Just one of many sculptures I made of auerhahns (capercaillies) during my stay in the Black Forest. This rare bird is often used as a symbol for the Black Forest along with the wild boar and it inspired a logo for my Sommerberg.org website. The first sculpture was made of papermache, then came a clay/ceramic version and finally the one shown above in plaster. A plaster mold was made from this one, which I had hoped would allow me to cast positives in various materials, even chocolate was on my list! However the mold proved to be very heavy to handle, especially once filled with clay-slip. Then it had to be inverted to pour out superfulous slip. Despite ropes and pulleys the whole process got more complicated than I had planned and eventually became a nightmare. I moved on to sculpting a copy of the famous Nefertiti bust from photos but that resulted in a disaster of another dimension.