He who did not explode in the kiln

 As you can see my cat head came out in one piece, therefore, my hollowing out was a success. No explosions = happy cat.

My painting process didn't exactly follow a plan I ended up just winging it, as you can see above this was when I took a deep breath and just started spraying the entire head matte black hoping this wouldn't be something I regret. In the end I did, I wished I had given it more thought and put aside my impulsive excitement for painting. Starting with a base coat of a light gray would of suited the end result more successfully; but instead the under coat of the black was dulled down to a deep gray because of the ceramic base that was pulled through by steel wool. I then covered the black head with a plastic bag, leaving the collar for me to spray three different layers, of three different shades of green. Repeating the same steel wool texturizing I had done on the head to the collar, That turned out, only, after taking the head back outside for some small brush attention. I filled in the different shades of green spray paint in a more logical manner. Finally finishing off the details with acrylic, but still I had to deal with color changes due to the base coat. In the end I attached the wire coil and i'm pleased with my new halloween decoration.

Finally done with my still life, It's not my best work but it's finished, and on to a more interesting composition!

Summer fun

This summer my only major (I thought was going to be minor) project was painting a mural on a friend of mine's wall. 12"x16" turned into 48"x30".  The first four hours consisted of trying to drawl a seemingly  straight knot on an extremely uneven wall. Another challenge was that the guy I was painting for had made five holes in the wall and patched them with stark white putty, but of corse not owning any of the impossible to match wall color. Thus, adding an even greater challenge to cover the holes....  Somehow, it worked out, somehow it was straight, and somehow it looked good.

20 hours later, and eight redbulls, success.

but never again.

week two....hollowing out

This weeks work has really progressed my sculpture. I have successfully (with many attempts, which cost me some patching of holes) carved out the majority of the feline's head, the ears and eyes are left to brave for next week's challenge.. I have also begun creating, or coiling, the wire spring that attaches between the cat's ears. With the help of my teacher, we conjured up winching a scrap of metal piping to one of the work tables. Consequently coating myself in grease. But, ultimately creating the perfect width as which to begun wrapping the metal around in oder to make a tight coil. The wire quickly became a nuisance, as it would not be controlled by my greasy fingers; lucky for me I wore my glasses that day, otherwise I might have lost an eye. Once again, another winch was applied to the end of the wire, making it much easier to wrap around the metal piping. The creation of the coil spring was a more difficult task than I had imagined, pulling the wire tightly around and around. Eventually I came up with a new approach of making the wire spring in sections, thus, now requiring me to sauder the sections together. I haven't a cue how to do this, but my teacher promised to show me how next week.