When I first started the self-generated project, I was as per usual, clueless as to what the content should be. Self generated implied that everything regarding subject and content relied on my own imagination. Furthermore, I was stumped by the paper clay material itself, because it dries and cracks as you use it and doesn’t carry it’s own weight. It would topple over if I formed anything too tall, and many of my trial creations were unsuccessful because of this. But after class one day I was milling around the Old Town Orange neighborhood on a skateboard. This is when I saw a snail shell on the ground of an alleyway, and it’s spiral based form caught my eye as a technique that I could mirror in the paperclay. It was a dull shade of brown, lonely and cracked from sitting in the sun. Inspired by what I had seen, I went home shortly after and began to smooth out slabs of the paper clay so that I could roll them into shells. 
The shape of the shell is interesting because it feels like the spiral could go on forever. When the shell is standing right-side up, it is not really possible to tell where it starts and begins. I like this idea of permanence being juxtaposed with the snail itself, who gets stomped on, run over, ignored, and lives (generally) a short life. There are many artists who address this fate of the crustacean in their art. An artist named Stefan Siverud (http://www.legalassassin.com/?cat=134) uses snails as a way to insert his art into living forms of nature. He takes their natural design, and modifies it to his liking. These are some of his snails:
His use of color and symbols that carry contemporary value (aka the golden arches and the Louis Vuitton print) work to humanize the snail, which is so often cast off as ugly and unappealing. I was also inspired by another artist who paints snail shells, named Slinkachu. Their art with snails is made specifically so that the snails will be noticed for their vibrancy and color, and as such will hopefully not get stepped on. I thought it was interesting that they physically attached other objects onto the shell as well, as shown in the photos below. 
These artists inspired my use of color in my self-generated project. I was weary at the thought of just making a boring pencil drawing, but these artists motivated me to bring color into the mix and not worry about making things hyperrealistic. For the color in my work, I relied heavily on watercolor pencils. They are easy to blend and control on the pencil work that I had already laid down. From this point moving on, I was more interested in creating a personality for the snails than creating accurate physical forms with the paper clay. An artist who is able to mimic life forms while still maintaining a strong tone in their work is Allison Schulnik. While her work is mostly done in claymation, I was able to learn a lot from the imperfections that are present in her characters. This video below is the main source I used as inspiration: Allison Schulnik Beautiful/Decay Studio Visit
As a result, this is what my snails looked like:
My idea was to make it appear that the snails, who were made from paper clay, had escaped their home inside the bag. They broke free, and are moving up and away from their confines as just paper clay. I spent a lot of time constructing the shell, but the faces were my favorite portion to create because of how weird and expressive they ended up. With mouths gaping wide and eyes poking out in weird directions, they look like cousins of one of Allison Schulnik’s army of clay creatures. 
When it came to choosing the colors for the snails, I found myself inclined to NOT limit my palette. Snails come in all different shapes, colors, and sizes, and I thought that I would honor this by choosing a range of colors on their body. Henry Matisse once did a piece in 1953 called Snail and I think it represents the ways in which I color blocked little sections of each snail shell. While this piece of art is more abstracted, it still emulates the spiral form and also uses color to accomplish a snail interpretation.
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