Sphinx

I know I haven’t posted much lately. I’ve been quite busy, and not much in the mood for writing. But I thought I’d share this picture of the sculpture I made this week. Many years ago, Dad told me that I was never to spend any money on gifts for him, which translates as: for every birthday, Christmas, and Father’s Day, I sculpt something. (Needless to day, Dad has quite a collection of my figurines.) This year I was stumped. What to make? Yet another dragon? He’s got dozens of those. I’ve already done unicorns, griffins, cats, squirrels, mallards, tropical fish, and many others--I was running out of ideas. Then I realized, I’ve never made a sphinx before. (Or at least not a permanent one. I did once make an awful sphinx out of blue Play-Doh, but I didn’t save it, so it doesn’t really count as anything more than a three-dimensional doodle.)


The penny is there for scale. I’m not really happy with the sphinx’s face, but it’s not bad given that I normally only do animals and I’m generally terrible with humanoid faces. This is a hybrid sphinx, with elements of both the Egyptian style (pose, hairstyle, and ornamentation) and the Greek style (wings and breasts--yes, it’s a female, and no, you can’t tell from this photo). The cartoonishness is just my own style overriding the others. I probably should have made the face a more humanish flesh tone, since the color makes it look like a Simpsons character. But I imagined that a sphinx should be furry all over, so the face, though human shaped, would be the same color. Perhaps that’s a mistake, but it’s too late to fix now.

Don’t worry about me posting this picture before Christmas. Dad doesn’t have a computer and won’t see the blog, so it will still be a surprise for him.