I start with a newspaper form- squished and folded into the shape of a fish. I use masking tape or blue painters tape to hold it all together.
I then roll out a slab of clay- probably around 5/8 “ thick. Cut a big edge around the fish form that you’ve made so as to have plenty of clay to cover the form.
simply wrap the clay around the form – smoothing and pinching til all the form is covered. It should be starting to look like a fish!
now is the fun part- allow yourself to go a bit crazy- these fish are not anatomically correct so don’t worry about where fins should be or what they should look like. Add eyes, fins, a mouth, texture- anything you want!
be sure to think ahead about how you plan to display the fish. I leave a fairly big hiking the under mid section., as I mount mine on a piece of metal about the size of rybar. In fact, I sculpt with The piece placed on a rebar stand.
For Sculpture Fest in Marble Falls, I displayed my latest figurative sculpture, Lake Girl – which you can view in this previous post. In addition to Lake Girl, I created handbuilt Raku’d Fish. Each fish was unique but all sported big red lips and were mounted on a display. Many of the fish had additional of metal pieces sourced from old pieces of iron scraps.
