Grammy Zombie Part 2

Sorry for the delay, lets get back to it! So, Grammy has her head, but that's all. That's not cool. Poor Grammy Zombie. Lets's hook her up with some body.

I took some waxed card stock that Sarah got from her work, it was a shipping thing. Cool tough card, but not the best for finished art. Anyway, I rolled the card into 'bones' and taped it into tight little tubes, using my own limbs as a rough guide. The pointy thing there is going to be Grammy's pelvis.

Next, using galvanized fencing wire, I strung her body together. I used long lengths of wire, twined around the 'bones' to connect them all, and threw more tape around all that, to help keep her in shape and together. I also added a 'ribcage' of just bend sheets of the paper, so that her chest stays hollow but has some definition. I'll be adding 'skin' to her later.

Lastly, I did a little more work on her head. I made eyes from glass pebbles, back painting them...then glued them in with hot glue. Her 'skin' is paper towels soaked in modpodge and water as a pseudo papier mache. It gives her nice wrinkly skin.

Next time, we'll attach the head and maybe skin the body a little more. Heck, may even get to hands and/or dressing her!

Grammy Zombie Part 1

Alright, let's start on Grammy's head!

Grammy's head starts as a styrene skull that I bought last Halloween. Skulls are ALWAYS good bases for heads.

I took a pocket knife and cut her jaw away from the rest of her skull. Fortunately, the skull I bought seems to have been a multipart construct, so removing the jaw was REALLY simple.  I trimmed the back of the teeth some to make them a more realistic thickness.

The jaw is roughly wired/taped back into place, but hanging open. I like zombies to have their mouths open, because, you know, they are always hungry for brains or flesh.

I stabbed some bailing wire into her skull from the bottom to make a neck, then taped some card stock around it to flesh out a neck. The card is leftover packing dividers from my girlfriend's work. They're wax coated and not amazingly useful for art, but have been REALLY useful for construction material in projects like this, or for stencils and the like. Grammy Zombie is very inexpensive at this stage, and she won't get much more costly, I promise!

Now, I took some brown packing paper (The brown paper some companies wad up to cushion packages, instead of using packing peanuts) that I saved from packages I'd gotten (Yeah, I'm that cheap), and I glued it onto my skull and 'neck' with mod-podge. What we are doing here is half decopage and half papier mache.

More to come next time. More head stuff and starting the body!

(If you are actually trying to follow along with this, I'm sorry in advance. I don't know if this will be a 'tutorial' at all. I'm just talking through what I am doing.) Next part will be the body. It needs more bailing wire, more card stock/paper, more brown paper and more tape (duct and masking).

ZOMBIES!

Halloween is my favorite holiday, and that means I spend more time getting ready for it than I do other holidays. This year I'm adding zombies to my spooky yard.

As you can see, my yard last year was spider infested. I don't think that the spiders will be going away, but Zombies will be making an appearance.

Cara, the mummified corpse victim of the spiders is being upgraded to a zombie. She's getting a new(ish) paint job, some wiring to help her stand, and new hands.

We've got two new fellas joining Cara. There's Crawley and Walker. Crawley is half formed, and Walker is a fully formed zombie.

Crawley is complete at this point asside from accessories. I need to mess up his shirt, and maybe add an earring or something.

Walker needs his hands finished, he needs feets, and clothing needs to be aged and ratted up.

Think I may be adding a grammy zombie too...and IF I do, I'll be doing a walk through on how I build her. Until then, enjoy the zombies!

Warning: Personal Crap to Follow

I quit 'vaping' (smoking the e-cigarette), and have been nicotine/habit free for about a month now!

We've gotten a Keurig coffee machine and it is awesome. Coffee's taking the place of my cigarette habit. Good thing that studies show that coffee adds to longevity.

We did lose Mom, and my life's been kind of upside down for all that. I'm getting by, but it's a huge huge change. I always knew it would be just an earth-shattering change, but until it happened, I had no idea how it would feel.

Finished Carousel Horse!

I finally finished the carousel horse and he's taken up residence in my bedroom! Here's a couple of pictures of him in his new home!

The horse is from a child's spring horse, the pole is a curtain rod (originally 8' but cut down to 7'4"ish.), and the um... ivy is fake.

This project spanned months of very sporadic work, but it's done, and that's what counts. There's not really much to say about him now, other than I'm very pleased with the results. I may do another at some point, but I'm not really seeing a need to.

The bedroom has been getting a lot of focus from me lately. Next post will probably be about a unicorn silhouette I did just yesterday for it.  Hope that me talkinga bout my bedroom doesn't make you too uncomfortable. Heheheh. Oh, and side note: the green monster peeping at the bottom of both pictures is my chupacabras, and yes, he lives in the bedroom too.

Working on a horse

I have a love for carousels and carousel horses, and really wanted to make one of my own for a while, now. I came across this tutorial one day and knew I HAD to try it.

Eventually I found the horse at an antiques mall for $35 (I think), and picked it up.

The pictures here, in order are:

1) The horse after I had patched the holes in it's legs and neck, 2) The horse primed white and 3) Repainted.

That's where we stand right now. I have the pole to put him/her on, and a stand for it, so we'll get to the finished product soon. Right now it is sitting in the corner of my living room, but once it's finished it'll be decor for the bedroom.

I doubt I'll have it finished this week, but expect an update post about it when I do.

On other project news, I'm working on several (TONS) of paintings, and I'm making a wooden cutout of a raccoon for my yard, so we'll have all of those to put up soon enough, too!

Until then, I've put up plenty of stuff in the etsy shop for you to see. I'll probably do a post or two about the paintings there, but for now you can go look and imagine what I'm planning on saying about them.

Another personal post

So I went with another vacation picture for this post. I wasn't sure what else to do for it. It's me feeding a 'guanaco' which is some sort of llama. I fed it at the Sevierville Deer Farm, which has a pretty cool petting zoo.

The meat of the message today on this post has nothing to do with vacation, though. I just was at a loss as to what picture to put up, and that one seemed good enough.

When I posted Friday about starting this blog back and working on it near daily, I may have spoken too soon. I'm not intending on abandoning it again, but I've got a lot more on my plate than I first thought I did.

My mom is in the hospital, she has been for some time now, and she's not doing well at all. It's really looking like we're going to lose her, and soon.

This isn't a plea for sympathy, and I'm not looking for a bunch of sympathy comments (they are nice, I just don't want anyone to feel obligated)...I really just wanted to let you know kind of where I'm at right now, so if I drop the ball on this thing, there's a reason. I'm going to try to not let that happen, though.

I'm BACK! AGAIN! Fo' Reals!

Alright, it's been too damned long since I posted. I got no excuse, other than I get bored with shouting into the vacuum, which is exactly what blogging feels like sometimes.

Anyway, I just got back from a birthday/vacation, so I thought now was a good time to get started back on this thing. The smiling puffer fish picture was one I took while there. It's from the Ripley's Aquarium in Gatlinburg, TN.

Art wise, I've been painting a lot. My Etsy shop has plenty new in it. I got a scroll saw for Christmas, so that's adding to my bag of tricks! I've finished, started, abandoned, or have halfway completed ALL sorts of weird little projects, and I'll be talking about a lot of them.

Anyway, I won't promise that I'll post EVERY DAY, but I'll do my best to not forget about this thing, again.

Turning Thrift Store Art into ...um... art.

I'm a StumbleUpon addict (It's a firefox and chrome add-on), and I find my self 'stumbling' for waaay too long at a time, but it often turns out to give me some great ideas. For instance, Stumble threw me to an article on altering thrift store art. From there, I fell in love.

My girlfriend an I were dropping off some donations at the local Good Will, and I found a print of painting by Ruane Manning for $2.75. It was all framed up and everything. The frame was in bad shape, and the plexiglass was scratched to pieces, but the art was completely intact!...until I bought it.

I've taken cell phone pictures of the painting, after I 'finished' it, and they ended up blurry. I'm posting them anyway, given the subject matter (which should always be photographed in blurry conditions), and the fact that I don't own the rights to Ruane Manning's original piece. I wonder if parody laws come into effect on this?

Wish me luck in trying to get this new Bigfoot painting hung successfully in my dining room (sans protests!)

Airbrushing shirts II - weird discovery about myself

Yesterday after writing my post about the shirts, I felt oddly compelled to make another shirt. I went researching online for some cool '80s cartoon character, or just cartoon in general that I liked, but didn't remember. I'd decided that I wanted a cartoon shirt.

I went to retrojunk and was browsing through the list of '80s shows when I found Saturday Supercade! It was a bizarre show on CBS back in 1983 and 1984, based on coin-op arcade games. The show was segmented into different mini-shows, each based on a different game. I only vaguely remembered the show, but I remember a bit of it that I LOVED. My favorite segment, for whatever reason (I was six and seven when the show came out...who knows why you like anything at that point), was based on the game, Kangaroo.

Kangaroo wasn't a stellar game, nor anywhere close to the top of my favorites, but apparently the cartoon had huge impact on me. I found it's mini intro on youtube and was immediately a six or seven year old kid again. I knew I had to have K.O. Katie as my newest shirt, then.

So, now the shirt is done, and I'm left with questions. Why on Earth did I spend hours painting a shirt with a character nobody remembers? Heck, I barely remember her, but I do remember that I thought she was awesome. Maybe it's because she punches monkeys? I have no idea. Why does a half-remembered show like 'Saturday Supercade' hold any power over me what so ever? Am I just really really weird in having a fixation on a barely remembered bit from my childhood, or does this happen to other people? If you have answers or similar experiences, let me know! I'd love to hear about it. Especially if you loved K.O. Katie, too!

Airbrushing shirts

I've been playing away with my new airbrush, and I finally have things worth showing for my troubles! I've been airbrushing t shirts (the classiest of all things to airbrush).

The brown shirt is mine, it's a winged frog, the black shirt is Sarah's. It's me in a gas mask...I'm guessing you already knew that though. Both of these shirts were heat set with an iron, and have made it through the wash, so we know the paint took. The frog shirt's wing faded just a bit near the edge, so last night late, I added a little paint, then heat set it again, for longer and hotter. Hopefully this time it will take.

Both are done using Frisket stencils that I designed. The frog is a particularly simple stencil. It's just the outline of the frog and an outline of the wing (as separate pieces). All the detail on it was added by hand. As a result, the frog was more fun to make, too.

I've gotten a few more blank shirts over the weekend, so I will be experimenting with different stencil types, air pressures for the compressor and what not, even more. I'm also considering trying my hand at some 'fine art' airbrushing, but I don't quite feel like I'm there, yet.

As you are aware, this has slowed down work on my dolls...but it also means that now I will be able to airbrush them instead of just normal brushing them!

Baby Robins

This spring, I had a robin's nest on my front porch, which is kind of cool, because I like birds. The mommy robin was kind of an ugly thing, as far as robins are different (her head looked too tall and too narrow front to back) but it made it easy for me to tell her apart from the other neighborhood robins when she was out and about.

Eventually the eggs hatched, and I got to watch the little birdies grow up over the course of a couple of weeks. Starting at the ugly 'fetus with a beak' stage, until now, where I still see one or two of them (I can't tell them apart), still sporting their little spots, hanging out with the mommy bird. The last picture was taken right before they all took off. I was outside (and probably what prompted their flight), so I got a very good view of their first flight. It was neat.

Birthday!

Hi everyone. Sorry about the gap between posts, but I've been distracted. Aside from Brink and Mortal Kombat, I had a birthday. I'm now a billion years old...okay, 34, but it feels like too many for the amount of stuff I've gotten done.

Anyway, this is my haul from this weekend. I got a Dremel Drill Press, Flexible Shaft, and Router. I also got an airbrush! Yay!

Suffice it to say, I've got so many new projects now that I'm not sure what to work on, or what to show. Heh.

Not to worry, after I play with all this enough to be comfortable with it, I'll settle back into my old routine of working on stuff and letting you see it.

Fox Doll Update

Oopsie! I forgot all about posting yesterday!

Anyway, here's the fox head as of today. I tried posting earlier, but blogger was having issues. It is Friday the Thirteenth, after all.

I could have posted something deranged and messed up, as the date makes that kind of thing fitting, but I never go with what is fitting.

The fox here is going slow. I spend more time patching cracks than I do sculpting. Her little hands and feet will be polymer clay instead of paper clay, and for that I am happy. They should go pretty fast.

I also need to make a pattern for the body. I want hips and a bust on her, so it should be interesting to try to make...meaning I have no idea how I'm going to do it. I have the fabric and the paint for her head, though.

Updates as they happen! Have a good weekend!

Cat Boxes!

I've been playing on and off again with pyrography (wood burning) lately. I've never really stained wood before though, so that step intimidated me. Having just completed a blasted Dr. Fate helmet has given me courage to try new media and techniques, though, so I've burned then stained these two boxes.

There would be more boxes stained, but unfortunately, I don't have the equipment to stain multiple boxes at once. I have to do them on at a time, because I don't have enough little goofy pyramids that I use to prop them up. I have no idea what the pyramids are called, but they come from hardware stores, and they are used to do things like prop boxes up while you stain them.

I'm a bit disappointed with how both of these came out. Staining the wood obscures a lot of detail, apparently. I need to try to either work with less detail, or with dark darker detail.

The secret I told you about a few posts ago? It's coming along just fine. I'll be talking it up, soon.

Dr. Fate Medallion

I was thinking of holding this post for a while, but to keep things chronologically balanced, I've went with it, anyway. This is Dr. Fate's Medallion. On my costume it will be holding his cape shut. It's basically a big disk (near the size of a CD). The disk is a bit of cardboard with bondo on it, painted gold.

The first image is a sort of 'how to' of how I made the thing, but in full disclosure, I honestly added a few drops of resin to the bondo to soften it, before I laid it to the cardboard.

After spinning out the shape and letting it dry, I cut away the excess cardboard, then sanded the whole thing down. I covered the edges of the cardboard with wood glue and putty to hide all the holes, then sanded again. Next it got a coat of gold paint, and today it got a light sanding and a second coat of gold. The weird texture on the finished picture is because the paint is still wet! It will dry fairly smooth (I hope!).

Sorry about throwing another costuming post at you, and yes, I'll do something not costume related tomorrow.

Side note, costume wise. I found out that the GameStop near me is giving away a copy of Batman: Arkham City in October, and is choosing the winner with a batman themed costume contest. Soooo, I've got two ideas in mind. Either I'm going to do Mr. Freeze, who will be an ultra complex costume, or The Scarecrow, who I've already got started. I'll let you know as the time comes closer...but I want a free copy of that blasted game!

A new kind of doll (for me)

Here's the head of the doll I said I was working on. The head is paperclay, which is something I've never worked with before.

The head was originally going to be polymer clay, which I am familiar with, but the core of the head expanded every time I baked it, causing the clay to burst. Burst, not crack.

Eventually, I went with the paperclay because it air dries, but it is messy and slow compared to polymer clay. I guess that's the trade off for it not being toxic.

The paperclay does crack, though. Every time it dries, I have to patch cracks. Fortunately, that's pretty easy. If you can tell by the head size, she's going to be a pretty big doll compared to what I normally do.

Her body is going to be cloth, but her hands and feet are likely to be polymer clay. As this doll is an experiment, I don't know what direction I am going, completely.

This doll owes some of it's existence to the Dr. Fate helmet. That helmet was my all consuming project for a few weeks. I didn't really work on anything except it. That helmet has given me the patience to tackle this doll and the unfamiliar techniques like paperclay and sewing. Wish me luck!

Dr. Fate Helmet Complete

It's finally done! The Dr. Fate helmet has been painted, and is complete! Now I can get back to my 'real' work, which includes things like fox dolls. Hehe

The next step in this set will likely be Dr. Fate's medallion. I don't plan on putting you all through a step-by-step on it, though.

For now, I will just say that the helmet is done, and I'm very excited about that. While I do plan on making an entire costume, the helmet is getting a place of honor in the living room, I think.

Thank you all for being patient while I did this blasted thing, and I promise I'll get back to the 'normal' stuff soon.

Until then, good luck with your own projects, and thanks for dropping by!

Dr. Fate progress

The Dr. Fate helmet is progressing. I've not posted in the last few days, but I have been working on it, daily. I just didn't think tons of posts that say "Sanded, added filler, sanded added filler" were very interesting, so I saved up until today.

I've been sanding and adding filler (Imagine that!), and trying different fillers as I came across them. I have used miliput, which is a two part epoxy, similar to plumber's putty, but mostly used by miniature train enthusiasts. I used some Squadron White Putty, which is mostly used as bondo for model cars, as far as I can tell. I've even just used more bondo, sand it off, add more. Ugh. It's frustrating that I can't get him smooth!!!

Yesterday, however, I found out about Rondo. Rondo is not an off the shelf product, but rather a mix of bondo body filler and fiberglass resin. It's more liquid than body filler, so it doesn't make air bubbles as bad. That's what I've added today. Wish me luck!

I've also bought some paint for the helmet, started my next mask project, which is slightly more and slightly less ambitious at the same time, and have been planning and buying materials for the new doll. I think she's going to involve a lot of hand sewing.

The picture for today is a painting of Dr. Fate, as I realized I was rambling on about this guy, but most people probably don't know who he is. That's what I hope to look like, once this project is complete!

Also, there is a secret in the works. More to come on that, later.

Dr Fate helmet: Fiberglass and Bondo

So, I skipped some pictures, sorry about that.

The fourth Dr. Fate helmet, as I said, was close enough that I didn't feel the need to make a fifth one. The first picture is of me after I cut the helmet, to see how much of a gap was needed to be added. I didn't add as much as is shown there, but I took the picture just to give me an idea of the size. I'm very proud that my very first attempt at a sizing picture actually worked, by the way. I just held my phone away from me and clicked the picture.

After I got the sizing done, I added some fiberglass resin to the outside and inside of it, which made my studio stink so bad that I abandoned the room for a couple of days. Note, do this crap outside if you plan on doing it.

Next I reread everything I could find about turning pepakura (papercraft) files into wearable stuff, and started the awful task of fiberglassing the inside. I used fiberglass cloth and more of the resin for that.

Side note, the resin, the cloth and the bondo all came from WalMart. This stuff is easy to find. It is with the tools/automotive stuff, all right together.

Today, I sanded the devil out of the Fate helmet, inside and out. I wore a respirator, goggles, gloves, and long sleeves to do this, and I did it out on my front porch, that way my neighbors will fear me. I did it outside and wearing all that gear because I am slightly phobic of fiberglass.

Next up, as seen in the second picture, I covered all my hard work in a layer of goopy bondo body filler. Now my cool paper helmet is pink. Pink, and as hard as a car part, I might add. (Also, seen in the picture, bird poops on my porch. That's what I get for having a bird feeder)

Later, I'm going to be sanding down the bondo, fixing any gaps that show up, checking and rechecking the symmetry of it, then eventually painting the whole thing brilliant and gaudy gold.

More to come as I get there!

Also, as for my sculpting progress:

I cut down a styrene ball to the shape I wanted for a large doll's head, then sculpted the head in super sculpy. I didn't take a picture before baking it, but trust me, it was cute.

After baking, I found that my cute sculpted head had shattered. I started over, but I first reinforced the styrene so that it wouldn't expand or anything to cause another break.

I resculpted the head in super sculpy, baked it again, and again, it busted. GAH!!!

I'm not giving up on this doll, just so you know. The next step is trying my hand at paperclay for the first time. Pictures and what not will follow.

Dr Fate vs. Vacation

Pictured here is the first three Dr. Fate helmets. The third one was painfully close to right, but it was still too small. I also made a fourth one, but guess what? It's still a little too small!!! Gah!

The fourth one is close enough that I may simply mess with it a bit to make the helmet fully wearable. I can squeeze it onto my head, but only with a little distortion to the helmet. It also mashes my nose. I think I will cut into where the cheek parts meet the face part, and add a little paper to there to stretch it some. I'll let you know how that goes.

Next, I'd like to let you know that for Easter I went to Pigeon Forge, TN. It was kind of a sudden spur of the moment trip, but it was a lot of fun. So much fun that Sarah wants to go back there for her birthday in July. So, I guess that's what I'll be doing then.

We went to a petting zoo, and to Wonder Works, which were both kind of fun, but the petting zoo gets more revisit value, if you ask me. I petted a camel, some goats, a zebra, some deer, a zonkey and donkey. The goats win, in my opinion. Later, I may do a more in depth post about the trip, complete with pictures of me getting mauled by little animals.

The biggest thing to come out of this was that I was inspired to sculpt again. Pictures will come as soon as there is anything to show!