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This came from a school project where we were to make nesting boxes. The first was to be plaster, the second metal and the final wood. They were to hold an item that was somehow special or significant to us. I chose a pocket watch sent to me by a friend that I once had, the focus being on transience and mortality. How very befitting it wound up being.
I made the first in the shape of a scarab. The body is built into a shape like a slipper with a wire under-structure and made the wings separately. The fit in using the hook and eye system, so that they open and close.
The next I made of steel and aluminum. A rivet held a clock-like arm The top of the head of the sarcophagus was closed only by wire. There are some similar stitches at the bottom.
Only ply-wood was available to me, so I made a lid with a fitted top and the body to match. I then stained it, carefully with two layers of varnish and glued some red felt to create an inlay. I was really very pleased with the result.
The outside represents death, of course. The sarcophagus represents both life and death as they were indeed designed to hold corpses, but the culture didn't believe that death was the end. The scarab represented life, eternal. An exterior of death, a hope for eternal life imprisoned in the barred cage of the sarcophagus.
On a personal note...The pocket watch was sent to me by a girl that I dearly loved and with whom I knew that I had no future, but couldn't and wouldn't comes to terms with it. Not until the choice was made for me. This project was very special to me, though I regret to say that it has somehow, somewhere disappeared. I hope to one day find it, but I can imagine no place within the house (or without it) where I haven't already searched.

I think that I'll start spending a bit less time on my descriptions, at least until I receive some feedback. It's starting to get rather discouraging.

This is a larger piece, done in black and white charcoal (though this is an older piece, from my Art Institute days, so I don't remember for sure. The white may be colored pencil, instead). The focus was on light and shadow. It was an all-day (four-hour) drawing, as I recall.

Thanks so much. I'm really glad that you like it. I wish that I could get a proper scan of it. This is just a photo, so it's a little blurry.
It's a little late to go back and do corrections, now. A lot of work was destroyed in the flood. I'm not 100% sure that this is one of them.
As far as signatures go, I do usually try to include them, but what do you mean "Hard way"? They're typically included the bottom right corner, but cropping them off is really easy, but these days, digital editing makes it even easier still to get rid of things like that, without even having to crop. All one can really do, if they want to retain claim to their artwork is hope that their style speaks for itself. In other words, even if you had signed it, if they really wanted it, they'd have still found a way to claim it as their own.
I hope you'll stick around and keep watching. I add another new picture every day.

I missed another day, didn't I? I crashed a bit unexpectedly last night. My apologies.

I'd have to say, this is another one with some tough memories attached... But let me start at the beginning.
I don't do much photo editing. You may have noticed that I'm more into the tactile, analog variety of art. I learned how to do this (which I personally find impressive, looking back) but the knowledge of how was quickly lost. I don't think that I could do this again if I had the file in front of me... So it's unlikely that you'll be seeing something like this again, soon.
In the class that I made this for, we were to make our own variety of chimera (in that it was a combination of existing animals). I chose to take the western idea of a dragon but make it a mammal, using my own pet chinchilla as a base. As you can see he has rhino and ram horns, bat wings, and the paws are from a mole and the tail a fox. His "hoard" was mostly pennies and other assorted little shiny things that I found around my house.
As for the tough memories, I unfortunately lost Kenny, last year... Unfortunately enough (for me, anyway) this happened exactly one week after the situation with the girl (mentioned in the post about the box) came to it's own excruciating conclusion... But this isn't the You forum, so that will be the end of my little story time.

He sure was. I miss him almost every day.

Yeah, the lighting isn't perfect either. Like I said, it was my first attempt at anything worthy of being posted. I think I somehow turned off the color on that layer altogether and I couldn't get it back on. ^..^;;
Ah well. Like I said, Photoshop is not my forte.
I'm working on the new post right now. Just digging up the next picture, first.