SNAP! New Kickstarter (miniature snapping turtles).

Snapping turtles quibble over small change

My new year's resolution is on schedule (to launch 4 Kickstarters in 2015) with these little beasties!

They are New York's official state reptile, can live for a hundred years, and snap your fingers right off!

These are safe enough though, even in your pockets.

The project runs until Tuesday March 24, so if you like what you see, CLICK HERE to visit the project, and then snap one up!



Click these links to visit my website...SteveWorthingtonArt.com - Sculpture that loves you back
or my Etsy store, CritterVille

New Kickstarter for a bronze cougar sculpture

Howdy, and a happy new year!

I've decided to make my new year's resolution (or one of them anyway) to do 4 Kickstarter projects this year.
The first one I just launched, so I'm nicely on target!
It's a cougar prowling along some rocks.

If you'd like to check it out, click HERE.

I've also become fairly obsessed with playing a certain sport I used to play (although this time I'm doing it left handed, since I had to give it up years ago when it created a bulge in my right wrist which got in the way of my ability to work by pressing on nerves etc).

See if you can guess what that sport is...

Cougar bronze 'on the rocks' by Steve Worthington

I can hold my own at the rec center, but I'm shark bait when I go to the local club!

Click these links to visit my website...SteveWorthingtonArt.com - Sculpture that loves you back
or my Etsy store, CritterVille

Silver Ghosts 2, and Friends! New sterling silver pendants up for pre-order on Kickstarter

It's my latest collection of wearable sculpture in the form of solid silver pendants, currently up for pre-order on Kickstarter at an early bird price ($65 each with free shipping within the continental United States).

Click HERE to visit the project.

Silver Ghosts 2, and Friends

They are loads of fun to make, I can't wait to see them in silver!
Here's pics of a couple of my earlier collection (Silver Ghosts 1), just so you can see how they ended up looking!

First Silver Ghosts collection (currently available at my Etsy store)

Click these links to visit my website...SteveWorthingtonArt.com - Sculpture that loves you back
or my Etsy store, CritterVille

World domination is fast approaching...

These mice will stop at  nothing to achieve their nefarious goal:
They are hell bent on world domination and must populate every continent on earth!

I just sent two Nosey mice off to Brazil and Australia, and it got me wondering, 'how far and wide have they spread so far?'
I have personally sent them to every continent except Africa, which doesn't of course mean they don't also live there, since they have other ways of getting around besides relying on me.

Here's a post of Sir Ranulph Sprightly Mouse arriving in Antarctica.

Here's Ralph Sprightly in Australia.

Perhaps it's time one of them went on an African Safari, or a trip up the Nile or something?

Nevertheless, they are progressing quite nicely on their mission to take over the world...

The box turtles are also more than holding their own, turning in a stellar performance over on Kickstarter...
Here is a mini chart showing their progress...THANKS BACKERS, YOU ARE AWESOME!!!




Click these links to visit my website...SteveWorthingtonArt.com - Sculpture that loves you back
or my Etsy store, CritterVille

New bronze box turtles up for grabs on Kickstarter...

Here's my newest offering up for grabs on Kickstarter- box turtles!

Click HERE to check out my new box turtles. I have had a blast making them and hope you love them too!

Click these links to visit my website...SteveWorthingtonArt.com - Sculpture that loves you back
or my Etsy store, CritterVille

Saddle up! Mysteries of medieval jousting saddles unlocked...

When I was making my beefier jousting toad on a snapping turtle I seached again for jousting saddles from bygone eras.
I found a couple of recent posts by some people who take their re-creations of such things very seriously indeed! They'd be Arne Koets, Joram van Essen, and Wouter Nicolai, among others.

Here's a LINK to their explorations, experiments and findings.
Pretty fascinating stuff.

So I used their expertise to inform the sculpting of my new saddle.
Of course they had to make something to support a heavily armored real person to sit comfortably on and without hurting a real horse.

Here's an image from their post I was very happy to come by.

More on this at thejoustinglife.com (see link above)

I, on the other hand, was making a saddle for an imaginary toad to sit on an imaginary turtle. Although I still wanted both my imaginary chums to be comfy.

Medieval jousting saddle typically used by turtle-riding toads

Medieval war saddle used by toads in jousting tournaments when riding turtles

Even though there's a blanket thing covering much of it, I stuck fairly closely to the old style saddle.
There's fudging and artistic license here and there of course, but I'm glad I found an authentic path to follow!

Here's the saddle in a turnaround video, although you'll probably need to hit the full screen icon and use the pause button if you want to get a good look at the leather tooling, studs, and what have you...!



Kickstarter update: Funding and pre-ordering for the Silver Ghosts pendant collection is being made at a splendid clip (it ends on June 26th)!

Thanks to backers and those who have 'liked', tweeted or in other ways helped spread the word, we're at 6 times the funding goal! I've snapped up a few tools and am tweaking away at the metal masters here and there, and re-doing some others so they'll be as good as I want them to be when finished in solid silver.
Thanks again backers and spreaders-of-the-word!





Click these links to visit my website...SteveWorthingtonArt.com - Sculpture that loves you back
or my Etsy store, CritterVille

These armatures look like a lot of fun

I found a project which ends in a couple of days on Kickstarter for a whole bunch of different armatures.
The joints work great. The only thing it can't do that I've noticed is pull the shoulders back and push them forwards, but besides that they look terrific.

Certainly good enough for me to pledge for a bunch.

If you like them you'll have to be quick though. I only noticed them yesterday and their time is almost over!

It's HERE

The Rolls Royce of shoe horns is rolling along, plus other tree frog and Kickstarter progress...

My epic shoe horns featuring either a snail or a tree frog are progressing nicely through the many stages that bronze casting demands.
The top of the shoe horns featuring the critter in question are being cast separately from the main portion. They are hollow to accommodate a screw head sticking from a wall for hanging after the back side is welded on with 'keyhole' cut into it.
The rest of the shoehorn will be welded to it and worked in metal before a final sandblast and patina to create the seamless whole.

Shoe horn - handle end

I took pics of some castings of my hollow wall mounted and solid paperweight tree frogs.
They mostly still need some metalwork done (small vent off the nose, flattening the bottom), before a final sandblast with glass beads for a silky smooth look and then the final patina application.

My Kickstarter project is only a week from over...
It finishes around 2 AM on Feb 27, so if you fancy getting your  hands on my new mice at the pre-order price before time runs out, click HERE.

I'd again like to thank everyone who's snapped up something using Kickstarter with their pledge system.

Click these links to visit my website... SteveWorthingtonArt.com - Sculpture that loves you back
or my Etsy store, CritterVille

First bas relief plaque ready for molding...(can you tell what it is yet?)

Here's a side view of my bas relief plaque....

As you can see it's like a large wafer with some thinly sliced cheese on it...and out of focus, of course!

Can you tell what it is yet?

Things are getting clearer now...

Rather spookily lit!
Yes, it's a chameleon!
I was nuts about them as a kid, and would stand watching them literally for hours (it takes that long for them to do anything) when I was visiting London Zoo with my dad (who no doubt was bored to tears, hoping for a dramatic crocodile escape to happen behind me or something. Hang on, he used to do train spotting when he was a kid. Well I guess that explains it then).

I would make sure to go on a Friday which was feeding day in the reptile house. Any other day and all you might see in the way of reptiles might be obscured patches of scales snoozing beneath logs or behind leaves. Reptiles can sleep for days.

Chameleons have been known to keep their heart rates elevated with an thrilling game of 'watching the paint dry' for as long as they can stand the excitement.
Then they have to calm down and take a rest.
Probably followed by some naps and an early  night.

Originally I planned this plaque (which I made on a piece of 5" x 7" masonite) to go in a 5" x 7" frame, but I didn't like how shaded the top got pushed up inside the frame so I stuck it onto a 6" x 8" piece of masonite so the image area would poke forward from behind a bit more when installed in a 6" x 8" frame.

This will be cast in bronze and some will also be made in another more experimental way, which I'll elaborate on when it's been done and I have pics.
For now, I tweeked the photo in photoshop of it in a frame to see how it might look with a green patina just because I'm impatient that way!

Maybe it's a sea-sick chameleon heading around the Cape of Good Hope on Charles Darwin's 'Beagle'.

You can see this plaque finished if you click HERE.

As for my recent Kickstarter project, it's off to a flying start having got 94% of the required backing in less than a week!
Thanks backers!

And TX Cupcake, if you're out there, you've got until the end of Jan to claim your mouse prize!

Click these links to visit my website... SteveWorthingtonArt.com - Sculpture that loves you back
or my Etsy store, CritterVille