Goblin Halloween Diorama- Part 11

I have been working on the door of the diorama for the last few days.  My vision for my door was inspired by doors on abandoned buildings.  When buildings are abandoned, they eventually become grimy and develop mold.  Water gets into cracks and seeps into the wood.  Mold develops if the wood stay wet.  This is what I am trying to portray on the house in this piece. 

The door is only two and a half inches high.  Working that small presents some challenges.  It can be difficult to hold on to tiny pieces.  Sometimes I use tweezers.  The door is not intended to open, it will be glued to the wall.  The action in the diorama will be outside of the abandoned home.  Gluing it to the wall solves a few problems.  I won't have to create working hinges or use materials that will allow the door to swing. 

The door is constructed from poster board.  I cut three rectangles from the poster board and glued them together.  It looked a little plain.  I originally put some raised strips around the perimeter, but they were too large.  The scale looked off.  I removed those strips and replaced them with one-eighth inch strips of poster board glued vertically.  That worked, but it was still a little plain for a front door.  I added strips around the perimeter again, but they were smaller this time.  That worked. 

Before painting the door, I gave it a coat of glue to help waterproof it.  After the glue was dry, the door was painted with a diluted black paint: 1:12 dilution.  The paint allowed to run into the cracks, then lifted off with a paper towel.  I kept applying paint and lifting off until I had the door looking as I wanted it to look.  There was one moment when I hit the oops too much.  I scrubbed to lift off, and a portion of the strip peeled off.  I had to repaint that area.  Fortunately, it did not ruin the door. 

The door knob is a lesson in why I never want to throw anything out.  Regular readers know that I did a major purge of my junk stash recently when cleaning up after making home repairs.  My studio was so full of little bits of this and that, I was finding it hard to move around.  Something had to go.  Anyway, the door needed a door knob.  A seed bead was just the right size.  Unfortunately, the box of miscellaneous bead bits were one of the things that were donated to an art group.   The door knob was all that was needed to complete the door.  I ended up cutting up a shell and bead necklace to get the one seed bead I needed.  The bead was glued on and painted with a mixture of antique bronze and metallic espresso paint.  When everything was dry, I gave the door a coat of varnish.  After the varnish dried, I glued the door to the building.  

Up until now, the blog has mostly been about the construction of the house.  The building is just the first part of the diorama.  The diorama has a story to tell that goes beyond the construction of its individual parts.  Once the house is complete, the story will start to develop as I add in the other items of the diorama.  There is much more to come.  I think the diorama will turn out to be an interesting piece.  More on the story in future blog posts.

The next step will be to put the clapboards on the house.  I should have more on that in the next blog post. 

Goblin Halloween Diorama - Part 10- Field Project

Windows in place.

Since Wednesday I have been working on the windows.  Regular readers may recall that my Plan A did not work as well as I had hoped.  Plan B worked well.  I have all the windows in now.

The broken window.

I began by building the muntin bars.  That is the word for the pieces of wood that hold the individual panes of glass within the window.  I had to look that up because I could not remember what it was called.  I was thinking mullions, but that was not quite right.  The house in my diorama is an older home, and it has the windows with multiple panes of glass.  Unlike real windows which have the glass set in to the wood and held with glazing points, my muntin bars are just for looks and to keep the "glass" from bowing inward into the building.

The muntin bars are made from wooden toothpicks.  The building is made from foam core board, essentially a thin sheet of styrofoam with a rigid plastic sheet on each side.  I cut a toothpick slightly larger than the width of the window.  (Fortunately the pieces did not have to be exactly accurate.  That is hard to do when working on such a small scale.) 

Field 7-27-2014

Then I dipped each end of the toothpick into some glue and shoved it into the styrofoam.  If it wasn't quite even, I pushed until I had it in the right spot.  The foam moved out of the way very easily while still giving a little support.  Once I had it where I wanted it, I added in a little extra glue.  Then I cut the vertical pieces and dipped them in glue.  One end was butted up against the horizontal toothpick and the other was pushed into the Styrofoam.  After everything was in place and the glue had dried, I painted the bars with some diluted black paint in the same strength as I painted the boards that will become the clapboards.  At the moment, they look a little light compared to the black paint on the foam core board.  They will look better when the clapboards are in place.  They may still be a little lighter, as they are a different type of wood.  That is okay.  The windows would be protected slightly protected by the eaves and would not be subject to as much direct weathering.

Once the muntin bars were in place I cut a piece of a clear report cover and glued it over the hole for the window.  Everything went on easy enough.  Before gluing the plastic piece on I gently (emphasis on gently because all you need is to barely brush the surface) brushed the clear plastic with some fine grain sandpaper).  The plastic is so clear that it was hard to tell it was there.  A very light brushing with the sand paper gave it a look of an older window that has been etched by blowing grit and bad weather.  Besides, this is a house in disrepair.  Its windows should be dirty.  I used a craft knife to cut a small hole in the window as if a pane had been broken out.  I may go back and do more of that. 

I will say that you have to use a little caution when you put the glue around the window frame.  The glue will mush out from under the clear plastic and tended to make a mess on the "glass" of the window.   A little trial and error showed that placing the glue back about an eighth inch from the edge kept most of it from getting onto the window pane.  The glue dries clear, but it is still visible.  I guess it looks a little like there is dirt built up here and there.  Once the clapboards are on, you won't see the edges of the window any more.

So things are progressing.  Next, I will be working on the door.  More about that on the next post.

It's Sunday, so it is time to post the latest picture of the field. It is raining and foggy today.  The temperature is 71 degrees Fahrenheit.  We have rain and fog.  Winds are from the South South West at six miles per hour.  The humidity is 90%  Thunderstorms are expected by noon.

It is strange that I should choose to do the weekly photo project of the field the year that things get weird there.  When I started the project on the first day of winter I had no idea that I would be doing anything other than shooting pictures of growing crops.  Something is starting to grow in the field, but I cannot tell what it is.  The grass buffer is deep enough that I can't quite see what it is.  Although some things are growing, and are now taller than the grass that is in with it; not every place that was plowed has something growing.  If you look closely at the photo, there is a black wheel barrow towards the upper right hand side of the picture.  Although the field was plowed by a tractor, the soil amendments are being worked in by hand.  It seems to be taking quite a while.  It is not business as usual in this field this year.  Intensive organic farming perhaps?

Goblin Diorama - Part 9- Book recommendation

The diorama is in the same state as it was last time I posted.  I have done some work on creating the window panes for the windows, but I was not satisfied with the result.  The panes were too translucent with the method I was using.  I'll have to come up with some other way to make the window panes.  I was hoping that once the glue was completely dried that it would be clear.  It turned out to be milky.  Since it did not work, I won't describe the process.

I have to figure out another way to make window panes.  I have a couple of ideas.  The article I read about making an aged building was not helpful here.  The author purchased windows manufactured to scale from a company that sells model railroad materials.  I hope to have a prototype window completed in time for my next blog post on Sunday.

Since I am a little short on content today, I would like to recommend a book.  As I have mentioned in a number of posts, we live in an area that is frequently hit by storms that knock out our power.  When the power is out, we have to rely on alternate forms of cooking: camp stove, charcoal grill, propane cooker or when the generator is on we can heat in the microwave.  The book, Apocalypse Chow, by Jon Robertson with Robin Robertson is a cookbook with creative recommendations for what to cook when the power is out.   It is a worthwhile read for anyone who thinks that they might be in a prolonged situation where they are out of power.

The recipes in this book are vegetarian, but you could supplement them your choice of canned tuna, chicken, ham, or spam.  The recipes appear to be creative and flavorful which is a real morale booster in long term power outages.  Better still, for the most part, they can be made with canned goods and packages that you might reasonably expect to have in your pantry.  It also contains lists of items to keep on hand and other useful information.  Having been in a number of storms where I was without power for a couple of weeks, I can definitely say that it would have been  worthwhile to have had these recipes.  It has given me a new mindset on survival food.

My friends sometimes kid me about my emergency preparedness.  No doubt they have tired of my bringing it up in conversation.  One of my friends never took me seriously until a storm knocked out power and damaged the plant that delivers the drinking water for the area.  She told me later that as she and her husband sat alone in the dark, with little drinking water or food and no way to flush the toilet that she thought of me breaking out the MREs (Meals, Ready to Eat).  You should have seen the look on her face when my husband said, "We never got down to the MREs.  Yes, I do keep a few days supply of them.  In a real emergency, they are worth every penny.  Every few years I have to reorder.  In theory, they are good for many years, but loose lose quality over time.  I have heard that they are edible but horrible after five years.  I've never tested out that theory.  I would just rather reorder.

While I am on my emergency preparedness soap box, I would like to suggest to people that they take a good hard look at their first aid kit.  Most people have only a few band-aids and a tube of Neosporin.  If this is you, you should really consider upgrading by adding materials for larger wound care.  Next time you go to your pharmacy or department store, check out how many boxes of first aid supplies they have.  Generally, they have a few of this and a few of that, usually stacked no more than four of five boxes of any one thing.  These days, stores don't keep overflow supplies in the back.  They reorder from a regional warehouse.  In a hurricane, earthquake, or flood those few supplies are going to be gone in an instant; if you can reach them at all.  It could be days before new supplies are delivered.  Be prepared by having the right type of supplies in advance. 

Well, enough said on that.  Check back on Sunday for the latest on the diorama.

Goblin Halloween Diorama - Part 8- Field Project

Stained craft sticks for clapboards.

I have had a fair amount of time to work on the diorama this week.  Although it does not look it, that pile of sticks in the first photo represents several hours worth of work.  I started cutting the rounded tips off the craft sticks last week and sanding them.  I developed quite the blister on my little finger from the scissors during that process.  I also sanded the sticks with a sixty grit sand paper because they were too smooth.  I wanted the wood to look worn and rough.  The sanding also removed some of the clear polyurethane from the sticks.

Scored to look like wood grain.

As I had mentioned in one of the very early posts on this diorama, I had read an article on how to make buildings look aged in a model railroad magazine.  I'm not trying to follow the instructions exactly, but work with the general gist of the idea.  In the article, the writer said that he had scored his planks with some sort of toothed tool.  I don't remember the name of it six months down the road, but I don't have one.  But I thought that he was on to something with scoring the planks, so I scored the planks I made with a sharp stylus.  I tried to score four lines into each plank on both sides of the planks.  I used enough pressure to scratch in a line, but held the stylus loose enough that the stylus could follow the contours of the wood grain.  This took a while since I was scoring them one line at a time.

Old barn used for color inspiration.

Field 7-20-2014

Once all the planks had been sanded and scored (I sanded first because I did not want to sand out my score lines.) I stained them with thinned black paint.  I remembered that the magazine article had said he used 1 part paint to 10 parts water.  I tried that, but only it looked dark.  Usually acrylic paint dries darker than it appears when it is wet.  In this case the paint dried lighter, and it looked too light so I changed it to a 1 part paint to 12 parts water and gave the sticks two coats.  The effect I was trying to get was the color of wood in old abandoned buildings.  I am not totally satisfied with the color, but it is close.  The old building in the third picture is more or  less the color I was shooting for.  The stain soaked into the grooves I had scratched into the sticks, and they really do look like old wood.  I'm putting up a close up of a stick so you can see the grain, but I am not sure how the resolution will look online.

Morning Glory bloom.

Other than that, I cut out the windows in the building.  The building is painted black inside as well.  I did not cut out the door because the door will be pasted to the front.  I am not planning on having the door open and close.  That is about as much work as I could get done this week.  This week I will be working on building the door and windows.  After that the clapboards go on. 

Today's field project picture looks much the same as last week.  I don't see anything coming up in the furrows that have been plowed in the field.  I think some of the vegetation coming up in the foreground might be mustard greens.  Most of it is just grass and weeds.  Even though the field has been plowed and mowed, the native vegetation is still hanging on.  I saw the first blooms of morning glory flowers this morning.

Goblin Halloween Diorama - Part 7

Only a little progress so far this week, but after my long weeks of creative inactivity while we were repairing the house, it feels as if I have made major progress.  I am working on the clapboards for the house.  It is not just a matter of gluing a few craft sticks to a box.  It is really a fairly involved process.

I am using craft sticks that I purchased at Walmart.  They are described as premium craft sticks.  They are very nice craft sticks. The sticks are sanded smooth and coated with what I am guessing is clear polyurethane.  For most projects, they would be ideal.  For this project, they need a little work.  Since I am trying to make a dilapidated house with aged and peeling paint, a smooth surface is not going to look right.  The wood needs to be distressed. 

I began by cutting off the rounded ends.  That was not exactly easy.  The sticks are thick enough that cutting them off with a box cutter type knife took a number of strokes.  A coping saw was too large.  I could have used a cutting wheel on the Dremel tool, but I did not want to drag everything outside as it is already beastly hot and humid.  I suppose I could have done it in the studio, but I have just cleaned the place from top to bottom and I'm not ready to cover it in fine saw dust.  I used a heavy duty pair of kitchen shears.  It took an uncomfortable amount of pressure, but I justified it by telling myself that I was improving my grip.

My original plan was to save these rounded pieces to use as scalloped shingles for the roof.  At this point I am thinking about changing that to something else as many of the small rounded pieces cracked in half when they were chopped off.  The pieces are very small.  I would be cutting up a whole lot of craft sticks just to get the tiny ends if I wanted to do the roof that way.  Yes, a Plan B is definitely in order.

Anyway, once I chopped off the ends of the craft sticks, I had a plank; the plank will be the clapboards.  I did not worry overmuch about the planks being even.  The clapboards will have to be staggered so that you won't have lines running down the house.  At this point the process for distressing the wood begins.  As I mentioned above, the craft sticks are very nice.  I need the wood to look old.  My first task was to sand the wooden sticks with 60 grit sand paper to rough them up.  That is actually where I am in the process at the moment; about a third of the way through the sanding.  I expect to finish the sanding this week.  I'll be blogging about the next step in the distressing process on Sunday.  By the way, if you would rather not make the planks yourself, you can purchase planks in scale to various model train scale sizes from hobby shops and internet sites that offer model railroad gear.  I don't know how much they cost as I did not make the trek across the city to the hobby shops.  I did not search the internet because I suspected that the shipping and handling costs would be high on such a small item.  I expect that it would be more costly than craft sticks though.

Getting back into the studio has been an interesting process.  After I completed the Shaman Staff piece, I had hit a patch of burn out.  I was having trouble coming up with ideas.  When that happens, the best thing to do is take a break for a bit, then work in a new medium for a while even if you don't feel like working on anything.  Eventually one of two things will happen: you might find you like the new medium and be inspired with new creativity, or you will be glad to get back to doing what you previously enjoyed with renewed interest.  However, if you have a choice, don't choose to rebuild half your house for your creative endeavor.  Although I was frustrated that I could not get into my studio to work, I am now actually somewhat glad now that I had a project just started in the works when things went south with the house.  At least I had something to come back to when I was able to return to the studio.  It gave me a starting point other than staring at a blank wall trying to figure out what I wanted to work on.  Since I had been in a bit of a creative blank spot before the plumbing disaster that befell our house, I feared that it might still be there once I was back in the studio.  When creativity has been your constant companion for many years, it is rather scary when suddenly you can't come up with anything you want to work on.  However, with a project just started sitting on the table, it gave me a starting point.  I can feel my creative energy returning.  If I could describe the feeling, it would be as if a large
piece of iron machinery such as an engine had been shut down and allowed to grow cold.  When started up again, the engine slowly starts and warms up before it come up to full speed.  Finally, the moment comes when the engine is warm and you can throw it into full speed.  That is what it feels like when you come out of creative burn out.  The ideas are flowing again and everything feels as it should.  I'm glad I am back to being able to work again.  Now I have more ideas and plans than I have time for.  I'm glad that things are getting back to normal.

Goblin Diorama - Part 6

This week I worked on putting together the house for the diorama.  Last week I had blogged that I was having a bit of trouble with the dormer.  It is fixed, but in the process of fixing it, the dormer became larger and is a little over sized for the house.  In this case I feel that I can live with that because the theme of the diorama is supposed to have a feel of things being not right.  As a Halloween diorama about goblins, an off kilter house fits right in.

Field 7-13-2014

Field on 6-29-2014

The house is foam core board that I put together with hot glue.  I painted it black thinking that when I put in windows, it would appear to have some depth.  Now I am not sure that it was such a good idea.  Perhaps I should have only painted the areas of the windows black.  The next step is to add clapboards.  They will be hot glued to the house also.  Herein lies the problem with painting the house: the hold of the glue is only as strong as the coat of paint.  It may not be a problem.  The clapboards will be made from craft sticks, which are not very heavy.  If it does turn out to be a problem, I have a Plan B.  Regular readers may have guessed what Plan B is; add a layer of papier mache.  However, until proven otherwise, I will go ahead with the original plan.  After all, if worst comes to worst, I'll just cut up some more foam core board.

That is about as far as I have gotten this week.  July is a busy month for me and my time in the studio is limited with so much going on.    Things will slow down after this week, and I expect to make better progress soon.  Being away from the studio for so long has changed my habits, and I need to get back to my old schedule.

It is Sunday, and that means that it is time for another field photo.  Today's photo was taken at 9:00 am.  The temperature is 80 degrees Fahrenheit.  Winds are from the South South West at 9 miles per hour.   This photo was taken a little later than normal. I usually try to get out about 8:30 am.  By 9:00 am the sun has risen high enough that the field is no longer shadowed by the trees.  It is humid this morning.  Humidity is 70%.  Things look much drier.  We have have very little rain and afternoon temperatures have mostly been in the upper nineties, with a number of days pegging in at over 100 degrees (Fahrenheit).  Our hottest day was 102 degrees.

I did not post a photo last Sunday due to being on vacation.  It seems as if I missed a critical week.  There have been many changes to the field.  The last photo I posted showed that the field had sprouted grass and something which I thought might have been beans.  Since then, most of that has been plowed under.  The area has been further divided into small plots.  A few green areas have been left within each plot and a generous border was left close to the street.  I am guessing that the farmer is practicing erosion control.  I would consider this a good practice.

Check back on Wednesday for new photos of the house of the diorama.

Goblin Diorama - Part 5

Today's blog post is a bit late.  I have had a  busy morning.  At least I am able to get to it today.  I have only done a small amount of work on the diorama since the last blog post because I have been out of town. 

As I posted last time, I sketched a pattern for the components of the house on graph paper and then transferred the patterns onto foam core board.  Since then I cut out all the pieces for the house.  Today I will be putting the pieces of the pattern together to build the house.  I am hot gluing the pieces together.  The hot glue works well to bond the pieces of foam core.  Getting the foam core apart if a mistake is made is another story altogether, but it does work. 

I am having a little bit of trouble with the dormer.  It is not exactly as I would like it to be.  I am going to have to make a modification to the pattern.  It is just a matter of working with it until I get things to settle in the right place. 

By my next blog post I will have completed of the shell of the house.  I'll post a photo of it then.

No Post Due to Holiday

It is a holiday weekend, so there will be no blog post today.  Check back on Wednesday, July 9th for the next post.

Goblin Diorama-Part 4

Drafted onto Foam Core.

This has been a busy week for me, and I have only had a little time to devote to working on the diorama.  I have drafted the basic shapes for the house of the diorama onto some foam core board.  The foam core will serve as a support for the wooden structure.  It will be rigid enough to support the wood, but is very light weight.  Perhaps more importantly, I happened to have a sheet on hand, left over from some other project.  It saves me the expense of purchasing some balsa wood or other material to make the house.  I guess we shall see how this works out as things go along.

Cardboard Mock up.

At the moment, I did not have a piece of scrap board to use as a base, so I purchased a piece of pine shelving.  It was quite long, so I had the hardware store cut it in half for me.  I guess that means there will be at least one more diorama in my future.  I need to sand the edges before I can do much else with the build.

There is a tropical storm off the coast and it is headed this way.  At the moment it looks as if it will only brush the coast.  Everyone on the east coast is watching the weather.  July 4th weekend is a big holiday weekend.  Many people have plans for picnics, parties, or are planning to head to the beach or to the mountains.  If the storm misses us, I will be celebrating the holiday with friends and family, and I don't expect I will be getting much done on the diorama.  If the storm turns inland with rain and high winds, I might have a lot of time to spend working on my project.  If I don't post about the project, it means we are probably without power after the storm.  I don't anticipate that I will have much time to work on things this week because I am getting ready for the weekend.  Most likely my next blog post on the diorama will be Wednesday, July 9th.