made immobile – sewn securely to the body frame. Now the right front foot can be bent to clutch the model’s right shoulder and better distribute the animal’s weight. I hope to attach the claws and eyes next week and start on the scales. Until then….

As I expected, the dermis will be a little slower going than the other layers, but there were also some minor “surgeries” necessary to achieve the look I want and model comfort – it’s best if the model is comfortable:) So this week’s work included: painting the claws; placing suede pads on the bottom of the feet that will touch the model’s skin (this not only adds comfort, but insures none of the wire frame pokes through to the model’s skin); creating-cutting-pinning-sewing the dermis of the torso and tail; opening the tail to add a circle of plastic boning behind the second joint (The second joint of the tail was flattening due to the weight of the dermis layer. The stiff boning helps keep the tail round close to the base.); and finally the nip-n-tuck to create the semi-flat waddle under the iguana’s neck. Covering the rest of the head should go pretty quickly and then on to the feet, which is the point when the claws will also be attached. The initial covering of the feet proved to be very time intensive. I hope the second layer goes a little faster. We’ll see. Until next week…..

Painted claws with gloss clear coat

suede pads sewn on the bottom of feet that will touch the model

torso and tail covered in dermis layer

waddle of dermis layer

As you’ll recall last week’s post ended with a not so wonderful tale. The first attempt to the iguana’s glorious ending was not so glorious. As a matter of fact it was puny, lifeless and all-in-all without spunk. This week the tail end problem has been fixed and replaced with a much more robust ending. The new tail has an internal “vertebra” structure of recycled plastic containers with just enough spacing to allow for tail-whipping movements. Also completed sculpting the eyes and claws – my first experience with polymer clay. Really quite a fun medium. The only thing I hadn’t anticipated was the amount of time for curing properly – it took days. So painting them will be a part of next weeks work.

recycled plastic container vertebra

the long end of the tail

whimpy tail (left); robust tail (right)

A full iguana in epidermis & musculature

“I don’t care if it’s a boy or girl
just as long as it’s got 2 eyes, 10 fingers and 10 toes.”