Day 271

Shiu Pei is putting on an art show in about a month with a Game of Thrones theme. I was invited to make something for it so I thought I would give it a try. I guess most people paint or draw something but I'm not a very good painter or drawer. Maybe I'm above average but compared to real artists, I didn't want to try to compete. The other option was to make some sort of sculpture. I thought about that for a bit and then an idea popped in my head. About two or three years ago, I saw a picture of someone who sculpted crayons into a bunch of animals. I thought that was cool and wanted to give it a try. I bought crayons but never got around to doing it. So my idea now was to carve an appropriately colored crayon to represent each of the great houses of Westeros. But first I needed to do a test.

I picked out a crayon color I didn't think I would use: pink. Since it was pink, I thought I would try carving a unicorn. Unfortunately, the tip of the crayon wasn't in the right place to make a horn so it ended up being a horse instead. Carving wasn't too bad. I've had to carve wax before in dental school when I had to make teeth out of wax. However, the wax I used in school was a lot harder (as in physically harder) than the crayon so it was easier to work with. Since the crayon is softer, when I try scraping across the surface, my instrument will stutter across. So to make a smooth stroke, I have to push harder and then since I'm pushing harder, I lose my soft touch and ability to do detailed work. But I think I can work with it so I proceeded forward.

The real hard part about carving a crayon is that I have a very limited volume of wax to work with. And once I take wax off, I can't put it back on (actually I might be able to but I don't want to cheat...yet). So I have to plan things out so I made some quick sketches which I usually don't do. There are nine houses and I drew a front and side view for each. First is the Stark's direwolf sigil which will be a white crayon (I would have preferred gray but I don't have that color) The sigil is typically just the wolf's head so that's what I'll be doing. The head's gonna be pretty squashed though. Next is the Lannister lion in yellow crayon. I'm doing the whole body and will try to have it stand on a stack of coins. Next is Tyrell flowers in green. I wanted the base to be coiled vines with thorns but that wouldn't make sense with just a single flower on top so I'm doing three flowers now. Why not?

Next is a Tully fish in a shade of blue. It'll get pretty narrow at the tail so I'm doing a water splash around it to beef that area up so it'll be less likely to break. Next is the Greyjoy squid in black. It's pretty crayon shaped to begin with so hopefully it won't be so bad. Then it's a hawk and moon for House Arryn in blue. I would have preferred white but that had to go to Stark. It's gonna be a hawk in flight up against a crescent moon. I'm not sure if I have enough room for that though.

Next is Martell sun and spear in orange which has two issues right off the bat. The sun is going to be as wide as the crayon is wide so it's going to look tiny. Then the spear is narrow which means the crayon might break. I'm going to try to get around that by wrapping a snake around the spear but the sun is still going to be a problem. Next is the Baratheon stag in peach. Their colors are black and yellow which were already taken so I settled with peach. It's going to be a stag head with a crown on the bottom. The antlers are going to be a challenge. Last is the dragon in red for Targaryen which has three heads, wings, legs and a tail. Sounds pretty tough. I didn't even try to make a decent sketch for it. I'll worry about it later.