owls and turtles

I had in mind to make owls before Christmas, as ornaments.  I attempted to make these by forming mini-closed ovals on the wheel.  However, I failed to make a shape I was satisfied with and didn't have time to fool around with it more so I dropped the idea. I have a couple of projects to work on for customers, but decided to indulge myself first by trying the owl thing again.  This time I hand-built them, which worked out better for me.

Here are the little guys.  The first one I made is sitting on a branch.  What I decided to do for the rest is use a real twig for the branch.  These are modeled loosely on screech owls. 

The most important element in forming little owls:  My thumb.

Turtle beginnings.

  A customer requested turtles. He bought quite a few in the past to give as gifts and asked me to make more before Christmas. It was too late to get to work on them at that point to have ready for Christmas but he still wanted them. It's probably been six or seven years since I've made turtles so first I dragged out all this stuff, then I stared at it all for a while, trying to remember how I went about it. More on that later.