Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Cow Tiles

Uploading some more progress on the cow tiles.

I would say I am at the 65% point on this one? I have not done the whites or any details yet but the gemeral layout is all painted. I plan to do white's. fur, eyes, and grass some more still.


Colors in this photo still a bit off. Glare on the shoulder.



Colors off on this one too. I will have to do a good photo shoot of the colors soon.  This is kind of a miz up test.

Saturday, October 26, 2013

Outside Head Update


I have been playing with/sculpting my clay head while doing other things at home in my free time.. 

One thing I am not liking about the clay I purchased is that it is so soft. Every time I touch it I leave finger prints and dents. That means it takes longer to smooth and is more likely to lose the shape I want as it is handled.
I saw a technique where they modeled some of the fine details through some cling wrap. I may try that for the eyelids and see how it goes. My eyelids keep getting messed up.

I am working on adding hair. It is hard to add believable hair from the same white clay. I have found that raising the area up a bit and then digging back down with my tool so far has been the most effective way.

I am pretty much out of time messing with this guy though. I am going to smooth it out and add what I can and then I will have to finish up in the next week or so so that I can get a mold of it and get to work on making it in wax.  (I also have to thicken up the neck.)



Thursday, October 24, 2013

Paintings, and Pencils


 I thought I would do an update on my oil paintings.
Thought I would post this photo even though the colors are off to show the size difference in these paintings.

My tiles for my tile painting cut out, gesso'd and ready to be painted on

Beginnings of my tile painting.


moved some of the tiles to show it can be broken apart/moved

I started working on a small modeling clay sculpture I wanted to cast in wax. I took it home to work on it and my cat ended up jumping on it and smashing it up. The dog is probably still workable but the man is in rough shape and I never liked him to begin with. Still debating what to do with him now.

I got custom pencils for my website!!!!! They are in all caps which kinda stinks but it is pretty cool to have pencils I could give away to people. I just have to finish adding the right text/photos to the website now before I hand too many of these out. :P

Monday, October 21, 2013

New Website and Aluminum Pour!!

I got a new website on sale from GoDaddy this week. I am still updating it. None of the text or photos are on there yet. I need to find my artist statement and I need to upload my nicer finished photographs to it but it is nice to have a regular professional website to send people to.

All of my updates and progress will still go on regularly here. The website is more for finished pieces etc. But go ahead and check it out if you want to! Http://MehuArt.com




In other news.... (:P)

We did the aluminum pour today!!!!!! It was pretty fun and it turned out nice which is good. I was worried because my ceramic shell had some cracking but everything worked out fine.





Burning out wax and heating ceramic shell.


My Professor adding aluminum to the crucible

Hot now

Pouring the left over aluminum into ingots

pouring it into the ceramic shell. Sand all around it.

FIRE!









Ingots

Aluminum in shell. Still hot

Close up after breaking some of the shell off.

Breaking the shell off

Monday, October 14, 2013

If you Leave

Music video done digitally with 2D and 3D animation.

I found this on vimeo. Pretty awesome stuff.









Friday, October 4, 2013

Exterior Head

Progress on the exterior of my head is still underway.

I have a couple pairs of eyeballs that I dont hate. I may still cast a few more sets to see if I can get them any better.

The exterior of the head I am carving out of modeling clay. I ran out of off white and accidentally bought regular white so now my two whites have to mix into a dirty white. :P

The face keeps changing who it looks like as I add and subtract clay. For a little while it reminded me of Patrick Stewart, probably because it was bald. I have decided that the clay is too soft for doing highly detailed facial features such as eyelids. The heat from my hands alone tends to melt it/make it mushy. I have some small tools that are helping but every time I handle it my fingerprints change it a little. I am probably just going to keep sculpting it slowly in my free time until it is time to make a mold.


 Here is the most recent photo as of 10/4


I still have a lot of carving and smoothing left to do. I need to add bulk to the neck and also fix the ears and eyelids again. I am considering the possibility of hair but if I add that I need to consider how best to portray it.

Open to suggestions at this point as it is still very underway.



Once I finish my plan is to cast it in wax over the aluminum base head I am building. I want to utilize the resin eyes in the piece. I would like to do an encaustic style oil paint (possibly?) over the piece to give it some color. I then plan to photograph and document the work as well as video tape it as I melt it.

When I show the piece I believe the video will be the main focus although I can include the aluminum base head and possibly a duplicate of the exterior face (wax or plaster?) if I want to.

Thursday, October 3, 2013

Sculpture Studio Update

I started dipping my wax head in the ceramic slurry and thought I would post pictures of my progress.
I had some troubles with my wax head. It was too hot or something when we poured the wax into the plaster mold and because of that there were tons of small bubbles under the surface. As I heated and smoothed the wax more bubbles were uncovered. It took me a long time to try and fix this problem.

Original sanded down Styrofoam head.

Wax poured into plaster mold







































Wax head after sprueing (sp)

Another angle.




Head after third coat dipped in slurry mix



Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Painting update

Thought that I should post photos of my painting progress since I did not in my last post.

This one is probably at 1 85-90% completion. Going to consider how I want to present it. Originally it was going to
have another painting with food but now that may be a sculpture or a smaller painting. Not sure yet


This one is in the very early stages. For now I am calling it Cow-lie-doscope.. LOL I am sure that might change. It is just a small piece to work on while I finish the frame for my large moveable tile piece I am doing next.