So I have a spot above the TV in the living room about 5' x 3' that needs filling and have had an idea to do an octopus sculpture for awhile now to fill it. I have a propensity towards octopi so it makes perfect sense. So after much mental deliberation I actually got down to working on it. This is my rough sketch to get my basic shapes down. I didn't do much work on the tentacles in the rough as I'll just let them take their shape as I sculpt. I had an old sculpture in the garage that I was doing nothing with and had a pretty good form already so I sawed it in half and recycled it to get the form I have now. This sculpture should go relatively fast, as unlike my other sculptures, isn't covered in 1000+ scales.
The paintjob's complete. All he needs now is some gloss resin for his mouth and eyes and he's completely complete.
I wasn't having the greatest day yesterday so I took a break from staring at the computer screen and pulled out this guy and decided to work on his paint job. I cranked up some butt rock and went to work.
Here are his base colors, about 5 to 6 drybrushing coats of various blues and purples.
I painted his belly white, did a base coat of rust red in his mouth and screwed in eyelets on the backside to hang him from. 
He needs a few highlight coats, an antiquing to bring out the scales and a base coat of black for his eyes and teeth. Once that all dries, paint the teeth and eyes and a spray of varnish and he's complete and ready to hang.
The scales and skin are complete, now for the fun stuff... the paint job. I had a few people ask me how big he is so I put a sharpie in the picture for scale reference. He measures approximately 3 feet long by 2 feet tall. I didn't count this time (the Red Snouted Spiny Fish on my website has 1,948) but he has well over a thousand scales on him. He'll be drying today and hopefully I can knock out his paint job tomorrow.
Okay, so he didn't get done "next week" like I said about four weeks ago but I have steadily been working on him. Here are a few progress shots. The bottom one is where he is currently. I'll be adding some more scales to him today.
Again I'll be at Staple! tomorrow selling my wares. I'm looking forward to it, should be a fun weekend.
I've had a couple of fish sculptures that I never got around to finishing so I figured I'd dig them out and finish them. I put the fin spines on this guy tonight and will put the fins on him tomorrow. He's not nearly as big as my Red Snouted Spinyfish (see my website, under sculpture) so scaling him won't be such a huge undertaking either. No football to watch this weekend so he should be complete by next week.
