Copper Puppy: the Sculpture

Finished puppy: front.

Back.

I started at the pup's nose, twisting a couple of wires together across its top, then twisting one more at each "corner," then another to change direction for each eye, and so on, and so on...

It gets pretty confusing. I try very hard to keep it symmetrical.

Ears!

The puppy is growing a leg.

I've twisted wires together through the chest and down around one front leg, closing them off at the foot. The "unused" wires wait to become the rest of the puppy. Many more will be added.

The front legs are finished, and I can begin twisting the wires into the puppy's back and belly.

The body has been shaped down to the haunches.

The right hind leg is finished; the left is just a bunch of wires.

Both back legs are complete.

Just have to finish the tail! Then a lot of tweaking to fix any odd bumps or bends. The puppy contains about 130 feet of wire.

It took about 3 full days. My hands are pretty tired.

Copper Puppy: the Wire

I wanted to post something about how I make a wire sculpture. I've never done this before (though I did create the stop-motion video "Make a Wire Bird," on YouTube and Flickr), and I apologize for how tacky the photos are.






1. I cut old electrical cable into lengths of 5 or 6 feet.



2. I use a utility knife to strip the rubber or plastic coating off each length of cable.

3. When I pull the covering off, there's a bundle of twisted wires inside. Some cables have as many as 19 wires; this cable had 7.

4. I untwist all the wires.

5. I pull each wire under my shoe (wearing old shoes - it cuts the soles!) to straighten it.

6. Now I've got about 130 feet of heavy-gauge (I think it's 16) copper wire to play with.

What the heck

The blog life is totally new to me. Just checking it out.