Life Size Halloween Figure and Goblin Heads

 If you are interested in seeing how the figure was built, you can see it on this blog, by scrolling back to the dates of July 2108 through November 2018.   If you cannot scroll back to it from where you are viewing it, you can  input the following link:   folkartbycaroljones.blogspot.com         The entire build of the figure is there.          

I actually began this project two years ago by making the life-sized figure.  The initial concept was for the doll to be a dancer.  The doll has a wide stance, as if she is just moving into a hip bump dance step.  Her hand was raised because I had originally envisioned her holding either a fan or a scarf.  The more I worked on the project, the less enamored I became with making the doll a dancer, but I also wanted to keep the option open.  The idea evolved more into what would I do if this was a Halloween figure.  (As my husband says, "It's always Halloween here.  He is referring to my constant fascination with making Halloween projects)  I wondered if there might be a way for me to have the doll as a dancer and some type of Halloween figure.  I think that might be accomplished by having changeable costumes.  

From a distance, she almost looks real.

I worked on this doll up until the day of Halloween. The doll was built, but I had no costume for her.  I decided to paint a black leotard on her just so I would be able to get it set out for Halloween.  Then, of course, it rained.  I never even set the doll out.  At that point, I hit burnout from working on the project so extensively that I no longer enjoyed the process.  I decided to set the doll aside until I felt ready to take the project on again.  I spent a year and a half working on other projects.

This year we have all have had to deal with Corona virus.  While we have been in lockdown, I started working on some pâpier mâché Goblin heads.  The heads came out really well.  I decided that maybe this doll should be holding some Goblin heads.  I could picture them hung on a rope.  I started thinking of her as the "Goblin Slayer".  The doll was returned to my project list.

A closer view of the Goblin heads.

At the moment, she still has no costume.  I do not plan on going out shopping for fabric during a pandemic, so the robe will have to wait a bit.  In my mind's eye I am seeing her in a gray (possibly hooded) robe and a few accessories.  I will engineer it with some hook and loop tape so that the robe can be removed. At some point I will also make some type of dance costume.  For the moment, she will have to hang out in her ballet leotard.  I don't think there is any hurry, the general consensus so far is that Halloween trick or treating will not take place this year due to Covid-19.  A local county near us has already announced that the Trunk or Treat event has been canceled.  That will not stop me from decorating for Halloween though.

The PVC armature for this project.

Because I was thinking about this project as having multiple costumes, I decided to make the doll with a normal face.  As most Halloween figures have either ancient witch faces or scary faces, I I thought I could make a mask that I could put on with hook and loop straps that hide under her hair for when I want a different face. I will probably be working on that in the not too distant future.

I haven't blogged about the doll lately, but I thought I would mention that my husband refers to this doll as a "real life Chucky doll.  She has on a number of occasions punched him when he came to close without being wary.  She has also punched one of our friends while his back was turned.  Generally, she does not punch me, but she has banged me on the head a few times.

Halloween Goblin Heads Painted

I have been working on this project on and off all year.  After a few bumps in the road, I have finished painting the goblin heads.  I am pleased with the results.  There are always things I would like to have come out better.  Sometimes if I keep trying to "fix" a piece that I end up just making a mess.  So at this point I am calling the heads finished.  Note:  If you want more information on the construction of the heads, scroll back through my previous posts at folkartbycaroljones.blogspot.com   (I have been blogging about these heads since the beginning of the year.)

The heads were  made with hangers built in because they will be hung on a rope.  
 
I liked the color of the heads.  They have a lot greens and reds, giving the heads a mottled color.  Ithought I would blog a little bit about the painting in case someone might be interested in how to achieve that outcome.  When I was new to crafts, I thought I could just slap on one color of paint and it was done.  I was always disappointed with the outcome.  It took some time to learn how to paint a piece so that it was interesting.

The heads are made from paper mâché.  Before the heads were painted, I sanded them fairly smooth using a sanding block.  I don't do a lot of sanding, I mainly want to get rid of any flour paste lumps and high spots.  There are a number of low spots, but I was not trying very hard to get rid of them.  The low spots help with creating the mottled appearance.  What I was really trying for with the sanding was to call it good enough. 

After sanding, I gave the heads two coats of white Gesso.  The Gesso covers over the print on the strips of newsprint used to make the heads.  It also helps seal it and fills in some of the depth of the low spots.  I let the Gesso dry thoroughly between coats.

I used acrylic paints for the project, but they are better quality paints, not craft paints. 

The inside of the head was painted with Mars Black.

Base color and tooth detail.

The areas around the eyes, gums, and lips were painted with a mixture of Burnt Umber and Cadmium Red Light.  I actually had to paint them a couple of times because my first mix had too much red in it.  The red was too bright.  I ended up going over the areas with a washes of Burnt Umber until I could knock the color down some.

Brushing Raw Sienna over a small area.

The teeth were painted with four layers of paints.  The first layer was a mixture of White and Raw Sienna mixed with a little Pearlizing Medium.  I was hoping to give the teeth a more enameled appearance.  I was not that impressed with the results though.  The next coat was a watered down wash of Burnt Umber.  I selectively painted it into the crevices and low spots in the teeth to make them look dark and decayed.  The third coat was a stronger mix of Burnt Umber in only some of the crevices and low spots.  The last coat consisted of tiny dabs of straight Burnt Umber in even fewer spots.  The multiple coats of paint gave the teeth a lot of depth. 

Wiping off excess to leave paint in the low spots.

 The base coat for the heads was a mixture of Cadmium Yellow Light (dominant color) and Payne's Grey (mixing color).  I don't have the proportions, I just mix until I like the color.  It created a bright green. If I had added more Payne's Grey, it would have turned a more gray-green color.  However, I wanted the base coat to be very bright.  The translucent nature of the color also allowed more light to pass through and hit the bright white of the Gesso, allowing more light to bounce back through the paint.  My husband came in at that point and I told him it was only the base coat.  He said, "You would never know."  I could have stopped there, but I felt that I could do better than bright green.

Raw Sienna is dabbed on, then lifted off.

The mottled appearance was achieved by working in a small area at a time.  Using a bristle brush, I scrubbed on Raw Sienna on a few square inches, feathering the edges so that there would not be a hard edge.  As soon as the paint was on, I used a paper towel to scrub the majority of it off.  The paint tended to remain in the low areas, and leave only a thing sheen on the majority of the skull.  I might have to do some areas a couple of times to be satisfied with the result.  Next, working in the same area, I would use a smaller stiff brush to dab on dots of paint.  Then, I would carefully dab the dots of paint with a paper towel trying for a dab and lift without smearing the paint to far.  I think the results were satisfactory.  If I did not like it, I could wipe it off and repaint the area again until I did.

I let the heads dry completely for a couple of days just to make sure they were well dried.  After that, I gave it two coats of Exterior Satin Acrylic Sealer.  I would have preferred a Matte finish, but I had not been out to buy any due to the Corona lockdown.  I used what I had available.

These heads are part of a larger project.  Check back in about a week and I will have some new pictures of the project.


 

Halloween Goblin Heads Ready for Painting

Goblin heads ready for painting.

These heads are part of a larger project.  I am working on a life-size doll for Halloween.  She is supposed to holding up the heads of the Goblins.

I started the project thinking I would make some gruesome shrunken heads.  However, the project was not going well in a number of areas. Things were just not working as I planned.  Sometimes it is just better to figure out something better than the original plan.  So I changed my plan from shrunken heads to Goblins. 

A Coke can for size reference.

I had drilled holes into the heads because the mouths and eyes would have been sewn shut.  I needed to do something with the holes.  I had made eyes for the shrunken heads, but the eyes were small because they would have been dehydrated.  They were not going to be the right size for a normal head.    Rather than trash the project completely, I cut out the eyes and mouths with a craft knife and filled them in using paper clay.  Hopefully, those areas will not be as noticeable once the heads are painted.  The noses were also small, but I left them, because who knows what a Goblin nose looks like anyway.

First strip layers over the skull mold.

One of the skulls removed from the mold in pieces.

I painted some flat back glass marbles (the kind used in floral and home decorating) with black glass paint and heated them to make the paint bond permanently.  (By the way, I have a small dedicated toaster oven for these projects.  It saves on having to clean a home oven after using that product.)  I ran into some unexpected problems with the eyes.  I made three pair of eyes all painted the same color: black.  I wanted the eyes to be a solid black.  There are no pupils, just a deep soulless eye, something like a shark's eye.  When they came out of the oven, one pair was black, and the other two pair came out with one black eye and one eye that looked silver.  Unfortunately, these decorator marbles are not very consistent when it comes to size.  I had picked out each set of marbles so they would match in size.  I painted some more eyes, and the same thing happened, but since I had made several of them I was able to mix and match.  I have no explanation as to why some of the eyes changed color.  I would guess that it has something to do with how the light is refracting through them.  

Anyway, with enough eyes in hand I began to mount the eyes.  This is a retrofit project.  If I had been doing this project from scratch I would have done it differently.  When I made the faces, I molded strip paper mâché over a plastic skull.  When I had enough layers on, I cut the head off the skull mold, then put it back together using more layers of paper mâché.  (While I had them apart, I also made some modifications to the skulls.  See earlier posts for details on how I made the modifications and how I put the skulls back together.)  Rather than take the whole head apart again, I used the holes I had carved into the face to place the eyes.  If I had started from scratch, I would have painted the inside, and mounted the eyes and teeth while I had the head apart.

While the eyes and mouth were open, I painted the interior black.  It would actually have been better to mount the eyes before I painted the inside,  but then I would not have had the eye holes open to use for painting.  I would have preferred to glue the card stock directly to the paper mâché, but since I was also adding paper clay, I was not too worried about the stability of the mounting.  I once saw a tutorial on the internet in which the person reminded everyone that to glue pieces together before painting because your glue job was only as sturdy as your last coat of paint.

I mounted some black card stock to the underside of the holes for the eyes with hot glue.  This was the backing to hold the eyes in place.  The glass eyes were hot glued to the backing.  Paper clay was pressed around the eyes and underneath the lids to fill in the eyes.  It was a difficult job trying to mount the eyes while slipping my fingers in through the mouth hole.  I would swear that those creatures were biting me.  Sometimes it was difficult to get my fingers out.

Once the eyes were mounted I turned my attention to the mouth.  When you cut into a strip paper mâché piece, you can see the layers of paper.  I used a small dental pick type tool to push a hole in between layers and separated some layers slightly.  I twisted a very thin wire tightly at the top, and then left an opening in the middle of the wire, then twisted tightly again at the bottom.  I pressed the wire into small bits of paper clay and formed a tooth.  The opening in the middle of the wire would lock into the clay to hold the tooth in place and keep it from slipping once the tooth was dry.  When the tooth was formed, I put some multi-purpose glue in between the layers of the paper mâché and also added some glue along the gum line.  I stuck the bottom end of the wire into the hole I had made and pressed the layers of paper mâché back together.  That "rooted" the tooth.  The glue along the gum line also helped to keep the tooth in place.

I found that making the paper clay teeth sharp while trying to put them in place was too difficult.  You can do one or the other but not both.  I shaped them as best I could, and waited for them to dry.  The teeth were sharpened using small needle files.  I suppose if I had thought about it a bit further, I could have made the teeth and painted them before mounting them.  However, I am not sure I would have made them so that they would look right for a particular mouth if I had pre-made the teeth.  I did what I did, and now I am ready to go on to the painting.

I am excited to see how these heads are going to turn out.  

Goblin Halloween Diorama - Part 31- Photos- Field Project

This week I was working on my little goblin figures for the diorama.  I started out using cornstarch peanuts to build up the bodies over the wire armatures.  Then I came to my senses.  The cornstarch peanuts are a lot of work because they have to be built up layer by layer.  After four hours of work, I had only two layers of the peanuts on the figures.  In order to get this project completed, I needed to step up the pace.  I decided to complete the figures using paper clay.  With paper clay, I could have the figures completed in one application. This is one case where I had to decide that using a newly purchased product was preferable to trying to be green and use every piece of scrap from other projects.  At least the remaining pieces of cornstarch peanuts will dissolve in
water.

I made a trip to the craft store and purchased the paper clay this week.  Now I have started shaping the figures.  I have completed four of the six figures.  The small size of the figures was still a bit of a problem.  They are only an inch tall.  It is hard to handle figures that small.  Even the tiniest pinch of flattened paper clay was almost too large to cover the arms and legs.  However, it was still faster and easier than my previous method.

Field 11-15-2014

After I had put on the first layer of cornstarch on each figure, I determined where each of the figures would go on the diorama and posed the figure accordingly.  Then I put on the second coat of cornstarch.  It was at that point that I decided that I needed to switch to using paper clay.  The first photo shows all of the figures lined up under post it notes that tell where the figures will appear on the diorama.  The second photo is a close up to show the difference made between one layer of paper clay versus two layers of the cornstarch. You can see why I felt I needed to switch.  Building up a piece layer by layer has a certain meditative quality to it, but there are times when speed is called for more than meditation.  I have been on this project over long, and other projects are calling.  I need to get this project finished. 

My competition piece:  About that Flying Dream.

I will finish the figures this week, and hopefully I will get them painted.  I might even get them positioned on the diorama this week.  Once they are mounted onto the diorama, there will only be once piece left to make the diorama complete.  Check back for more on that on Wednesday's blog post.

Today is Sunday, so it is time for another field project picture.  The photo was taken at 9:00 am.  The temperature was forty degrees Fahrenheit.  Winds were calm.  We had our first freeze earlier this week, and you can see the change in the field.  Many of the grasses
and weeds have turned brown.  Most of the green vegetation still visible are mustard greens.  They were not planted by the farmer, they just show up wild from previous plantings.  I notice that the farmer has removed his stakes that he had for his tomato plants, and pulled up the tomatoes and whatever green he had planted in the other small bed.  The field is getting ready to go to sleep for the winter.

Just a final reminder, I have a piece in the Mystery Build art competition: About that Flying Dream.  First prize is determined by a jury, but there is also a People's choice award as well.   People can see the art and vote online.  The voting is still open until mid-week.  My project is project number 37 found on page 2.  Here is a link to the voting:  http://mysterybuild.com/

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 Halloween Diorama - Part 2

Regular readers know that the start of a new project is slow.  Ideas must be developed.  Materials must be gathered.  I also clean my studio (a.k.a. the small bedroom) before I begin each project.  Generally by the time I complete a project, the place looks like a disaster hit it.  Leftover materials from the earlier project are covering my work area.  Since my crafting time is limited, I end up working until until the last second and there is no time left to put things away.  So that is my project for today.  To clean the studio so I can begin again.

I've had another synchronicity happen with this project.  This is the second one.  While making sketches of the pieces of the diorama, I drew in a dilapidated house.  Maybe it is a haunted house, who knows at this point.  Anyway, my thoughts ran to how to make a house with a sagging roof and peeling paint.  I only made those sketches a couple of days before posting them and had not thought of it further since then.  Then yesterday, my husband out of the blue shows me an article from a Model Railroad magazine on how to make a dilapidated building with a sagging roof and peeling paint.  This is completely weird because 1. I had not even discussed my new diorama with him yet because I am so early in the process; and 2.  In the decades that we have been together, I have never known him to show any interest in model trains.  I have never seen him look at a model railroad magazine.  I can tell that this is a story that wants to be told, because the universe just seems to be making the information available to me with very little effort on my part.

The two photos above have dilapidated houses in them.  Once is even labeled "haunted house.  The lower sketch was just kicking around ideas of what might go into the diorama.  The upper photo shows the sketches are beginning to tell a story.  Before they days of computers, motion picture plots and advertisement campaigns were developed with the use of story boards that were drawn by artists.  I suppose I could use an art program and sketch on the computer, but I don't find it nearly as satisfying as taking a pencil in hand and drawing on paper.



For readers that are following the Orphan Train story that was in the first post, I will be posting more on that story on Sunday.  Today must be a quick post because I have meetings this morning.  I would rather not try to rush through and leave that story in a muddle.