A's animal sculptures (updated 12-31-17)

OH GOSH! They are really awesome!!!!!! Are you planning to make copies? Really beautiful works! and it must be difficult to sculpt since they are so tiny...

Beautiful work and excellent choice of species

I love the diorama pic too

And now it's time for a Greater prairie chicken With copies please

So many nice comments, all I can say is thank you to everyone!

NightLioness, my sculptures are the 2 prairie dogs, 2 owls, snake, and ferret. I don't know if that answers your question?

Anne-Joke, birds of prey noted.  

pm64, I think these ones, already painted, will not have copies in the future, but maybe others if I ever get the right set-up, etc.

Christophe, yes! We are of a like mind! The town will have dancing grouse some day. I'm hoping to see them in life, but the sculpting may have to come first. Sculpting and making copies are two separate learning experiences, maybe I need to be thinking more seriously about the latter?

Really well done, I love the choices of species as well as your work!  Your models are beautiful, thank you so much for sharing the photos!  

I have seen every species you've sculpted in the wild and you've done a magnificent job in recreating them for your diorama!  The most exciting for me was the chance to see the endangered black footed ferret's, such an incredible story behind its recovery and reintroduction to the wild!

Really great job. I like them all, but especially the prairie dogs. They are simply perfect. Love the size of them all.

Fantastic diorama, I particularly like the prairie dogs, but have to say the snake is my absolute favourite here. Thanks also for sharing the work in progress shots

Very nice. I love the pronghorn.

Thanks for the comments everyone.

Cattlecollector- I'll show the pronghorn in my repainting thread; it's from New Ray and I think you might be able to find one?

MiniZoo, I also like your sculpts/reptiles, including that monitor lizard in your picture!

Philter4- I'm glad you approve of these depictions. You are lucky to have seen all the animals in person! My range has not quite overlapped with theirs. (When I was little we had prairie dogs & a pronghorn at the zoo. The snake, though, is sculpted from firsthand experience. ) Regarding the ferrets, it is amazing, that someone my age can have the hope of seeing them alive. Hopefully things will improve for prairie species.

Here is a picture of something to come. It will be a common meadow katydid (Orchelimum vulgare). It was started some time ago, but put on hold because I felt that the Sculpey III I had wasn't working for it. After getting Premo! clay, I made the back legs, but it still needs to be finished.

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When it is done, I think a spider will be next.

A.R.Garcia wrote:

Philter4- I'm glad you approve of these depictions. You are lucky to have seen all the animals in person! My range has not quite overlapped with theirs. (When I was little we had prairie dogs & a pronghorn at the zoo. The snake, though, is sculpted from firsthand experience. ) Regarding the ferrets, it is amazing, that someone my age can have the hope of seeing them alive. Hopefully things will improve for prairie species.

A.R. Garcia, (and all STS Members) do you know the real story of the black footed ferret?

The ferret was almost declared extinct, no one had seen one in almost 50 years (despite the fact that Wikipedia says they were declared extinct in 1979 it was never actually declared extinct, only extinct in the wild after the USF&W collected all of the remaining wild ones for a captive breeding program) and was about to go on the extinct list when they found a colony living on some farmland in Wyoming.

The farmers, realizing what they had, told the USF&W what they found! Thinking it would be great and the right thing to do turned out wrong. Had they waited until the ferrets were "extinct" they would have had no status and everything would have gone along in harmony, but because they were still considered endangered this caused the owners all sorts of headaches as they had to restrict usage and grazing to protect the ferrets and keep their animals off of their own land! Now this may sound reasonable to you but remember, for 50 years these ferrets had been living alongside the animals and ranchers with no problems, each of them using the property without harm to the other but now the ranchers lives were disrupted because it was all of a sudden "bad" for them to be there.

In the long run all worked out, the ferrets were eventually collected, the land use returned, there are now over 2-3 thousand individuals with more then 1000 breeding in the wild!

Wonderful sculptural work,  you have a great eye for shape and detail. Thanks for sharing them with us!

Looks great!

Thanks LeeAnn and Tim!

Philter4(sorry if you have a preferred name)- Thanks for the comment, I don't think I knew all of this about the black-footed ferret. Not knowing more, I have to think everyone was trying to do the right thing. It seems a bit strange, though- wouldn't the grazing animals, in some way at least, be serving the functions of native grazers or large animals of the ferrets' habitat? I'm no expert, but when I read about the subject of conservation I'm often struck by what seems like a gap between science and what is put into practice (of course social factors can be hard to appreciate from an "outside" perspective). If the world were more ideal conservation measures would be put into place before the last-minute panics, genetic bottlenecks, etc. Anyway... even thylacines can live happily as animal figurines! Also, I forgot to mention I like your creations. I'd like to try making trees someday.

Nice again:)

A.R.Garcia wrote:

Philter4(sorry if you have a preferred name)- Thanks for the comment, I don't think I knew all of this about the black-footed ferret. Not knowing more, I have to think everyone was trying to do the right thing. It seems a bit strange, though- wouldn't the grazing animals, in some way at least, be serving the functions of native grazers or large animals of the ferrets' habitat? I'm no expert, but when I read about the subject of conservation I'm often struck by what seems like a gap between science and what is put into practice (of course social factors can be hard to appreciate from an "outside" perspective). If the world were more ideal conservation measures would be put into place before the last-minute panics, genetic bottlenecks, etc. Anyway... even thylacines can live happily as animal figurines! Also, I forgot to mention I like your creations. I'd like to try making trees someday.

Phil is my name, but philter and philter4 are all fine with me! Science is based on study and if the original theory was founded on a mistaken belief or idea all that follows sometimes takes a lot of time to change. The black footed ferrets habitat used to include bison which cropped the grasses which in turn led to healthy prairie dog populations which are their main food source, in fact the main reason they almost disappeared was the ranchers killed off the prairie dogs believing they were bad for the cattle (in fact they keep the grasses healthy by cropping them like a mower allowing them to grow better roots and faster recovery). It's all interconnected!

Here's a current example of a mistake that is 200 years old that they are just now trying to correct. When early naturalists came to California, before the gold rush in 1849, they describe the area as a sea of wildflowers. Now when they restore habitat they plant mainly grasses, this is because they see in non developed habitat grasses. What people like me believe is that as settlers came they brought grass seeds with them by accident in the wagons and animal feed as well as on purpose to use as feed and because it is such fast growing it out competed the native flowers and took over. Today's environmental biologists just look at what is there and assume that that is what is native they don't look at the whole picture!

Here is why people like me think differently. Looking at early naturalists reports they didn't write about grasses but wildflowers. There are no grazers living here, not one, if there was huge areas of grasslands where are the animals to feed on it? Not one species of specific grass eater, there are deer species, which eat grasses as a last food source but nothing that uses it as a primary food source living, in the Native American camp sites or bone dump sites or fossil records. Most gasses are not drought tolerant yet most every other plant including all of the native wildflowers are! If all of these things are true, anyone looking should come to the conclusion, there were very few grasses that were here, and there are only a very few native grasses that I think they should be planting!

So the simple stories about animals and their past are not always the best for the animals, in the ferrets case the cattle took the place of the bison and the habitat was about what it was historically and they survived, it would have been fine to leave them there until they removed the to the breeding program which was a good thing in the end!

MiniZoo wrote:

Fantastic diorama, I particularly like the prairie dogs, but have to say the snake is my absolute favourite here. Thanks also for sharing the work in progress shots

fabulous work

awesome! very qute !!

Congrats on presenting something quite different here! Keen to see further progress on the katydid.

Wow, It's looking really great!

These are simply amazing!  Incredible work, they're so beautifully crafted.  Can't wait to see more of your sculptures.
Also your pronghorn antelope repaint is gorgeous. Love to get that model, it's so nice.

Thanks for the nice comments.

Phil- Those are good points. We can't always make assumptions about our environment based on what we currently see, and historical observations are valuable (I think they're fascinating, too). In this region the prairie and woodland/savanna type habitats may be understood better (as far as I know), but there are other obstacles to restoration like reliance on fire for maintenance.

Harriet- Thanks. I love your photography and artwork. I think your sculptures, and Anna's, were some of the first I saw online and were surely part of the inspiration for me to try my own.

I'm planning two animals I've wanted to make for a long time. One is a rodent and the other is a bird. Both are well-known North American animals neglected by toy companies. :)

A.R.Garcia wrote:

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Beautiful! I find these animals really special, as it's a very nice snapshot of the wilderness where I live now! Growing up, I was enamored with more exotic species from far away places, but nowadays I really appreciate the wildlife in my own "backyard". Of course, I am still fascinated by all kinds of wildlife, but these sorts are close to my heart.

Nice work!

Images resurrected.

Your work is amazing. If you make any arthropods for sale, I would most certainly buy them!