Update on Faux Tesla Halloween Project

No new pictures yet.  Since I last blogged I have put a coat of gesso and a base coat on the electrical bolts.  Some of the bolts are base coated in yellow, the others in orange and crimson.  I plan to be painting the detail coats today and tomorrow.  I will have new pictures of them on Wednesday.

If things go well I may have some of the bolts attached to the spheres on the frame by that time.  I'll post more on that process as soon as I have pictures.

Faux Tesla Coil Halloween Project-Part 4

Three inch tall pillars

Electrical bolts

I have been working out some of the procedures for creating this Halloween themed project.  It has been a case of which came first the chicken or the egg.  Once I added the spheres to the top of the stand I determined that it needed some scaffolding to add more dimension to the piece.  I also determined that I needed to elevate the frame.  I showed the sticks that will become the main frame of the scaffolding in my post labeled Part 3 of this project.  I could not determine the width that I wanted between the scaffolding pieces until I actually had the pillars in place.  Once the pillars were cut, I had a much better idea of how wide I wanted the base of the scaffolding pieces to be.  Now I know how long each cross braces should be.  I also went ahead and sanded and painted the pillars while I was working with them.  That is progress, although it does not seem like much at the moment.

I also determined that before I glue the metal frame to the pillars, I should add the bolts of electricity that shoot from the spheres.  It will be much easier to work with the spheres without having to deal with the additional length of the pillars every time I turn the piece.  So I have started on making the electrical bolts.  At this time they are only bits of wire covered with masking tape.  The masking tape will be covered with (you guessed it) paper maché.  The masking tape will provide a rough surface for the paper  maché.  It could have been done without adding the masking tape, but it would be more difficult to keep the paper
 maché from slipping.  

That is about as much as I have had a chance to work on this project for the last few days.  My next step will be to cut the cross braces.  Then I will cover the braces and the electrical bolts with paper  maché and paint them. 

Jack of Autumn Art Doll and Tip of the Day

Now that autumn has arrived, I wanted to post a picture of one of my previous projects, my Jack of Autumn Art Doll.  This doll is the first doll in my series called Jack.  The name Jack is an archaic term used to describe a mischievous nature spirit.  (The most well known Jack is the Jack O'Lantern of Halloween.  It literally means the Jack of the Lantern.)   Jack is 14 & 1/2 inches tall.  His base is 7 inches across.  This doll was my first attempt at a free standing doll.  Free standing means that the doll is internally supported and does not require an external doll stand.

The concept for this doll came about one fall when my husband had finished raking the yard.  The next morning the yard was covered with as many leaves as he had removed the day before.  He jokingly asked, "Who through leaves all over the yard?"  My reply was that the Jack of Autumn had done it.  That started me thinking about what the Jack of Autumn might look like.  I envisioned him as a callow youth who would throw leaves around in the way some teenagers might throw litter.  I also envisioned him as an anthropomorphic figure who had risen up from the earth to move about in human form.  His outfit is a representation of that idea.

The doll's body is a wire armature covered with strips of batting.  The batting has a layer of string wrapped around it.  That is covered with a layer of unbleached muslin.  The face and hands are sculpted from flesh colored bake in the oven clay.  His features were painted with craft paints.  His hair is individually applied pieces of embroidery thread.  To make this doll free standing I added a dowel that runs the length of the body.  The dowel was glued to the body before I added his outfit, then covered with a layer of muslin which was sewn to the existing skin of the doll.  (See more about the dowel in my tip of the day below.)  

Jacks pants are made of silk leaves cut down from full sized silk leaves from a floral arrangement.  Each leaf was individually cut in the shape of an oak leaf and is about 1/2 inch in length.  The leaves were sewn on to the doll body three leaves at a time.

The vest is brown to symbolize soil.  It is covered with small seed beads to imitate the crystals found in the earth.  The beads are sewn on with a contrasting orange thread in a spiral patterns.  The spirals create a feeling of energy and motion.  The shirt is white cotton and the hat and shoes are made of green felt.  

The leaves in Jack's hand are glued in place.  The falling leaves are on a strand of clear quilting thread.  The strand is no bigger than a hair.  If you are withing three feet of the figure you can see it.  If you view the doll from further than three feet, the leaves appear to be floating in the air.  The leaves are not anchored at the bottom.  If a breeze comes through the leaves move and swirl as if they were really falling.

The base is a wooden disk purchased from the craft store and painted brown.  It is covered with floral moss, silk leaves, acorns, and small twigs.  The base has a very organic look, but if I were to do it over again, I would not use the moss.  When it was new, it had an odor to it.  The odor disappeared after it dried, but the moss became brittle and tends to drop bits of itself here and there when the doll is moved.  If I do use moss again, I will make sure that every bit is completely glued down.  However, that will make it lose some of its natural look.

Tip of the Day:   Using a Dowel as a Support.

When I made this doll, I used a 1/4 inch dowel as the support.  I learned the hard way that this size dowel is not strong enough.  As I was putting the finishing touches on the doll I used too much pressure and the dowel broke.  I had to remove some of the clothing and insert wooden skewer supports to keep the doll upright.  Later, I was reading the submission rules for an art doll contest.  The rules specifically stated that the support dowel needed to be at least 1/2 inch in diameter.  They stated that this was necessary to prevent the support from breaking during shipping and handling.  So take a hint and use a dowel at least 1/2 inch in diameter.

Also, I had made the doll body before I decided that I would attempt a free standing doll.  The doll would have been more stable if the dowel had been built into the armature rather than attached as an afterthought.  My method of attaching the dowel with glue and covering it with a strip of muslin worked well for this project.  If the doll were to be dressed in a tight outfit, the internal dowel would be more important.

Faux Tesla Coil Halloween Project-Part 3-Tip of the Day

Photo 1-Substrate for scaffolding

It seems like just yesterday since I started posting about the new Halloween project.  Things are moving along slowly.  Some projects go quickly and others go slowly for a while and then suddenly everything starts coming together.  I think the Tesla coil project is going to be the latter type of project.  There are a lot of components that create the whole.  It will take a lot of detail work on each piece before the project shows a lot of progress.  The project is moving along.  I have put in several hours of work into it, but you can hardly tell at this point.

Photo 2- Paper mache, gesso, and paint

In my last blog post I had mentioned that the larger spheres on the pillars made the pillars look spindly and that I wanted to raise the height metal support in order to change the scale of the piece.  I have come up with a plan for that.  I have some of the 1 & ½ inch diameter dowel left over from making the legs for my folk art pig project.  I plan to slice off 3 inch segments and use them as pillars underneath the ball feet of the metal stand.  Three inches does not sound like a lot, but when you are talking about increasing the scale of the figures in the diorama by three inches, you have really increased its size and it will be a lot easier to work with them.  The increased size will allow for more detail on each figure, and for this piece, a lot of information will be transmitted through the details. 

Photo 3- Taped for painting stripes.

To keep the copper coils from appearing too spindly, I have decided that they should be surrounded by a scaffolding support structure.  The inspiration for the support is Tesla’s Wardenclyffe Tower.  If you go to:    http://images.google.com/ and input Tesla’s laboratory you will see a picture of the tower in the photos of the laboratory.  (When I was a kid scary movies had the quintessential mad scientist and his laboratory with electricity sparking everywhere.  I did not know that they were modeled so closely on reality.  This lab is really creepy.)   However, this is a Halloween piece so rather than paint the scaffolding to look like metal I am painting it orange and black to tie it in with the Halloween theme.  

Halloween themed colors.

The orange color I am using is not the yellow–orange color that is used in connection with Halloween now.  In keeping with the theme of an earlier time, I am using a deeper red-orange that was the popular Halloween color in the early 19^th century.  The red-orange and black combination is somewhat discordant.  That actually fits with the time period historically and with superstitions and beliefs about Halloween that were present in that era.  We had a lot of immigrants entering the United States and they brought with them old world superstitions about scary spirits being about on Halloween.   Hopefully, the color combination will add unspoken information about that subject.

So what I have been working on this week is the scaffolding.  At this point it is still in individual pieces and in the process of being painted.  To create the scaffolding I pieced together straight craft sticks with masking tape.  (Photo 1)  The sticks are not completely straight.  Some of the sticks are warped or have a curve one way or the other.  I think that this will give the impression of being a little ramshackle and make the piece look a little whimsical.  It also ties in with the theme of a somewhat down on its luck traveling show. 

Once the craft sticks were taped together, I covered them with two layers of paper maché.  Once dry, each stick was painted with gesso to seal them.  Then I gave them a base coat of the red-orange paint.  (Photo 2)  After that I marked off segments and taped them with blue painters tape.  The remaining open segments were painted black and then the blue tape was removed.   (Photo 3)  It does not seem like that much work was completed, but creating the strips and painting them has taken quite a few hours.  I have not yet started on the cross bracing.  Once the pieces are all painted the scaffolding will go up and the piece will appear to have more substance to it.

Tip of the Day:  Painting Stripes Using Painters Tape

When you use painters tape to create stripes, make sure that the edge of the tape is firmly sealed.  If the edges are not firmly stuck down paint can seep under the edge and the edge will not be sharp.  On a small project like the one above, use your fingers to press the tape down firmly.  On a larger project such as a wall, use a brayer.

   

Faux Tesla Coil Halloween Project Part 2

I started my artistic rendition of the Tesla coil by wrapping copper wire around the metal stand.  The metal spheres on the tops of the pillars could have stood alone as accurate representations of a Tesla coil spheres.  However, they did not have the stage presence of the toroid shape that is being used in large Tesla coils today.  I decided that the thing to do would be to exaggerate the size of the spheres in order to draw more attention to them. 

My next move was to decide what size the spheres ought to be.  That was a rather hard decision to be making at this point.  The stand that is the base of the coil is not an ideal height.  If I kept it at that height, I will be working with really small figures as I move on to the detail of the piece.  If I wanted everything else to be on a larger scale I had to figure how to raise the height of the piece.  Once I figured that part out, I figured the size the spheres should be in relation to that height.  Of course, once the spheres became larger, the pillars looked too spindly.  I’ve determined the fix for that also, but I’ll blog more about it later as I apply that fix. 

Coils look spindly in relation to spheres.

I also had to determine what I was going to use to make the spheres.  There were a number of options, but some worked better than others.   I started with foil, but I could not keep the size consistent between the two spheres.  My next thought was Styrofoam balls, but I could not find them in the size I wanted.  Plus, they came in a bag of a dozen and I only needed two.  I kept going through options most of which were too big or too small.  It finally occurred to me that I had something at home that was the right size if I could just make it work over the existing sphere.  At home I had some medium sized glass Christmas ornaments.  The size was right for the project, but the neck of the glass ball would not fit over the sphere.  That was something I could work with though.

I determined the diameter of the metal sphere on the stand by using a pair of calipers.  I marked the measurement on the Christmas ball.  I covered the glass ornament with masking tape everywhere other than the area marked off as the opening.  Then I used a pair of pliers to break off the neck of the Christmas ornament.  Once the glass was out, I added more masking tape around the area of the broken off glass so that the glass was completely taped.

The glass globe was still quite fragile, so I covered it with about an eighth inch layer of paper clay.  After the globe was covered, I checked to make sure that I could still get it over sphere at the top of the pillar.  I had to make a couple of adjustments, but eventually I was able to produce a sphere that I could fit over top of the existing sphere.  Of course the diameter of the opening is wider that what was up there in order to slip it on.  So now I had to tape and glue the sphere to keep it in place.   It took some patience, but eventually I had the spheres set where I wanted them.  They still seemed a little wobbly up there, so I covered the sphere and pillar with a layer of paper maché.  Now they are quite firmly attached.

Once I was satisfied that the spheres were firmly in place, I gave them two coats of silver metallic craft paint.  I will put a coat of sealer on the spheres at this point.  There will be more detail added later, but I want to make sure that this segment of the project is well sealed now because it may be more difficult to do it later.

The biggest challenge of the project is not to make a representation of a Tesla coil.  The biggest challenge is to be able to blend this into the theme of Halloween.  That will come later in the project.

Next blog:  Other pieces of the diorama.

Faux Tesla Coil Halloween Project

The globes for the faux Tesla coils.

 I have been working on the details of my Halloween Project.  If you read my last post, you know that I plan to have an artistic rendition of a Tesla coil in it.  I have been doing some background reading on Tesla, Faraday, and Edison to try to get a feel for the early electrical experimentation.   I wanted to understand the look of the early electrical machines.  It has been interesting reading. 

The Halloween card I mentioned in my last post caused me to start thinking about life in the 1930’s.  I also wanted to get a feel for what was happening then.  By that time, most cities had electricity and were beginning to use electrically powered street lamps. Two out of three city homes had electrical service.  Only about ten percent of rural and remote homes had commercial electricity.  Outside of the cities and suburbs people either lit their homes with gas, used lanterns, or a small generator.  Innovation was coming quickly as people embraced electricity for everyday use.  I wanted to put some of this idea of change into my Halloween project.

To get into the spirit of my Halloween piece I thought about what entertainments were available in the 1930’s.  They had radio, and the movies.  The 1930’s were also at the end of an era in entertainment known as vaudeville.  There were still traveling shows and circuses that moved from town to town.  Vaudeville probably played in saloons or some type of hall.  Circuses still used tents.  In small towns with little in the way of entertainment, a traveling show or circus coming to town was a big deal.   I decided that I had to get some of this idea of a traveling show into my piece somehow.  

As you have probably guessed, my Faux Tesla Coil Halloween project will have a “mad scientist” type character in it.  However, it will be an anthropomorphic pumpkin as a mad scientist.  The setting for the piece will not be the mad scientist’s laboratory though.  The basis of the piece will be a traveling show.  My anthropomorphic pumpkin scientist will be demonstrating the wonders of electricity and the amazing Tesla coil.  I’m also imagining the traveling show to be a little outdated.  It will be using older technology.  In this case a steam generator to power the electricity.  The show would have to bring its own generator and of course they don’t have money for the most up to date equipment.  To tie it into the Halloween theme, the colors of the piece will have a lot of orange and black.  And, of course, it will contain a hissing black cat, as this was the inspiration for the piece.

I’ve started to work on the piece a little bit.  I found a piece of scrap wood for the base.  I have also done a little work on the metal support.  Although the balls on top of the pillars reminded me very much of the steel globes on early Tesla coils, I decided that they needed to be exaggerated for its artistic representation.  That is about all I’ve had time to work on so far.

Next blog:  How I created the “steel” globes.

It’s September and My Thoughts Turn to Halloween!

It may seem a bit early to some to start thinking about Halloween, but if you love Halloween like I do you know that it is never too early to be starting a Halloween project.  My folk art projects and dioramas can be pretty complex at times and sometimes I’m working up to the last minute.  I’d rather have it done sooner so I can enjoy it longer before putting it away.  So I’ve learned to start earlier than the beginning of October.  Some years I make only one project, other years I may make a couple.  Since I only work on these projects in my spare time, I always have more ideas than I have time to make them.

Since my last project was started from a flat piece of paper and built up from there, I decided to do something with found objects this time.  Once in a while it is nice not to have to reinvent the wheel.  So I started prowling the aisles of my local thrift store looking for something that would serve as a support for the piece.  I saw an unusual metal stand, but it was really expensive so I thought I’d go home and think about what I might do with it before I purchased it.  I gave it some thought and returned to the thrift store to purchase the stand.  Unfortunately, someone had already purchased it.  So I started over again looking at different metal pieces that might work in a project.  

 

I found a smaller stand with some interesting features.  (Photo 1.   I was so excited about getting started that I started wrapping the stand in copper before I took its picture.)  It is metal, probably aluminum, and has metal balls on the feet and the top of the pillars.  (Photo 2)  It also had some type of decorative curlicue on the base, but I wasn’t really interested in that.  To me, this base practically screamed “Tesla Coil!”  I really had no clear idea beyond that, but I purchased the stand and began the process of figuring out what I was going to do with it.  It doesn’t look like a Tesla Coil to you?  It will by the end of the project.

The start of my creative process for this piece was to get some inspiration.  I went to http://images.google.com/  and input Tesla coils into the search box.  They have some absolutely amazing photos of Tesla coils in action.  If you have never seen one of these devices, you should take a look.  It will give you a much healthier respect for electricity.

Once I had satisfied myself that I knew how I wanted to represent a Tesla Coil, I then had to ask myself:  “How any of this applied to Halloween?”  There is a rather obscure connection.  In the 1930’s the Biestel Company had put out an orange and black Halloween card with a silhouette of a hissing black cat.   The cat’s fur was shot through with electric bolts to represent its fur all fluffed up.   I’d seen it in a book on Halloween collectibles.  So here was my connection to Halloween.

My next questions were: “Was there any significance to this unusual card?  What was happening with electricity at that time that might prompt the creation of such a card?”  (Yeah, I’m a history geek too.)  There is an historical connection.  In 1936, one of the projects of the New Deal was the Rural Electrification Act.  It brought electricity, and later telephone service, to rural and remote locations.  (This project actually lasted from 1936 to 1994.  So, if you live in a rural or remote location in the United States and have electricity and telephone service, say thank you to President Roosevelt and the New Deal.)  So now I have my connection between Tesla Coils and Halloween.  All that is left is to work out the details. Check back for my next blot post about that.

   

My husband was really excited when I started talking about Tesla Coils.  He thought I was going to build a real one and put it into my art work.  He was very disappointed when I told him it was only going to be an artistic representation of a Tesla Coil.  Seeing his disappointment, I actually contemplated the possibility of building a small one.  I decided against it because some of the project will be paper maché over metal armature.  While the possibility of building a piece of art that ignites itself and burns itself to the ground has some appeal from a burner project standpoint, it really is not my plan for this project.  But, I’ll file that idea away for some future.

Next blog:  Halloween Tesla Project Part One