SCULPTURE: "Mantis"

Tonight, I finished a little project I've been working on. It's been a while since I'd done a full on sculpture in the round, so I made 3 little "bas-relief" sculpts..the other two were posted here earlier. The MANTIS finishes the set. 

I did my "sketch" of the Mantis in Photoshop by cobbling several photos together to get the pose I liked, and found a nice Celtic knot design for the background. I transferred the image by punching holes in a flat layer of Sculpy using a pin. 

Then I roughed in the shapes. Turns out that the Celtic element didn't work as hoped...it's too large in scale and makes the Mantis harder to see. Live and learn. 

The last phase was painting it with acrylics to create a "faux bronze" effect.

UPDATE:  I decided that the background was a bit hard to read, and competed with the Mantis. So I muted the background tones, and added more "patina blue" so the Mantis would pop more.