Copper Crab Update
Hey everyone, sorry for the late update. I made a new reddit account without a stupid name for me to post all my art to but apparently reddit thinks I'm a bot. It's been a whole thing where I got banned then unbanned then shadowbanned then not, and everything I've tried to do to seem human just makes them think I'm a bot. Hopefully next time I post it'll be on my new account u/LawlessLaboratories, because I'm going to try and have a crack at being a proper legit artist and I have a couple of cool things in the works so keep an eye out.
Anyway, for anybody who didn't see the first post basically I've stripped the flesh from a crab leaving the chitin and calcium carbonate, embedded that in a matrix then used various salts to replace the calcium with copper. This project is basically just the first full scale test for this process and I've already learned a LOT from it. The main minerals here are now malachite, azurite, atacamite, and gypsum. There is also some phosphates and silicates of unknown variety. You can't see it much in the photos but it has a decent sparkly shimmer to it, mostly from the gypsum I'm guessing. Different colours and textures show up in different light, and the sparkle shows up better on video so I'll post that this week too. I was going to do a second layer of mineralization but it turned out really cool already so I didn't want to take it too far and wreck it. This species is a blue swimmer crab (Portunus pelagicus). I plan to do another much larger and higher quality version later this year with a spanner crab (Ranina ranina).
I'll answer everybody's questions like last time but I'll probably do it over a week because last time kind of wiped me out. But I'm excited to see your reactions and I hope you enjoy it.