Sunday, October 25, 2009

Stone Sculpting Experiment

With my mother and husband watching my baby on a quiet Saturday afternoon, I had a chance to pull out the before mentioned sculpting kit that I had purchased at Pearl in Atlanta. It came with two rasps, sand paper, polishing oil, and three stones. Two of the stones were soap stone and the third was alabaster. The alabaster I decided to save for a project after I got things down with the soap stone. In addition, there are two pieces of marble that I bought, waiting to be carved (in memory of two dear friends) when my skills improve. Marble is freaking expensive, so I don't want to mess that up.


Four hours this Saturday, I spent sculpting a piece of green soap stone. This was my first time working in stone although I have carved other materials in the past. In college, I carved plaster for a class and discovered afterwards that I should have been wearing a breathing mask and should not have been doing it in a small dorm room space. That did not turn out so well, so I was sure to secure my mask and took a spot on the porch in the sun outside my parents house.


At first, I was going to attempt to carve from a photograph. The subject was my brother and sister-in-law's dog, Buddy Bear. He is an Australian Shepherd, very handsome animal (first picture at the top), and beloved of his owners. Thus why I was attempting to sculpt him for my sister-in-law's birthday on Halloween. Obviously I'm not worried about her reading my blog ;)

The photos weren't cutting it though, and when my sibling and sibling-in-law decided to venture forth to acquire food, my father helped me borrow Buddy Bear until they returned. Unless you know my family, that probably sounds a little more insidious than it actually was...


Most of the afternoon, was nice and warm, but my model got less and less enthusiastic, even after being treated to a piece of cheese. There's only so much a dog can take, I suppose, and it was taking an awful long time to shape, with fine soft sparkly dust, wafting about on the porch. Ultimately I had to give up on the project until I could find another stretch of time and a babysitter.

Sculpting took a very long time with carving, much longer than sculpting with clay, but it was certainly easier to work with than carving plaster or wood. I did not have to worry as much about pieces chipped off while I worked under and around crevices.

After oiling the stone a bit to see what it would look like when done, I felt like it looked more like a bear than a dog. Some people might even call it done at this stage, but what's the point of doing something if you aren't going to do it right? So hopefully in the near future, I'll have a chance to play with it again. I do have several other pieces of stone in need of work.

Also, today, I finally got my Wacom tablet! I have not played much with it yet, but might actually have some time this evening if Morgan doesn't stress her daddy out too much. Oh! Looks like email too! I might have to catch up on my word count quota!






Friday, October 23, 2009

Tomorrow

Since it's the weekend, I'm hoping to have a little baby-less time to attack that sculpting project that I mentioned before. My mother and sister-in-law's birthdays are both fast approaching, so they are going to be the inspirations for my first two stone sculpting projects. Both are tremendously difficult to shop for and thus tremendously difficult to figure out what to carve for them as well. More later!


Thursday, October 15, 2009

The Writing Challenge

Although I have a writing buddy and we used to write back and forth all the time, I had some serious writers block until recently. Now I have a daily goal of 1000 words a day. So far I've done better on that than my diet goals ;)

Still, Tawmis and I are kicking out the Chapters and challenging each other. Thus I have revived some of my old solo unfinished stories that are not placed in pre-established worlds. I'm hoping that this means with a little help from Tawmis that I might be able to create something marketable.

Much of what I write comes from dreams that I've had. One idea I had from a dream looks very promising. It may all be crap, but there's something fulfilling in finishing a ... project ... sorry, my stack of unfinished oil paintings was glaring at me again. Apparently they have the watercolors on their side. Something about finishing old projects before starting new ones... they are going to be very disappointed when they find out that I'm getting a new waccom board.

In case you were wondering, I'm totally adding this scatter brained post to my daily word count ;)

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Carved in Stone

This past weekend, a fellow artist friend and I went shopping in Atlanta where we ended up at Pearl Art Store. I had seen this kit before and passed it by only for it to be out of stock the next time I came looking for this set. When I saw it again, I had to grab it.

I have sculpted before with clay and Sculpey, and even carved wood and plaster, but this is a brand new medium, one that I'm itching to try out. It comes with a mask though, so I'm thinking that this may not be baby safe, which will make this endeavor a bit more problematic.

Being a first time, this could result in epic failure, but hopefully not as bad as the trying to do body paint at 2 am at Dragon Con.

In addition to the starter kit, which I thought would be a great place to ... well ... start I also have two chunks of marble, so we shall see how it goes, and I will post the results success or fail.

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Da Vinci's Code

At one point in time, to be an artist was to be part inventor, part researcher, part engineer, part scientist, and part creator. It wasn't about a set style, but learning about the world and the way things work in order to achieve a higher quality of whatever it was they were creating that day and experimenting with the materials to create it. So in this same fashion I approach artwork. I may have some different styles, but it's about the discovery, stretching your wings and exploring new venues of creativity, as well as interesting facts about the world today, how things work, and how they came into being. Share the journey of discovery with me.