Teumessian fox and Laelaps

Background story


The Teumessian fox (or Cadmean vixen) is said to be a tremendously huge fox destined to be uncatchable. Laelaps is a dog that is destined to catch everything that he is hunting.

The Gods sent the Teumessian fox as a curse upon Thebes, a City of Greece, to eat their children. The beast had to be destroyed so Amphitryon, the Regent of Thebes, fetched Laelaps to destroy the fox. However due to their contradicting fates, Zeus turned them both to stone and tossed them both to the stars.

The thought process


I love this story mostly because of the idea that the two creatures had colliding fates and were therefore sent to the stars. The idea that they were sent to the starts puts the image in my mind that they sparkle brilliantly. Therefore I have decided to paint them a pearly white, maybe with tints of other shiny colours.

Due to the fact that they are said to be of gigantic proportions, with keeping in mind that they were sent to the stars, I decided that I wanted to have the two chasing each other around a planet. This will give off the idea that they are in fact in space as well as showing them to be huge if their size is being compared to the size of a planet. Obviously since I am sculpting figurines I can't sculpt too big so this is why I decided on the planet idea.

The planet I have chosen to use will be Saturn. I decided on Saturn because of the rings around it. I visualize the two creatures to be running on the rings of Saturn.

Due to the fact that the rings of Saturn hover around the planet and do not actually touch it, I am going to have to consider very carefully how I am going to turn it into one solid sculpture. I will probably have the fox's tail touching the planet and the dog's paw touching the planet so that they end up holding the rings of Saturn up.

I still need to decide on their exact positions, I am thinking of having the fox looking over his shoulder.

(more coming soon. Sculpting Hylonome first)