Creating a Maritime Fest Sculpture

The Maritime Festival is this coming weekend here in Tacoma and I have been asked to participate by decorating an anchor.

Now, this isn't one of those projects where artists are given fiberglass sculptures to embellish; instead we are given actual working anchors. Or rather, decommissioned anchors. Most anchors these days don't even look like what we think of as the stereotypical anchor. I was the first one to pick out my anchor and picked the one that does look closest to that traditional anchor look. On the down size, my anchor weighs like 80 pounds and takes two people to move it while the other ones are closer to 30 pounds.

I love octopuses and try to incorporate them into a lot of my art, so an octopus hanging onto the anchor felt right to me. I am making him out of air dry clay.
I still need to finish out fleshing out his legs a little more and make more texture on the skin, but otherwise he is moving right along. He is drying super fast in the 80 degree weather so I should be about to start painting him Thursday, just in time for Friday delivery.