Painted Hypertufa Sphere Garden Art

Painted Hypertufa Sphere.

I am working on a project I began earlier this year.  I had made my first attempts at casting some Hypertufa Spheres.  (See my blog posts from May 5 2014 through May 14, 2014 to read about casting the Hypertufa Spheres and the recipe used for it.  The blog address is folkartbycaroljones.blogspot.com)  They were a whitish gray color.  They can be left in the garden as is, and will develop a patina over time.  However, why go for bland when you can add a pop of color?  I decided top paint the smaller of the two spheres I made just to see how well it stood up to weather and time in the garden using acrylic paints. An earlier project had shown that it was feasible.

Cast Hypertufa spheres.

I had made a project earlier in the year in which I had formed a concrete ball over a papier mache' base.  The ball was painted with Gesso, acrylic craft paints, and an outdoor acrylic sealer  after the concrete cured and I left it outside all summer.  It seemed none the worse for wear after being out in the sun and weather for most of the year.  The colors were as vibrant as the day they were set outside.  Unfortunately, casting the concrete was not as successful as I would have liked.  The method left the ball a little lumpy.  The idea worked, but I felt I could do better on the shape.  More experiments will be made sooner or later.

Painted concrete over papier mache' base.

Here at the end of the year I rarely get into a serious project.  With all the holiday activities and visits to
family and friends it is hard to find time to do a project that requires a significant commitment of time.  I still feel the need to be creative though, so I work on some project that I can work on here and there as time permits.  It seemed like a good time to do a fun painting project.  I decided to paint one of the Hypertufa spheres.  It is just something to play around with until after the first of the year.

Twine sphere.

I had been looking at NASA space pictures of the planet Jupiter.  They had shown some false color image photos so you could see the turbulence in the dust and gas filled Jovian atmosphere.  The colors intrigued me enough to try to paint the ball in similar colors.  I have not completed the ball yet, but the base layers are on and some of the colors are in place.  It is not meant to be an exact replica of the photos, but just a general idea of what the photos looked like.  I guess you could look at it and say that it is Jupiter.  The main thing is that I liked the umbers, siennas, and blue that made up the colors in the photo.  It was nice to put on dibs and dabs of paint as I saw fit without having to think about whether it was realistic looking.  It was just a fun paint day.  I still have more I want to add though I expect to finish the painting and seal it today.  Once the sealer has had time to cure I'll set it outside and see what happens to it during the winter.  I'll post another photo once I complete painting the sphere.

I forgot to show a picture of my twine sphere last blog post when I was blogging about projects completed this year.  I'm posting it here just for the record.

Just a reminder.  Starting next week my blog will have posts on Sundays and Thursdays.  A scheduling conflict is going to prevent me from posting on Wednesdays.

Stacked Hypertufa Garden Art

Painted stacked Hypertufa balls.

Last week I blogged that I was finishing up some partially completed projects.  One of them was to paint a project that I had made earlier in the year.  Earlier in the year I had cast some hypertufa spheres.  When the molds were filled, I had some hypertufa mix left over.  I decided that I would make make balls out of them, molding them by hand.  I thought that possibly I could make some decorative object with them.  At the time I really did not have a fully thought out idea, but it was either make something with it or throw the stuff in the trash.  So here is my project made from left over Hypertufa.

Tried to paint to look like granite and marble.

Trying for moss covered look on some.

I guess that I should begin by explaining Hypertufa.  It is a mix of concrete, portland cement, and vermiculite.  It is generally mixed with water as you would if mixing concrete.  The good thing about Hypertufa is that it is much lighter than concrete.  For example, a ten inch diameter sphere made of Hypertufa will way somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty to twenty-five pounds where a concrete sphere of that size would weigh close to ninety pounds.  If you would like to view my mixing proportions and comments on making and casting with Hypertufa, please read by blog posts dated from April 27th, 2014 through May 14, 2014 on this blog.  The actual blog address is folkartbycaroljones.blogspot.com
You can get to those dates by clicking on the month, which is on the right hand side of the

Before the balls were painted.

page.

Anyway, I made the small Hypertufa balls by patting them with gloved hands.  I left them to dry.  The small balls did not stay spherical.  The balls flattened on the bottom.  So I now had flattened balls.  Since the bottom was more or less flat, I decided to stack them up as you sometimes see rocks stacked in a Zen garden.  You could more or less get them to stay balanced with a little patience.  But why worry about them falling over every time you weed the garden?  If I could find a way to make them stay in place permanently then I would not have to spend time restacking them every time they were knocked over.  I
just happend to have the very thing, some pre-mixed thin set mortar.  You guessed it: I had it left over from another project.  The mortar held the stacked stones in place.  One of the stacked stones was overbalanced, and I had to break it apart and re-mortar it, but that was essentially my fault that I did not make sure what it check it as closely as I should have.  Because of that, I will have to go back and touch up one section.

I had stacked the balls early because I was unsure whether the mortar was going to work on this project or not.  It did.  Even if I had painted the balls first, I would still have to paint the mortar in between, so I am not sure that it would be better that way.  You can see the color of the thin-set mortar between the two balls where I made the repair.  Also, the hold might have ended up against the paint, you only have a hold on the coat of paint rather than the hypertufa.   So I can't really say that would be any better.

Anyway, I learned some useful information to pass on in regard to painting Hypertufa.  It is rough like cement.  I tried both liquid craft paints and heavier (student grade) acrylic artist paints.  Their different characteristics played out differently on Hypertufa.  The liquid paints were able to get into smaller areas easily, while the thicker artists paints generally stayed on the surface.  I found that I could get a more granular look to the balls if I painted first with a liquid paint base coat and then brushed a thicker paint coat over top of it.  I had fun experimenting with different techniques of dabbing on dots, smearing, and dry brushing on the paints.  Some I tried to make look like specific types of rock such as granite, basalt,  or marble.  Others I tried to make look as if they were moss colored.  It was fun.

I had hoped to show pictures of them sitting out in the garden, but it has been raining for three days.  Sometimes it has only been drizzle or fog.  Other times it was pouring rain.  This is part of that winter storm that has made a mess of things all throughout the South.  I'm really glad it is only rain. 
All in all, it has been too cold and wet to get outside.  So today's pictures of them is just on my worktable.  I will shop pic of them in the garden sooner or later.

Field Project - The Year in Photos

Field 12-21-2014

Last year at Winter Solstice I had an idea for the blog.  I decided that once a week I would post a photo of the field that I walk by every day.  I thought I'd share photos of the crops growing.  The field has been in production every year since I have lived here.  I thought it might be of interest to record the changes in the field from the beginning of winter, through the planting and growing season, and the decline of the field back through autumn and winter.

Field at Winter Solstice 2013

Well, surprise me!  No sooner had I started taking my weekly pictures than the field went up for sale.  No one purchased the field until well beyond the time crops are normally planted.  The new owner put in a few personal plots and left the rest of the field fallow.  So instead of having pictures of rapidly rising corn or soybeans I ended up taking pictures of what happens to a field as it is left lying fallow.

Field at Vernal Equinox 2014

I suppose that watching what grows in a field when it is left to itself is also interesting, but my photo project was not going as expected.  What I saw growing in the field were various weeds most of which I cannot identify.  I could identify a couple: mullen and jimpson weed.  The mullen sends up long spikes.  The jimpson weed has white trumpet shaped flowers in the spring and prickly pods in autumn.  Mustard plants sprang up in fields even though they were not intentionally planted.  A number of people do grow mustard and other greens around here, and I expect that the seeds were spread by birds. In the spring, Morning Glory flowers were seen along the edges of the field along with dandelions and buttercups.  The new owner kept the edge of the field mowed, so they did not take off as well as they might have.

Field at Summer Solstice 2014

Overall, I guess I was surprised at how rarely it was raining on Sundays, which was the day of the week that I took the pictures.  Some days it sprinkled, but only on two occasions was it raining hard enough that I had to take an umbrella with me.  Many days it was overcast, but that did not necessarily lead to rain.  I think I only have one picture of the field with snow on the ground.  We had more snow, but generally it melted before the day I was taking the picture. 

Today's photo was taken at 9:00 am.  The temperature was 38 degrees Fahrenheit.  Winds were calm.

Field Autumn Equinox 2014

Although we have had freezing temperatures overnight on many nights, the temperature has always come back above freezing during the day.  We have had a few days when the temperatures have stayed in the upper thirties, but most days the temperature has been in the upper forties to lower fifties.  I guess that accounts for why we have so much greenery still in the field. 

At this point, I am still mulling over whether I want to continue to take photos of the field for another year.

Field Winter Solstice 2014

On one hand, I would still like to do a long term project of the crops growing.  On the other hand, I am not so sure what the new owner's intentions are with the field.  The owner may plant in the spring as usual.  However, if his intention is to hold the land fallow until it can be used for organic farming, it could be another couple of years before anything is growing there except weeds.  I suppose in a worst case scenario, he decides to put up houses there.  I guess I will mull this over for another week before I make a decision.

I might add that one of the other reasons that I started this year long photo shoot was to try to engage artificial intelligence.  Last year I was surprised to see some animated photos stored in my photo section that I had not created.  The first photo was a series of photos I had taken of a walking stick I was working on.  The photos were pictures of moon phases that I had carved on a walking stick.  The animated picture showed the stick turning and showing the moon changing from full to waning crescent to new to waxing as the stick turned.  At first I thought someone had hacked into my account, but as I read on I came to understand that an artificial intelligence program had recognized the pictures as a sequence and had animated the photos.  On one hand, it was kind of cool, but on the other hand it kind of creeped me out as it meant that some sort of Artificial Intelligence was going through the pictures and possibly the text from my blog.  (This was before the whole Edward Snowden thing so at the time it was not generally known just how invasive that the internet turned out to be.)

The second animated photo was from a single shot.  It showed bare trees.  Although the text indicated that the scene was photographed in autumn, the AI had added snow falling.  Again kind of cool, but showed that it was interpreting what was in the photo, at least to the point that it could determine time of year.

The third photo was an interpretation of two similar pictures of our Christmas tree.  Our tree has fiber optics that change colors.  The AI was able to determine that the pictures were of the same subject but that there were color differences in the fiber optics.  It posted a photo to my account showing the lights twinkling.

These photos got me to wondering whether the AI could was only looking at an  individual blog post or whether it could take a look at a series of blog poss and could make determinations that it was the same scene taken over the course of time.  If so, could I signal the AI that I wanted it to give me an animated photo of pictures taken over time.  So the answer to that question is that it has not done so.  I have checked back regularly throughout the year.  Now I am posting a series of pictures to see if it will do so with a series of pictures posted on one blog post.  I'll let you know if it happens. 

It could be that the animated pictures were done to introduce a newly available program.  Or it could be that after the whole Snowden thing that it was dropped because people were so upset to learn about what was going on with the internet data gathering.  Or possibly there is another AI program that has decided that I am only posting innocuous art work and doesn't feel the need to spend resources on monitoring it.  So who knows what is really going on here.  Either it will give me the photo I am asking it to give me or it won't.  Hard to say what is going to happen here.  

Working on Older Projects - Photos

Stacked Hypertufa balls.

So earlier this year I was working on some Hypertufa spheres.  At the time, my husband and I were doing some major repairs to our home.  The Hypertufa spheres were cast in concrete, but that is as far as they were finished.

It is actually okay to leave the concrete spheres out year round.  They will eventually develop a patina.  It is also fun to decorate the spheres with varying media.  It all just depends on what you want to do with the sphere.  I'm thinking about painting some of the spheres.  I figure that I will start with some of the smaller ones and see how it goes before taking on a larger sphere. 

A piece cast from an old light globe.

I had some leftover Hypertufa after I made the spheres so I made some round(ish) balls.  I stacked the balls and glued them together with some thin-set mortar.  They look like stacked stones that you might see in a garden.  My intention was to paint them to look more like actual rocks.  And that is where that project has sat for some time as I became busy with other projects.  So here at the end of the year, I'm trying to finish them up so I can start the new year with all the old projects completed. 

Right now they are plain Hypertufa and don't look all that interesting.  I'm thinking that paint will add a bit of interest.  I plan to give the Hypertufa a base coat of Gesso, then a base coat of gray, and after that paint them with sponges to make them look like different types of rock.  Most likely they will look like granite, marble, basalt, and sandstone.  But who knows what will come about when the creative juices start flowing.

Waxing Lyrical Over Things Spherical

Zum balls with essential oils.

Last blog post I showed my completed Diorama.  Now I am on to new projects.   I have had a few waiting in the wings while my last two dioramas were in production. For my next project I am returning to one of my favorite cold weather projects a gazing ball.  I create gazing balls in the winter in anticipation of seeing them gracing the flower garden in the Spring.  Most of my gazing balls were completed before I began this blog.  This time I will be able to show the project step by step with photos and comments on the process as it progresses.  But before I can begin, I have to make trips out to the hardware store and the glass store.  So the project will begin shortly.

Lead crystal, quartz, and jet balls

In the mean time, I wanted to blog about my long term love of spheres.  Some people collect cars, others, matchbooks; in fact you can pretty much find a collector of just about any object under the sun.  Spheres are one of my collecting passions.  As with most collectors, it is all about the hunt.  No matter how many you have, the satisfaction is finding that next unique piece.

Various rock spheres.

I don't know that there is any deep psychological meaning to spheres, but I can say that wanting to have spheres is one of my very early memories.  I doubt that I was much older than four or five.  I used to walk with my grandparents to a little store a few blocks away.  On the way to the store, a house had spheres cut from white chalk.  There were four of them, one on each front corner of the property and one on each side of the walk leading to the house.  They were very white naturally.  They did not do anything accept sit there, but I can remember wishing I had some.  (The next house or so down had a sundial nestled among the flowers in the garden.  I was fascinated that you could tell time by the sun also, but I only have one sundial.)  Anyway, that is how far back my liking spheres goes.  And when I grew older, I started buying them, if I happened to see one that caught my eye.  I never found any spheres made from of chalk though. 

Crystal decanter top.

My latest acquisition came about this month while
Christmas shopping.  I walked into a little store that sells aromatherapy products, essential oils, creams and lotions.  They had these neat little wooden spheres that

Round glass and grout.

had been saturated in essential oils of frankincense and myrrh.  The suggested use was that you pop a ball into a drawer or in your car and allow them to scent the area.  When they run out of scent, you can rub or soak them in the essential oils to refresh them.  Instead of placing them individually in drawers, I put mine in a little bowl in my studio.  Five of them in one place was a bit much for the first few days.  The entire upstairs was scented with frankincense and myrrh.  In case anyone is interested in looking for the product, they are called  Zum Balls.  At the place I shopped, they only came scented in frankincense and myrrh.    They carried soaps and wand air fresheners in the same scent.  I do not know if they items come in other essential oils.  At least they did not have any other scents at the store.

Iridescent glass and grout.

I also have some crystal balls.  They are shown in the second picture The two larger balls are lead crystal.  The largest one is not exactly a sphere as it has a flattened bottom.  The two smaller milky looking ones are genuine quartz crystal balls.  I don't know if genuine quartz is getting harder to find, or if there is just a larger market for quartz, but the price on quartz crystal balls has doubled since I purchased them.  I was at a Gem and Mineral Show recently, but chose not to purchase another because the quartz balls in that size were $70.00 dollars and up.  Some of the spheres in other types of minerals were well over a hundred dollars.  I collect, but I also have a budget.  The small black ball is Jet, which is a form of petrified wood.

Stained glass and resin grout.

The third picture shows some of my spheres in other minerals.  The larger ones are Jasper.  The two smaller ones are lapis lazuli and snowflake obsidian.  I don't purchase them very often because that is a considerable amount of money tied up in little pieces of rock.  However, you never know when you might run across one at a yard or estate sale.  Maybe I'll be adding to that collection.  The people at the lapidary shop tell me that the egg shape is more collectable, and I do run into them more frequently.  Yes, I have a few of those too.  I prefer the natural color ones to one that have been dyed.

Oblong glass and clear resin for grout.

To be fair, the collection of inflatable spheres are there for other than collecting.  The larger two are used for exercise.  I also sometimes sit on the large ball rather than sit on a chair when I am sitting at my desk. I wish I had purchased a larger size though.  I can't type on the computer when I am sitting on the ball because it sits a few inches too low to make typing comfortable.  I have plans to use the two smaller balls in future art projects.  Until then, they serve as amusement for visiting children.  Stay tuned in, the balls will make it into art projects sometime soon.

Hypertufa balls.

Other spherical things have made it into home decor.  I have three decanters with spherical tops on them.  (I only photographed one.  Even the ends on my living room curtain rods are crystal balls, but I did not photograph them.  I also have a globe. I was thinking about taking it apart to use as a base for a gazing ball, but a bowling ball came my way, so that is now saved for another project.  The globe might end up remaining on its stand but covered in stained glass.  That would make an interesting display piece.

And finally, there are my stained glass gazing balls.  During the summer I put them outside.  Once the weather turns cold I bring them inside.  Some people have said that water can get into small fissures and freeze causing the  ball to crack.  Others have said that they leave them outside in winter and have had no problems.  They are a lot of work to make, so I bring them inside.  Why take chances?  In the winter, they sit in various spots in the living room.

I have also made a couple of balls out of hypertufa.  I tried different casting methods with each one.
  At this point it is undecorated.  That ball could be left outside all year in its natural state.  I keep thinking I am going to paint it, but so far I have not had the time.  I expect that if  left it outside, it would develop an interesting patina on its own.  I have even read that if you treat them with vinegar to remove change the Ph level that you can get moss to grow on them.  So many projects, so little time.

Anyway, my next few projects are going to be spheres in varying mediums.  I have some interesting things planned, so check back regularly.  I should have some new photos on Sunday.

Also, a heads up on a schedule change.  After the first of the year, I will be posting blogs on Sundays and Thursdays rather than Sundays and Wednesdays.  My husband started working from home on Wednesdays this year.  Unfortunately, Windows updates come on Tuesdays.  If the updates were posted after I get off the computer then I don't get them until Wednesday morning.  What has been happening is that on Wednesday morning his computer and my computer end up trying to download  the updates at the same time and it slows everything else down. In order for him to work, I have to postpone blogging until so late in the day that it is causing a schedule conflict in my day.  Because of this, I have decided to try blogging on Thursdays after the first of the year.  Maybe it will be better, maybe not.  I'll see how it goes.


 

Goblin Diorama Completed

Better late than never.   As regular readers know, I actually started the diorama early in the year.  However, a plumbing disaster caused me to pause for a while because we had to do some major rebuilding on the lower floor of the house.  Then, I decided to enter an art competition and spent many hours working on another project.  We also made quite a few trips to the cabin, as we are doing a floor to ceiling renovation up there.  This project took a back seat to all of those projects, so I guess I am actually lucky that I was able to complete it this year.

When I began the project, I had blogged that the inspiration for this project was a poem and a book of ghost stories.  The poem was "Little Orphant Annie" by James Whitcomb Riley.  It was a poem written about a real, and very scary event.  At one time there was something in this country called Orphan Trains.  Poor people were starving in overcrowded tenements.  War and Spanish Influenza (which we now know as a form of bird flu)  had left the country with thousands of orphans.  In an effort to give the orphaned children a home, they were placed on trains and sent out west to live with farmers.  Many of the orphans had successful placements and grew up to do great things.  For some, the situation was a living horror story.  The poem, "Little Orphant Annie"
was written about an orphan girl who came to live with a family.  She was an immigrant child or a child of immigrant parents, and shared her ghost stories and folk tales from the old country with her new family in the evening.  The poem has a refrain, (I am paraphrasing here, as it is written in dialect) "And the goblins will get you if you don't watch out!"  That part of the poem was the inspiration for creating a Halloween themed diorama featuring Goblins.

The book that also helped to inspire the diorama was called "Casting the Runes and other Ghost Stories."   The author's name was M.R. James.  The stories were set in the last century in England.  They are stories of ghosts, creepy creatures, and things that go bump in the night.  These stories differ from modern day stories in one aspect that is intuited rather than being pointed out.  In modern stories, the story seems to carry a reason why the event in the stories took place.  For example: in a hack and slash modern horror story the bad guy in the story might have been someone that was bullied or injured by someone in the story; or the event was caused by some action that was taken by one of the characters in the story.  In many of these Old World stories, the ghosts or scary creatures were there independent of any action taken by the character(s).  The ghosts or creatures were just there.  There was a separation of cause and effect, which lends to the horror in that the protagonist had little or no control over events  and could do little to ameliorate the effects that the creatures had on them.  So those creepy creatures made it into the diorama in the form of Goblins.

It was a bit of a coincidence that I ran across the book of ghost stories at the library.  I was actually researching how to make molds for casting plaster. The book popped up in the search because the title contained the word casting.  I had to check it out.  Who doesn't like a good ghost story once in a while?

I tried to incorporate a lot of symbolism in this piece.  Earlier blog posts go into the symbolism of the
house and the ravens.  To recap it here, to view the abandoned dilapidated house is to be confronted with fears of loss and fears of aging and abandonment.  The ravens represent our fears of our own inevitable demise.  There are ghosts on the trees.  One has a very human form, and may represent the former owner of the property, or the energy that the person had expended on the property.  The ghosts on the other tree do not have human form and are spirits or energies that have an effect us.  Perhaps the Goblins in the diorama are not just creepy creatures, but also represent the events in life over which we have no control.

Field 12-07-2014

The last piece I added to the diorama was the child dressed in his Halloween costume of a clown.  He stands viewing the old   abandoned house, the Goblins, the ghosts on the trees, and the ravens.  He is holding his arms out like a balance.  On one side he holds a Halloween staple, the candy carriers shaped like a pumpkin.  In the other hand he holds a fallen leaf.  He is existing as we all do; somewhere between the fun we make of death and dying at Halloween and the reality of the eventual end to our existence.  The diorama tells the story of a child coming to terms with the realities of our world and all that we must face as we travel through life as he contemplates the abandoned house.

The child's costume is that of the clown.  In one aspect he represents the clown or fool of a court in the Middle Ages.  The clown, or "Fool" as he was called was allowed to speak truths to the king or nobleman that other people could not or would not say to him.  In the diorama, this represents the taboo or uncomfortable feelings we have about speaking of this subject. 

In tarot, the Fool, is an interesting subject open to many interpretations.  Unlike the other cards of the Major Arcana, the card of the Fool is not numbered.  Some students of the tarot think the Fool should be at the beginning of the deck and interpreted as a person beginning a journey (or going through life).  Others think this card should be at the end and interpreted as someone who has passed through many events in life and now understands how little he or she really knows.  This person is now ready to continue on the journey with a new understanding of how little he or she really knows.  In other words, with a new perspective on how to continue on with the journey, hopefully on a higher spiritual plane than previously.

When I make a diorama, I like to tell a story, but also leave the viewer with questions.  As the viewer comes up with questions, the story unfolds in new ways as they try to answer them.  For example: Was the house abandoned and Goblins showed up when the place was empty, or was the house abandoned because of the Goblins?  Or: How did the window get broken?  As the viewer asks the questions, something is added to the story that can't be answered through the visual information provided.  The viewer has a mystery to which he or she can fill in the blanks with his or her own story.

So there you have it.  The new diorama.  Throughout the making of the diorama I have been using the working title: Goblin Halloween Diorama.  Now that it is complete, I have decided that the projects title will be Goblins Will Get You.

Today is Sunday, so it is time for a new field project picture.  Today's picture was taken at 9:10 am.  The temperature was forty-one degrees Fahrenheit.  Winds were from the North North East at fifteen miles per hour.

Mystery Build Competition Winners Announced

The Mystery  Build winners were released.  I did not win anything in the competition.  I really enjoyed the competition, and I encourage others to purchase a project and join in the fun.  The project is a great way to challenge yourself to figure out how to make something using bits and pieces.  Working in unfamiliar ways knocks you out of using a normal everyday methods and lets you look at things in a new way and awakens your creativity.  That alone is a worthwhile reason for purchasing the kit.

The following link is a link to the page that shows the 2014 Mystery Build winners.:  http://mysterybuild.com/past-art-contest-winners

You can also reach this page by going to Mysterbuild.com and clicking on the Past Winners button at the top of the page.

Sunday's blog post will have the latest photos of the diorama.  Please check back then.