Diorama Photo as Promised

As promised, a photo of the building I had painted for the diorama.  The lighting isn't quite right.  Unfortunately it was a rush job on the photo because I had a repairman at the house all morning and it had me tied up.  I did not have time to do a good light set up.

This is a picture of the first building I've painted for the diorama.  The painting does not go all the way to the  bottom of the building because there will be a sidewalk installed in front of it when the diorama is complete. 

Did anyone take up the experiment on the previous post?  If so, let me know how you did by leaving me a comment. 

Update on Diorama and an Experiment

I have completed painting the detail of largest building of the diorama.  That would be the beige building shape in the background of this photo.  I have not taken any pictures yet.  But hopefully I will have more pictures for you next time I post.

Now for the experiment:  Make a quick sketch of the building shape and add draw in your own details.  I will post a picture of my painted building some time mid-morning on Wednesday morning (Eastern Daylight Time).  You can look at earlier blog posts   March 3rd blog post to find the shape of the building.  Check to see how your picture resembles or differs from my painted building.  Let  me know how you did with this experiment by using the contents comments section or you can email me at carolstheartist@gmail.com.

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More on Peacock Mosaic With Photos

I was having trouble with the last blog post.  It would let me post a picture but it would not let me type anything.  I finally gave up trying to get it to work and hit Publish just to get to a new box. Hopefully, after I finish this post I will be able to go back and delete the other post.

Anyway, in my last bit of blogging, I had left off at grouting the mosaic.  I had grouted it with light gray grout.  Imagine my surprise when my beautiful iridescent peacock disappeared and I was left with a stepping stone was covered with shimmering glass with no discernible pattern.  It was very strange.  Once in a while, if you stood in just the right place, the peacock image would appear.  It would disappear if you moved and would be hard to find unless you were looking at it from a certain angle.  It was like one of those magic pictures that were popular a few years ago, where you had to stare at the picture just right in order to see it.

I lived with that for a while, because it was an interesting optical experiment.  However, it wasn't really what I wanted.  I had spent a lot of time and money on this peacock.  So I decided I had to fix it.  I determined that part of the problem was that when I added the grout, that the stone became a unified field.  I had to change that if I wanted the peacock to be seen.  I broke up the field by painting the grout with acrylic paints.  I used metallic blue and green, gold leaf paint, and black and white paint.  It allowed the peacock to shine through.  After painting the grout lines, I sealed the grout with a concrete sealer.

The other part of the problem was not really fixable.  Iridescent glass looks differently from different angles. You would hardly think it was the same piece of glass. Because I was laying the glass pieces on top of a design, the glass was laying flat.  When the stone was set up in a stand, the glass color was different.  I have not been able to have the peacock appear as nicely as it could look if it is sitting in its stand.

And to further take the wind out of my sails, not everyone recognizes this as a peacock.  One woman asked me, "What is it?  A sea monster?"  So this mosaic was a case of Live and Learn.
 

Mosaic Peacock

While I'm painting the next section on my paper mache project I thought I'd post a little bit about mosaics.  I started experimenting with glass a few years ago.  This peacock usually sits in a stand on a table.  We built a light in over the stand, so I was not able to get a good shot of the mosaic while it was in that stand.  I have it propped against a stool for this photos.

This mosaic is eighteen inches in diameter.  The glass is cast as part of the stepping stone.  The glass is iridescent blue and green with white,brown and black glass used on the face of the bird.  I cut the glass myself.

I traced the rim of the stepping stone mold to make sure my drawing would fit properly in the mold. Then drew a picture of my peacock on white paper with a heavy black marker.

I taped my drawing to a board and laid a piece of Mosaic Mount, sticky side up on top of my drawing.  I also taped the edges of the Mosaic Mount to the board.  At this point the piece of Mosaic Mount was larger than the diameter of the stepping stone mold.  (In case you are not familiar with the product, Mosaic Mount is a clear temporary adhesive contact paper.)  Many times Mosaic Mount is used with the tiles facing downwards.  For this project, the glass was placed on the product face up.

I laid my glass pieces over the design until I had the design looking like I wanted, leaving a gap between each piece so there would be room for grout.  The next step was to place a piece of Mosaic Mount trimmed to the size of one inch smaller than the interior diameter of the stepping stone on top of the glass.  Once that was done, I made sure the top piece of Mosaic Mount was well adhered to the glass.  I placed the design sandwiched between the two layers of glass into the mold and made sure it was centered.  Then I peeled off the back layer of Mosaic Mount and brushed fine sand in between the pieces of glass about half the depth of the glass in the design, but leaving the rim free of sand.  Then I poured in the stepping stone cement.  I let it set up for a couple of days to make sure that it was completely dry before removing from the mold.

Once the stone had cured, I removed it from the mold.  I removed the Mosaic Mount from the front of the glass and brushed away the sand with a whisk broom.  Then the stone was grouted.

My next blog entry will have more on this mosaic and some close up pictures.

Latest Diorama Photos

 As I posted earlier, the base color has been added to the background.  This week I will be working on adding the door and window detail. 

I've only had a few days this month free to work on it, so I'm behind as usual. 

The next painting section might take a while, so I will be posting pictures of some of my completed projects while I'm working on this section.

Diorama Update

I have added a gray undercoat to all the pieces and painted the buildings various colors.  The buildings on each end are painted to look like old brick.  The buildings next to them are painted gray.  The center building is painted to look like sandstone.  Tomorrow I will start adding window and door details to the buildings.  I'll post a picture of this next time I blog.

The Creative Process

People frequently ask me how I come up with my ideas.  I thought I’d blog about the method I used for my current project.  It is a method I use frequently.  I usually begin by choosing a season or a holiday.  This forms a background from which ideas emerge.  It also sets the tone and color scheme for the piece.

For my current project, Devil Looking for Trouble in a Small Town, I chose Halloween as my starting point.  Skeletons are part of Halloween decor, so I decided that I would try to make one.  I have made plenty of other Halloween figures, witches, jack o’lanterns, and the like but I had never made a skeleton.  I had been avoiding it due to the complexity of the subject. 

 

Once making a skeleton had been decided, I moved to the next step in the creative process.  I asked myself, “What is the skeleton doing?”  After that I quickly write down the first five actions that come to my head.    I find that five answers work best.  The first three are generally obvious answers, and I need to dig a little deeper to come up with the last two.  However, it is usually these answers that give me a starting point for my project.  I can only emphasize that this should be done quickly.  You don’t want to overthink things at this point.  

After I have my five answers, I examine each one and find which one really strikes me as something I really want to create.  In the case of this project, I settled on the answer that the skeleton is driving a car.  With that answer in hand, I moved on to the next question, “Why is the skeleton driving?”  Once again I wrote down five answers as quickly as possible.  My answers were: delivering a package, bouncing in a low rider, driving a limousine, came to that end by drinking and driving, and a devil made him do it.   

Once I had my five answers, it was time to do some critical thinking.  I examined the ideas I had written down and decide how feasible they might be to create.  With this project, the limousine, race car and low rider were discarded because there would be too much emphasis on the creation of the car.  A shiny limousine or race car would be hard to pull off in paper mache.  I decided against the package delivery to avoid anything that looked like a branded business.  That left me thinking about a generic car.  I decided that an old, damaged, rusty, crumpled car could be created easily in paper mache.  Also, concepts that are attached to a skeleton, such as death and decay played in nicely with an outdated, rusty automobile.    That led me to suggest an automobile with fins, which were popular about fifty or sixty years ago.  I say suggest because I wanted to make a generic automobile with iconic features rather than to try to imitate a specific car.  My hope was that any viewer will be able to make a connection to a memory of an old automobile of his or her choice rather than be directed to a specific car, which would be much harder to reproduce. (Also, I’m not sure of the legal ramifications of making a model of a specific vehicle.)

I returned to my questions and this time asked, “Why is a devil making or forcing the skeleton drive?”  This time the answer popped up immediately “He is joy riding!”  That seemed to fit so well that I did not pursue other avenues.  Instead I wrote down ideas about joy riding such as auto theft, “cruising the strip”, and “drinking and driving”.  I continued to ask questions until I felt I had a solid story which I used to create a piece of art. These answers added to the story by having the devil shown seated on the back seat of the car holding a bottle of beer.

That was the thinking that went into the stand alone piece of the car with the skeleton and devil.  Once I decided to make it into a diorama, I started the questions again.  “Where were they?”  “Why were they there?” “What type of place was it?”  Well, you get the picture…

Diorama Update with Photos

The working title for this Folk Art piece is Devil Looking for Trouble in a Small Town.  This part of the  work is more or less finished.  I still need to find some way to finish off the headlights.  They need something and I have not yet determined how to finish off that part of the car.

The car and figures are made from paper mache and painted with acrylic craft paints.  The figures were created with a wire and tape armature covered with paper mache and painted with craft paints.

I had pretty much finished the piece when my husband said that he thought it would look nice as part of a diorama.  I had a number of ideas for the diorama, and it took a while to settle on a theme.  I finally decided on the car driving through a small town.  So far, I have the basic building shapes covered in paper mache and painted with two layers of gesso.  Now I just have to start painting.  This part of the project should go fairly quickly compared to the layers of paper mache.

The buildings are made from an armature of styrofoam and masking tape covered in paper mache.  I had allowed for the thickness of paper mache when I cut the styrofoam, however it appears that I did not allow nearly enough.  Although it is not visible in the photo, the buildings are hanging over each end by about  3/4  1/4 of an inch.  I will have to decide whether to saw the ends of both buildings and recover the area in paper mache or  just leaving them to hang over the edge.  At this point I am inclined to leave things as they are, but I have not yet made a final decision.

  Next time I blog, I will write about the decisions that went into the creation of the piece and how the work evolved into the title.