I've been working on my sculpture 'Nyx" Goddess of the night.
I'm drawn to the figures of greek mythology and their enduring stories. Nyx is a powerful female figure with a black cloak that she spreads across the earth at dusk.
I started out by finding a pose that would work for the subject. I mimicked the action of swirling a large cloak, my memories of long ago ballet instruction helping me to find the foot and hand positions, weight distribution and momentum of the imaginary cloak. I made some rough sketches and then searched for reference and inspiration with google images.
This is an amazing time to be an artist. When I first worked in graphics and commercial art, computers weren't even on the horizon. Everything was done by hand and many hours were spent creating a 'morgue' of reference photos that were found by combing through national geographics, wildlife magazines and other publications that could be cut up and filed away for future reference. It always seemed that the photo you needed was never quite there and the choices were very limited. And now? A flick of fingers on the keyboard pulls up a wealth of imagery.
For Nyx, I ran through a wide range of inspirational women
The poster girl from Les Misrables
The first female matador Cristina Sánchez de Pablos
The legendary flamenco dancers Carmen Amaya and Sara Baras
Joni Mitchell’s evocative black caped skater
The incomparabel Serena Williams
Stevie Nicks. Wrong spelling but great shawl action.
Nyx started to come together. First the figure.
Then adding the dress, then the hair, then the fun stuff of working with a big cloak.
At this point she has to be diassembled for the paint shed. Her body, dress and hair will be white and her swirling cape will be black. I'm hoping to be entering her into a exhibit. The maximum size is 80" x 36"
All done and time for a walk along Sunny Beach in Qualicum Bay
