Sleep. so help me i need regular sleep. Not getting to bed until some nights (most) 3am. Not sleeping well & waking & rising early due to pain 24/7 thanks to my dissabilities is slowing me down no end. I meant get this posted yesterday (Tuesday) but then thanks to sleep loss did not realise it was my 1 day a month out the house (mostly to get art supplies) so i am posting this now - late again!. Right enough moaning & blame side stepping & rambling lol.
So this weekend gone what did i get up to then?
Well to begin with i finaly decided on a colour scheme for my first of many to come dragon vases. I have decided to go with a golden dragon with a golden trim around the top of the vase rim as well as around the small base too. I taped off the rim & painted the dragon & rim. Around the dragons upper half i intend to paint a crude (oval) section of scenery including some sky & clouds which will give way to a black back drop/background around/over the rest of the vase. The vase stands at around 49.5cms tall as will most of them when done.
I still have to make the embossed symbol for 'dragon' for the reverse side yet.
The base of the vase is simply two 2mm thick cardstock discs glued together, then 2 matching 2mm doughnut discs glued to those first two. I then trimmed all in 140gsm paper & then 2 layers of news print strips.
Next came my small custom swords (under a meter long) which are similar to a design i found online & altered to suit my liking. These were mapped & cut out of some 2mm cardstock sheets i am managing to get my hands on from my local super store (ASDA). Other than layng these flat & laying weights on them there is NO way of preventing these from warpping baddly making them usless as the swords i intend them to be. also i simply do not have the working space or any large wooden sheets to make them on. So i am like all my swords from now on making them on the wall.
To maintin a flat working surface i simply 'pinned' the blades to the wall using drawing pins (thumb tacks). I then coated the whole surface with 2 layers of news paper strips. I will cover these again in 3 later of 80gsm white printer paper. Once dry i will flip these over & repeat. Once all that is dry i can then get to work on building up the shape of the blades proper.
Next came my two sword 'half' blades which will only be that & around a meter long (a little over full measurments later), 1 side of a sword blade (each). They will become a sword styled wall mount for dragon heads. Unlike the small custom swords these will be built up with 2 layers of news paper & a layer of 140gsm paper then news paper again. I will repeat this untill i have 3 layers of news paper & 3 layers of 140gsm paper. Once fully dried they will be flipped over on the wall & the backs will get around 6 layers of 140gsm paper over a core layer of 2mm thick cardstock.
With 'spaced' screws to fix them to the wall when finished they should create a working wall mount for the large dragon heads. More on this another time though.
My dragon slayer (broad swords) blades were taken down off the wall & then joined together tacking them together with masking tape until the PVA glue dried the two halves together. Once dried i removed the masking tape then sealed the whole blades in turn in 2 layers of news paper. Once this is fully dried i will then give each sword blade around 3/4 layers of white 80gsm printer paper, then sand into shape. Then i will work on the top setion of the word so they can be mounted onto thier respective hilts. When completed they will be a little over a meter long. Again as with the sword wall mounts full measurments later when finished.
Next came Sharky's (Troll Screamer give away prize Troll) sword. This is based loosely on a 19th century naval boarding cutlass. I have left off the 'finger' guard section as unfortunatley at the time i had no idea just what type of cutlass to give Sharky so did not in the end allow for the finger guard to slide over his large troll fingers. The real naval 19th centuray boarding cutlass shown below:
This is the first of 2 large dragon heads. The first of which i started this weekend gone. Here it is only at the armature stage, quite devoid of any real defining features. They will follow very soon. At the moment i am merely working on building up of the heavier facial features first before adding the finer details to it later. Like each of the mounting sword barckets i will explain more & show how this is to be fastend to the sword(s)/wall later. The dragon head(s) are around 3ft or so snout to back of head/kneck in height.
Below a front view
I have also been trying to find the lost time i was spending on a project for an artist friend. Sadly such is my nature of working i start something then get side tracked. This last few weeks of growing sleep loss & constant pain build up have only added to my getting behind in promised custom projects of wich i now claim fame to 4 of. More on ALL of these soon. For now how ever that is what i got up to this weekend gone. Who knows perhaps NEXT weekends regular post feature just might, note i say might be posted on time lol.
I love the dragon vase. How tall is that?
ReplyDeleteYou have gotten so much done Jonty, geesh.
That's incredible.
I am so so sorry you are in pain and not sleeping. Hope you get some rest during the week.
It is a little harder for me to do the watery washes you were talking about on the polymer clay I use, the surface is very dense. You are right though, it does work very well on the more porous ones. I could, though, *water it down* with a clear medium. Hmmmmmmmmmmm!
Marie S: The dragon vase is approximately 49.5cms tall. ALL the dragon vases will be around that (the tallest ones anyway) others will be more squat/squeezed & ball shapes.
ReplyDeleteSo much done but not finished though lol.
Great blog I enjoyed readingg
ReplyDelete