Four cardboard toys: knight, emu, unicorn and horse

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 Knight-Errant

 Emu, perhaps.

Unicorn

Horse (detail of neck and head)

Some questions

At what point is a representation so abstracted that it ceases to convey the thing it purports to? Using only cocktail sticks and corrugated card, and limiting oneself to glue to join elements, what can one come up with? 

Would it be a good idea to paint the pieces? Or would that be to take them away from that playful abstracted area where the mind is teased into the area of mere imitation?

They are not refined. Does that matter? Is it nice to see how simply they are constructed?

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Homage to Tarkovsky

Here's a photo that brings to mind some of Tarkovsky's films. I used to love Tarkovsky, mainly for the beauty of the imagery and the way music and images are combined.

I saw his films first when I was 16 through to 22, and they appealed to me enormously. I liked their immense seriousness, and their extraordinary craftsmanship. They seemed both tremendously original, and yet ancient. Then, about 20 years later I saw several of them again.

I could still enjoy the films' aesthetic qualities, but found the reactionary messages in Nostagia irritating and silly. Of the films, the more abstract Mirror then seemed the most satisfing because it avoids the preaching, anti-humanistic tendencies of other Tarkovsky films.