Day 176 - 365/2014

Day One Hundred Seventy-Six

I started the day by wrapping up my three pieces for the Members Biennial Exhibit at Paint Creek Center for the Arts.  Sue came over and we drove the stuff out to Rochester.  This show runs from July 11 - August 8.  I will post more about it in a few days.

Getting ready to pack up Creatura Lupus Ursus, Time for a Nap, and Djubi for the trip out to Rochester.

After Rochester, Sue and I came back to Northville for lunch at Tuscan Cafe.  In between Rochester and lunch and then directly after lunch we were running into all sorts of frustrating snags and problems...both of us had our share for today...and then things started running together and man -- it was time to medicate and chill out.  Most of the stuff worked itself out, thankfully -- but it has been a very frustrating and emotional and physically painful day.  

Tonight I have still been toying with the idea of sawing off the goat-like guy's head and attaching it to the from scratch guy's body.  Last night I dug through the blog archives and found a few early mentions of the piece that became the goat-like guy.  Here is the most relevant one.  Like many of my early plaster cloth guys, the goat-like guy has had several transformations.  That post is from September of 2011...but I found what seems to be the second reference in April of that year (when he was some sort of canine creature)...I can't seem to find out when he was really first started.

I figured I was armed with a pretty good idea of his inner construction, so I found my trusty "I-mean-business" saw and got to work liberating his head from the tomato cage structure.  And I must say that after all of today, it was very very therapeutic. 

My patient, the goat-like guy.

My tool of choice -- the "I-mean-business" saw.

Going slowly around and around the goat-like guy until I can...

...triumphantly break through!

Success!

Yep -- some sort of plastic hanging basket was/is inside of him.

The from scratch body and its new head.

Balancing the head in place with one hand while taking photos with the other hand and trying to get far enough away to get everything in the shot.

The head feels pretty good sitting on the former papier mache rock (thanks again, Ingrid!).

I took a chance and balanced everything while slightly leaning them against the pipe...take the picture quickly...and then snatch the head and sit it safely on the table and stash the body back up off of the floor.

So it looks to me like I did the bulk of the early work in 2011.  Maybe this will be the year it is finally revealed to me what the six round headed guys are for...I have been waiting patiently.

These are those six round headed guys that I was absolutely driven to make...they need a lot of reinforcement layers and work...I am sincerely hoping to learn what they are for...SOON!

Day 175 - 365/2014

Day One Hundred Seventy-Five

I was thinking about the from scratch guy this evening.  I went down to the basement with my camera and sketch book and did some thinking...and made a couple of adjustments.

The from scratch guy...safely stored up off of the floor.

I pulled him out and really took a long look at him from all directions. 

I decided I was not happy with the tail-end...I didn't like the pointy triangly thing going on and leading into the sticking out tail...which would be even longer later.

I decided to cut off the legs of the tomato cage...this meant getting out my trusty all purpose hand saw.

Ta-daaaaa...it took quite a bit of sawing and also quite a bit of bending but I finally got the legs off!

I want to still use the three wire legs as the base/armature of the tail...it is less likely to break with the metal inside.

I wrapped masking tape around the three metal legs, just allowing them to go how they wanted to go.  I think it will make a decent tail and I can shape it later if I want to...it is a pretty good length, too.

I covered up the open end with the same cardboard that was on the triangle end and I realized I could cut part of it out and then wrap tape and part of the end of the cardboard around the back legs to form the beginning of the back hind quarters.

I know this is still very rough, but I am starting to get more ideas.

It occurred to me maybe one of these heads could work with the from scratch guy's body...make the front be a chest instead of a head...but the dog guy head is just too large.  I need to look back in the blog and find out how the goat-like guy's head is attached to the tomato cage base.  I think it is a cylindrical oatmeal box or a cottage cheese container attached to an inverted plastic hanging basket set over the legs of the inverted tomato cage.  IF that is the case, I should be able to remove the head (and maybe neck parts) pretty easily and then work them onto the from scratch guy's body...but not tonight.

I tried sketching it out and then I printed the photos and tried cutting the parts out and gluing them together -- just to see.

It is still early in the ideas/construction phase of the from scratch guy...whatever he turns out to be, he will not be very reality based...definitely creature vs kind of real animal.  It also just occurred to me that the goat-like guy's head/horns are also pretty from scratch.

365/2013 - Day 138

whew -- this is about as good as either of these projects will get today

Well, I wrestled with the sander and the shelves...I am not very happy with them right now but I also can't mess with them anymore today.  At least I sanded all ten of them...most need touch up painting.  The shelves just aren't coming out the way I pictured them.  

I have been tweaking this goat-ish collage for most of the evening.  I have never been able to draw a reasonably convincing goat face.  Then I thought about using a photo from the internet and trying to trace it and incorporate it.  But the more I looked at the Google'd photos, the more I remembered I have a bunch of photos of goats that I actually took -- Sue's friend's goats, Colin (the handsome goat at Kensington Metropark), and Hershey (the goat I sponsored at SASHA Farms).  Huh.  My photos are not at wonderful as some of the photos I found, but I can try to alter them in my photo program and work with them.  Again...this is about as good as this is going to get...tonight anyway.

the cropped and altered Hershey head photo

two versions of the further altered photo -- plus penciling the back of the cut out head to try and leave a mark on the canvas

right about here -- not quite the exact right size but maybe I can make it work

Hershey's horns showed up a bit -- I left out the notch he has in one of  his horns

first try

tweaked collage image of a goat-ish guy -- it's a start, I guess

365 Day 261

working on the goat-like plaster cloth guy

I am not feeling very wordy tonight, so I am just going to list the steps I took to set up and work on this stage of the (now) goat-like plaster cloth guy.


1. Get my hair out of my face and put on my plaster cloth making shirt. Snap a photo in the mirror on the bathroom door.














2. Open iTunes, put it on shuffle, close my eyes and "spin" the cursor to a random song, crank up the volume.










3. Spread out some well-used contractor trash bags in a half-assed attempt to cover the floor where I'm going to work.











4. Grab a stack of plaster cloth.
















5. Cut the plaster cloth into triangles.















6. Set the ears aside...not ready for them yet.









7. Set the cup of coffee at the opposite end of the
table...safely out of range of dripping plaster.













8. Get the container of hot-as-I-can-stand-it water and place it by the plaster cloth.











9. Set the victim...er, uh..goat-like guy in work area and cut off the aluminum foil beard...I will figure out something else when it is time for that.















10. Lay on the first few pieces of plaster cloth triangles and take a quick photo before hands get too plastery.











11. Yay -- snap a photo of the end of this stage.















12. Carefully set the goat-like guy against the wall so that I don't get caught on the end of one of his horns as I walk by him.













13. Think, "hey...I still have some triangles left...what else can I do?"









14. Choose the lion-like guy












15. Yay -- the lion-like guy looks pretty good, too!















16. Walk by the studio bathroom and notice this pile of towels...











17. ...and the incredibly wonderful shadow it is making on the wall -- sort of sheep-like or donkey-like...or some sort of creature-like.

18. Take a shot of it for later use.