After several months, the first full size Protoa is complete. I’ve learned a good deal about this process, and I expect to proceed with another one soon. I’ll focus on the shapes I like best since completing all nine of the series is a bigger project than I’d meant it to be. Before starting the next one, though, I plan to draw and paint still lives as hand-skill practice. I’ve always been more an ideas person than an execution person, but if I want to be excellent, I will have to temper my idea churn with heavy attention to craft.
Speaking of craft, I continued working on my silver spiral earrings, but haven’t gotten anywhere. My experiments with tapering silver wire have been unsuccessful so far. I think I may have solved a problem though: I suspect I wasn’t annealing thoroughly with the first try at forging. Or perhaps I work hardened the pieces too far before re-annealing. In any case, I splintered the sliver, had to cut it off, and then smelted it down. It’s been frustrating. All hand work is slower than I expect and also slower than I want it to be. I’m going to try forging again, the slow way, and see if I get where I want to go.