Whale of a Time
Jenson's love of Blue Planet continues and this week his fascination with the natural world manifested itself in a LEGO blue whale. He had originally set out to make an ocean animal sanctuary but somehow he got side tracked with this project.
I love how instinctive Jenson is. Without any diagram or book to guide him, he simply picked up a piece of LEGO and thought it looked about the right shape and size for a blue whale's tail.
The body quickly followed and I think he used the parts of a plane's carcass to create it.
The components he found to make the mouth, again, brilliantly demonstrate his natural understanding of scale and proportion. He made this model off the top of his head without any visual guidance after watching only twenty minutes of blue whale footage on Blue Planet a few days ago. LEGO is wonderful in the way it is able to combine his natural engineering skills with his other growing passions.
Even the position of the eye, which he chose to site on the side of the whale's body rather than the top, reflect how well he pays attention to detail.
The teeth are also exceptionally well placed. Although blue whales are baleen whales, the way Jenson has positioned them give a great impression of the sheer size and shape of the mouth. I also love how Jenson chose to hinge the flippers and tail therefore allowing the whale to swim and dive.
The blow hole on the top was a later addition that I suggested. While I had envisaged him simply adding a small round LEGO spot to create the 'hole', he instead made the complete action of the water fountain being sprayed out of the hole. He had been inspired by a picture he had seen in his LEGO book. I've no idea how long ago he saw this picture but it was clearly in his memory banks by the way he ran off to fetch his book when I suggested adding a blow hole: he knew exactly what he was looking for. What I loved most though was that his blue whale LEGO model was much better than the one in the book, (not biased at all!)
We then had a chat about what blue whales eat from which he made this LEGO krill model. When I told him that blue whales eat 40 million of these a day his jaw dropped somewhat: that should keep him quiet for a day or two!!