What's up Doc?

It always takes me about three times longer than I expect to make the animal sculptures. I intend to finish the rabbit by the end of the week, but I am having problems with the ears right now. I have decided to re-make them from scratch.

I can now tell you from experience that it is quite difficult to put a convincing pair of ears on a bunny without making it look ridiculous. I mean, the real things look ridiculous enough as it is, so if the sculpture is to be successful, there must be some element of silliness about it, just not too much.

It didn't help that when discussing the sculptures with the client, at the mere mention of rabbits they suddenly dropped all their usual gravitas, put their hands up to their chest - pointing downwards like paws - exposed their front teeth and wiggled their nose up and down whilst making little sucking sounds. We were talking about clichés yesterday, and this is the representational cliché of a rabbit as performed by a human. We've all done it at least once.

After I had recovered from the impression, I took it that they wanted the bunny to be in the upright, alert posture that rabbits adopt when peering over long grass to spot potential predators.

All the animals have to be cute, but not too cute. It's a difficult balance.