The person-in-the-moon as a symbol
is quite easy to understand if you've ever spent any time at all gazing
at Luna. There's a definite face there to be seen, as anyone who's stared
at the night sky can attest.I've done three versions of the person-in-the
moon, and each time the face turns out a little different. This is true
even though I am following the same general design and using the same colors.
That's part of the fun and challenge of caning!
Each time I build it, the size of the
cane gets a bit larger, too. It has to be big in order to get in a lot
of detail, plus I have learned that this is a popular cane, so I make it
large in order to get lots of slices.
I've used it to make beads, necklaces, buttons,
pendants, barrettes, eggs, pins, clocks, drawer pulls, and much more. Bryan
has used it in his mosaic work too--take a look at the Moonlight
Violin.
The third generation of moon cane
(shown at right) began with 12 pounds of Premo polymer clay. It was at
least ten inches across and almost eight inches in depth...like a very
heavy 3-layer cake.
After reduction begins, it takes a lot of effort
to make the cane begin to compress and lengthen.
Click here to see a pic of the cane
when it had been reduced enough to fit on the scanner bed. It took a while
to get it to this point, which is about eight inches in diameter.
Sunny Variations
Face canes can be very time consuming to build, and they can eat up
large amounts of clay, too!
One way to get more variety from a single face cane is to add details
such as hair (or sun rays) AFTER reduction of the main face section, and
use different details for separate lengths of the cane.
The sun face seen at right has been used with two other variations previous
to this batch--one had a sky blue background and one a fiery red background.
For this version, I was asked by a client to match her fabric.
Equal amounts of ecru and white Premo were mixed with smaller amounts
of black and gold to "sadden" the mix, bringing it to the desired
shade.
Reds and yellows were mixed with each other, white, or gold, to give
a good range of warm sunshine colors that would co-ordinate with the threads
used and with the sun face itself.
Shown below is the unreduced end of the new cane--it measured five inches
across and was a bit over six inches tall before reduction began.
The interior "face" section was slightly reduced again previous
to adding the "rays" and the outside wrap.
This is because the inside needs to be warmed up for movement--otherwise
it would be very difficult to reduce the inner portion with freshly warmed
clay on the outside and older, colder clay on the inside!
In the way of
experiments, I learned an important lesson--even when warmed up , even
with clay that was still fresh in the face cane and aged in sheets for
a few days for the rays--the clay was too different in texture for good
reduction.
It was very resistant as a cane to reduce, and most of the movement
came from the rays as they slid to the ends of the cane.Most all of it
ended up being cut off and reclaimed because the face itself had not moved.
The
rays ended up looking like a short ruff of flames--an interesting summer
'do for a hot sun!
Some of the cut off excess stripes were laid onto a section of the reduced
sun to make a very fluid sort of flamework around the face.
Each one has different flames due to the nature of using scrap in the
cane.
Some of the remaining clays were shaped into triangle rays and radiated
outward around a section of the reduced face. 
This is a more traditional
sort of sun.
More of the excess stripe was used as a wrap around the outside of the
rays, lending a bit of sizzle to this version.
