Walrus Dimensional Sign

The past day or two I've gotten to start on a new little project. This time its a sign, and its Captain Pearlman the Walrus from my Bear and Ivory Picture book! I'll include the design.

I knew that this would be something i would work on in layers. I first started by drawing an outline, the entire shilloute of the sign onto a nice firm wood board. I then jig sawwed this piece out. And because the walrus will be coming out of the sign, as a relief sculpture, I needed to make a bit of an armature. I got to cutting some pieces of wood and stacked them up onto one another. This i learned from Dan Sawatzky and what he does with his precision board. I leanred that you can sculpt characters out of signs. Usually for any dimensional character, you need an armature to support it. What i've seen from much of Dan's work, especially on the signs, is that you can just use the sign itself, build a few extra layers that mimic the shilloute of your character and go from there.

Yesterday, I used Welding Bond Glue to glue the pieces all together to the main base. We'll see how it holds up.

There is one interesting thing i will also be tackling and that is the tusks of the walrus. They will be fully dimensional. I will screw some wire into a piece of wood that comes out of the board. More on that later.

Oh boy! I keep thinking to myself. This whole sign work and cutting and putting it together is a whole lotta fun! I enjoy especially being able to start from a design of something, and then actually learning and fabricating that into a dimensional piece.

Stayed tuned..