Sunday went to the dogs!

I had to get this creature construction to the stage where I could get the top on while there were two of us to lift it. As a result I spent a lovely sunny Sunday, not to mention Saturday, adding heads, bottoms, ears and tails and levelling the top ready to take the curved seat. (I had to ignore the beckoning wind and high tide, but I did have a great sense of achievement instead).

I needed a good idea of a dog's bottom, and as I don't have a dog I typed 'dog's bottoms' into 'Google Images'. Usually a brilliant source, but this time what a load of junk came up, some pretty tasteless. If my computer was ever investigated there may be questions! Not that dog's bottoms are a strange concept - they used to be the to family name for those pasta parcels otherwise known as tortellini.

There is still a fair bit of finishing off to do when everything has settled down, and I am dying to lift away the supporting extra central props.
At the moment the eyes are just balls sitting lightly to give me a feel of where they should be, but I will think about how I am going to do them properly tomorrow. I started to coil the noses but then realised that they were much better thrown. The tails are hollow extruded tubes with cut and rolled tapers.
This is Rodger being a living model for the Pru Cooper plate which I gave him for Christmas.

The opening of my friend Sue Dunne's exhibition was at the McGill Duncan Gallery on Friday. She makes beautiful delicate white earthenware pieces - bowls, tiles, and framed botanical calendars, with embossed grasses and flowers. She and Rosie Villiers-Stuart the painter also on show at McGill Duncan, are off to Mull for a week to draw and paint. I was invited, and would have loved to have gone too, but I just seem to have taken on rather too much this summer. With Earth and Fire only two weeks away there is way too much to finish still.