Summer Sculpture fun

Here is a progress dump of sculpture stuff from the end of the semester and into the summer.

Here is the cow head in oil clay. I showed this one in an earlier post.
It is larger than my previous cow heads and is meant to replace them.

With Brush on Silicone

Beginnings of mother mold. it will be 3 parts

Home made Chevant melting box so that I dont have to buy a
toaster oven. I am starting to work with hard chevant clay.

Melted Chevant on a screw

Bald mini chevant head on a screw

Looking like Sir Patric Stewart.  I think I will keep working
on him as such. Just practicing detail with the chevant on a
small scale.. no real plans for this.

Random shelf in my studio

Small clay model for my large foam dog I was working on.
It's raining foam!!- I want to continue with this project but it
is so messy!

 

Yep. Those are the highlights. Pretty simple. I have been doing more painting than sculpting this summer but I am playing with the chevant and finishing up the new cow heads.

Art Focus!

Here is another progress pic of my oil painting in progress... it's been slow and steady. I have been working on it here and there while getting some other work done this month. I added some detail to the water droplets on the cows nose today. :)

Previous Progress

New Progress

Water on the nose

ALSO! I had a photo of my work in Art Focus Magazine this month. You can see it Here

here is a photograph of it if the link doesn't work for anyone.

That made me pretty happy to see. :)

Mixed media, encaustic Ben Hecht

I found this video with artist Ben Hecht talking about his work in encaustic mixed media.

It is very fun to watch.

Check out his website at:
http://www.benhecht.com

Spring break crunch

It's been a very busy spring break. I have been putting in many hours getting everything gallery ready for the show. I still have a few things left but I am getting closer.

I have five of the melting photos from Underneath mounted on 20" x 30" mounts I made for them.

I also finished my miniature melting cow heads which is called Faux Bovinae. It features a series of five wax cow heads mounted to wood and melted in progression. One non melted and on the other end one very melted. I plan to hang them rather high up so that they are looking down/the viewer is looking up at them.

Mounting boards in progress

Wood mounts cut, routed, primed, and painted

One of the cow heads before melting

Cow heads arranged so you can see them all at once. Top one is not melted, bottom right is most melted.

from least melted to most melted

Test hung on wall to make sure everything is sturdy, The closest cow is the most melted.

Cows and melty things

It's been a while since I posted so I thought I would come on here and share what I am doing.
For sculpture I am working on two sculptures at once so that I am never waiting around for something. I have a foam dog which I will post about when it is a little farther along. I also have these miniature cow heads.

The cow heads were sculpted out of oil based clay. I then made a mold box out of some foam core board. I poured a rubber mold around the clay cow head and let it set up overnight. Now I am casting wax mini cow heads. The plan is to do five or so white ones and also try doing a few colored ones just to see how they turn out.  Whichever turns out better I will use those five for my show.

I will take the five cow heads and mount them to a pedestal and melt them to various stages so that there is a progression from not melted to almost fully melted. The pedestal plus the melted cows will then be shown together.

Clay Cow Head (5-6"?)

In the mold box

pouring the rubber

finished mold with hot wax inside

Three wax cow heads

 I am also doing some miniature paintings for the miniature art gallery I am helping curate for the Oklahoma State University Artists Society. I don't know if these will be in it or not but it is fun to paint this small. These paintings are only a few inches big. I am finding it kind of hard to paint that small with my current brushes. The paint globs on thicker and doesnt dry very fast so it is actually more challenging than I expected for something so small. I like working bigger much better I think.

Early on.. to show size and progress

This is probably bigger on your screen than in real life. This is after a couple

of hours

And last but not least my ceramic cow head got into Momentum :) Momentum will be in Oklahoma City March 7 and 8th 8pm to midnight. :)

http://www.ovac-ok.org/events/events_momentum.cfm

Ceramic Calf/Cow head- Got into Momentum OKC 2014

Photo dump (Underneath) Melting Wax Head

I added a few of the photos from my melting wax head project that I did.  It is a beeswax cast of a head I sculpted over a shiny aluminum head shape that I cast.  The process took around four hours. I documented with photo and video. I may do another melting of this one this semester.


 Check out more of the photos on this page:

http://mehusculpture.blogspot.com/p/meltting-wax-face.html

Ceramic cow. Wax heads

Posting some progress pictures. Got my ceramic cow head back from the kiln.
It turned out differently than I expected. I will post before and after pictures here.
Also got another wax head poured and started to fill in the gaps on my other one.

This is before it went in the kiln. The way I painted on the glaze

Another before shot

After.... The glaze did what it wanted I guess? I kind of like the color but I dont claim to understand how or why.
This is white slip sprayed on with gold plum brushed on in the gas kiln.  It turned out interesting/

I only glazed the mouth and tongue white from what I can ramamber so interesting that it got color. I kind of like it.

The right side of the cows head (left for you if looking straight on) got a lot of weird color variation. Almost a grey/green color.. I am thinking it is just how the glaze ran over the slip but I have no idea really.

Hole in the back. Original thinking was it could hang on a wall. Could also plug it with some wax or something and use it for a vase. haha

COW NOSE!!

from above

another angle

from below

Another angle

I kind of like how shiny it is.

moo.

I cast another under head (core) in plaster so that I could do a second wax head.

Plaster under head after I sanded it and cleaned it up a bit

Sealed it with denatured alcohol and shellac.

after a coat or two of shellac

'

I cut myself a piece of wax to fit for an eyelid on my first wax casting.

After attaching. It still needs some cleaning up but it has its eyelid now at least

I started to patch up the empty spot on the neck. The wax is white when hot. I am hoping it will yellow up to match the rest of the head after a day or so.

A second wax casting of the head. This one over the plaster head core.

Two wax heads and one clay head

Here are the three creepy heads together. Front head is new wax. Right head is old wax (yellows overnight) on top of aluminum and the left is the original clay head.