Lettuce sea slug

We saw Watchmen last night it was truer to the comic then I had thought it would be. I finally have the compositions worked out for the fine art pieces. Now I just need to work out how the internal supports and channels for the wire are going to fit together. Unfortunately, all of my ideas this time were very complicated so I'm probably looking at 2 100+ hr pieces. So if I'm good I'm probably looking at June or July for those.

Art

goal for the week 11.75 hrs

today

do internal armature sketches

put slake on plaster, wedge, make more clay

Start the guy with the Anubis mask or work on wax dragon depending on clay availability

Animal  

photo by laszlo photo

The lettuce sea slug (Tridachia crispata) is a not uncommon sea slug from the Caribbean. They can range quite a bit in coloration from white to red to solid electric blue. They are herbivores but eat in an odd manner. They insert a fine tube into the plant and actually suck out the contents of the cells. They have been described as like a mosquito for algae. By removing the cell organelles from algae they can actually incorporate the chloroplasts into themselves and to some extent produce their own food from sunlight. They do also digest the other plant organelles that are not chloroplasts. They also produce a bad tasting compound from the organelles called chlorodesmin that helps to protect them from being eaten. They are sometimes kept in the aquarium hobby. They are said to control algae but don't really eat it at a high enough rate to be very effective at this.