Geeklog Site

Skullpture Redux

Thu, 30 Jun 2011 01:14:46 -0400

Here's a batch from the first mold I made. I decided to make a couple molds so I could make a couple skull blanks, for a small run of similar shaped pieces.

◄The first one you see here is my take on the steal your face skull. I did the sculpture and my friend Jillian did the glaze on it. She did a pretty badass job I think. I started with the full skull and then cut the lower part off, or what I guess would be considered the jaw, as the steal your face is just the top part of the skull. That allowed me to get some more precise detailing on the teeth as well.

►This is an actual shot of the mold itself. I poked around online and found a super nice lady who gave me direction on just how to do the molds. Since I'm working from a wet piece of clay, I can cut it in half and easily make the two mold parts. It causes a bit of deformity, but that can be addressed in cleaning up the mold as well as just cleaning up the poured piece.

◄This here was probably the one I was most pleased with. I put quite a bit of detail into it, and it was pretty fragile. That didn't help things much when my cat knocked it off the shelf and it busted into no less than a thousand pieces. I did quite a bit of work on it while it was dry.

Sometimes it's easier to work on them wet, sometimes I rehydrate just a small section with a little syringe and then will tool that segment. Oh well I have pics so maybe I'll remake it, if I'm ever feeling so inclined.

►This one I did for my friend Derek just as a test. He's going to put it in his aquarium and grow some coral or zoanthids or something of that nature on it. I just did minimal shaping to the eyes and nose and made sort of a drippy looking melty jawline. I then scored the surface to give the little aquatic peeps something to grip on. I'm really hoping one of the fish takes up residence inside.

◄This is the first one I did for actual sale. It sold surprisingly quick, so I'm hoping that is a trend. I did some quick shaping to it. My intent with this one was to see just what type of detail I could put into the skull in an hour of time. I think all in all it's pretty awesome, and some kid named Seven ended up glazing it. When I'm less lazy I'll include some images to the final version of it.

►This one I decided to bring some more of the grateful dead workings back. While not the shape itself, I did have a good time carving the teeth instead of just doing outlines, so I decided to carve the teeth into this one. It's still a work in progress so I'm dallying on that end. This will probably be one for a friend or for myself due to the amount of time I've put in to it. You may also be able to tell I have a new webcam. While I do like shooting proper pictures with my nikon, you can't beat the ease of the webcam for a quick pic. especially now that I have one that can do some decent focus.

◄And here's the last one for the update for tonight. Another moderately quick one. With a bit of a stache and just general detailing work. I did take a little bit off the jaw on this guy just to see what kind of variation I can get in playing around with that aspect. It's currently for sale at the ceramic lodge.

~fin ...

Mr. Kink =(

Tue, 12 Apr 2011 01:25:15 -0400

Mr. Kink has diabetes and a lot of medical bills. If you want to help out, please go to http://www.gofundme.com/MrKink ...

Pickens Plan

Tue, 25 Jan 2011 22:39:51 -0500

I'm not one to get political here, but this is a matter that should be addressed regardless of your party. It just makes sense that if we can get off of foreign oil that we should. If you're not familiar with the plan, please take a moment and check out Pickens' website. www.pickensplan.com/

Basically here's how it works, we're way too reliant on oil from the Middle East, and our country has no real energy plan. Other nations are getting off of oil and moving to Natural Gas, but still selling us the Oil because of what we're willing to pay for it. We're sitting on a whole lot of natural gas here that we could use to run fleet vehicles. Pickens plan promotes that along with wind and solar energy.

We'd move to electric or electric hybrids for our little passenger vehicles and then things like semi trucks would be switched over to natural gas. It would be a win win situation, we'd stop funneling money into a foreign nation and put more people to work here at home. This is something that everyone should be able to get behind, it's not a partisan issue, it's just good for America, hands down. ...

skullpture?

Mon, 24 Jan 2011 02:59:38 -0500

Picked up some clay to make a razor stand. Ended up doing something else with the left over.

I don't have enough projects going on so I might as well grab some clay and have at it. I started out with wanting a stand for my razor and brush. That came out pretty well, and so I figured I might as well do some other things with the clay.

I started off with this skull. (I didn't do the glaze on this one personally.) It was somewhat of an experiment, just trying out different patterns and styles. My newer ones definitely have a different shape, but I'm going to make a couple more like this I think.

Next up I decided to do the one pictured at the top. I did the glaze on it, it was my first time glazing something like that, so there are some imperfections, but all in all it was a learning experience. I also used a crackle glaze on it to give it a little extra.

Maybe I'll ramble on about more later. Either way if you want to check em out here's a mini gallery.

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bathroomin

Wed, 22 Sep 2010 01:25:57 -0400

Been putting it off for far too long.
I recently picked up a vessel sink, and today/yesterday, whichever it was, I picked up a new counter as well as some curtains to go in front of the tub. The counter I got is from Ikea. It's a bunch of 1" slats of birch laminated together. It should look pretty cool when all is said and done. Photos to be posted as soon as I get unlazy enough to take so ...

Roof & Such

Mon, 20 Sep 2010 23:23:38 -0400

The ongoing plight of "upgrading" the roof.

My roof was in need of replacement, so I decided to go with a metal roof. I figured it'll be super durable and will help with the efficiency of the house, as the metal reflects a lot more heat.

I decided to go with a company that had the best pitch. They weren't the cheapest of the lot either. So far it's been a bit of a headache, and one I'm still dealing with. I'll include photos later, as I still need to post some more.

Upon initial install lots of the "finishing" work looked, well... very unfinished to say the least. Definitely not a job worth the 20% charge they're inflicting over every other contractor I spoke with, though these guys seem to stand behind their product the most. We'll see what that's worth down the road. ...

promotion/demotion?

Mon, 20 Sep 2010 23:18:41 -0400

Worth it? Not certain.
So I got a promotion at work. More tedium as far as the job goes, but the real down side to it is that I'm back in the office again instead of working from home. If there were any reason to be in the office, I could understand it, but there is only one thing that requires a body in the office, and that's flipping the power on one little computer sitting in a room, that usually has a few other people sitting in it anyway.

So far it's been a pretty big disappointment, though it hasn't been too long yet so we'll se ...

Fleurs?

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 22:41:37 -0400

It's been a while since I've updated, so I'll post this, but I'm making it brief, maybe more will follow. Who knows.
I'm nearly finished with the new floors. They're bamboo, and I do love my bamboo. I'll add some photos here soon. And that's all you g ...

Gyotawho? Gyotaku!

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 03:12:06 -0500

If you don't know what Gyotaku is, it's the art of rubbing fish. You have to be gentle with them cause fish only like to be rubbed in certain ways.
What it really is though is the artwork where you'll have a inked fish transferred to paper. Lots of times they'll have additional information written on there, like the size, date it was caught, weight. Etc etc etc. The sushi bar I frequent has changed ownership and the original owners took their art with them. Not that I blame them in the slightest, they're awesome prints.

Anyway, there are some bland photos up now, instead of pretty fish prints, so I'm going to try applying my paint on glass art style to some faux gyotaku and see how it turns out. This is probably a project that will wait til after the new years, but I think it'll be fun. I'll be sure to post pics as it comes along.

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Typin' it up ooooold school

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:13:20 -0500

What do you do when you have too many projects going on? Get another! Latest on the block is going to be the Royal 10 typewriter. Chances are it's older than you.

I got it on the cheap from ebay. It's a little rusty and needs a good cleaning, but I'm sure with that taken care of it will be a phenomenal machine and an awesome piece of history. One of the things I find terribly interesting about it is the lack of the 1 key. To produce a 1 you type a lowercase L. Also without the 1 you don't have the exclamation mark. To produce this you type a period, backspace and then type an apostrophe.

This is the first typewriter. In being shipped the carriage was free and slammed around totally destroying the gears. There wasn't much that could be done for it at that point as it quickly took it from a restorable piece of machinery to something that's only worth the remaining parts.

In searching online I found a guy out of the Netherlands who does reproduction water slides. If it's the full set what I'll be doing is a full tear down and restoration. It should be quite exciting, and when it's done I'll have my very own typewriter. If I like you enough perhaps I'll type you a letter.

2009.10.08 Not here yet........ Anxious, must type with mechanics soooon!

2009.10.31 First typewriter was destroyed during shipping, lack of proper packing. Got a 2nd one in, and used the first as a parts machine to fix all the minor things that were off.

I'll get on to the write up of replacing the carriage slide, but just a bit about what I've done so far.

The first thing of course was a major cleaning and lubricating all the parts up. The keys E G and F did not hit correctly and the strike lever would not return to it's original position. I found that by slightly bending the connecting rods I was able to get the keys to lower all the way back down to normal and type properly. This was a pretty easy fix and I was able to do it with some long needle nosed plyers.

A couple minor parts that I pulled from the original typewriter were the rollers on the bar that goes down on the top of the paper. There were originally only two, but I like the way the paper is held with 4 rollers on there. The other thing was that my first typewriter had 5 tab stops with it, while the newer one had only two. The older ones look a bit cooler too. I'll take a comparison pic later. Anyway I cleaned up the first ones and transported them over on to the second so I can have an ample amount of tabulation.

Here is the actual first major repair I've done, and hopefully barring any unforseen accidents, any other repairs will simply be in thr course of regular maintenance or cosmetic in purpose.

I'm moderately pleased with myself on this one as it involved removing the entire carriage assembly. It did take me quite a few hours and I was pale and shrunken from lack of sleep when it was done but it was an accomplishment.

The issue was that when you'd return the carriage to the beginning of a line, the characters would step down until they reached the regular height of the rest of the line. I wasn't sure what was causing this until I spun the typewriter around and looked underneath to find that the slide attached to the carriage itself was broken clean through. The bolts and bars that are all over the rest of the carriage was what was holding it in place, but the fact that it was split in two meant that it wiggled a bit.

What I was able to do was take the slide from the original typewriter, remove it entirely, and then disassemble the carriage from the new typrwriter as well and use the original for replacement. It definitely helped having a parts machine to break it down step by step instead of having to fool around with my actual functioning machine first. As there is only a year difference in age on these machines the slide was exactly the same. Also in having it apart I was able to further clean things up and get them properly lubricated.

When everything was said and done, the rebuilt carriage worked even better than when I first got it. It's definitely much smoother on the return as well as in advancing. By the way, is anyone else disappointed in the G.I.Joe movie that Cobra Commander doesn't have a bitchy voice like he did in the cartoon? ...