THINGS BEING DONE & THINGS STILL TO COME

With so much to do & already missing a pre-planned Halloween deadline i set for myself a while back. This post is essentially a huge update of current projects, future projects, HOW TO video news etc. Basically the idea being i give you a host of posts in a single huge update post to read in one go so i can concentrate on my WIPs & repairs etc  for the following week or so & then i don't have to feel guilty not updating things here in fragments as normal whilst i get on with things. So where to begin then? Well first of all this IS a much longer post than normal. & around one third of the way down there are some pictures that are of a 'simulated' graphic 'bloody' nature that some people may find offensive or be disturbed by in some manor.

I SEE DRAGONS AGAIN - UPDATE:

There isn't much to report on this project right now. As you can see from the picture below i have only gotten as far as adding some frons to the cheek sections at this point. Why you may say when i last stated this dragon trophy would be going to paint this very week? Well as things do with larger projects go you tend to use a lot more materials than smaller projects. If your like me you don't always stop to think 'now do i have everything i need?' A golden rule of course - DO SO first!. Well to begin with i miss-judged my hot glue stick supply & almost ran out before i was done with the glue gun. I still have to add some frons the the lower jaw. As you can see i also have now added the neck to this trophy too now:



The ears have also now had the final detailing added to them. I still have to create the teeth & tongue yet but that's a small job. I need to also add a few 'stretched skin' details to the neck where it connects to the lower jaw & head too but again that is a small thing to do.

Once all that has been done i will be giving 'this' dragon trophy a double layer of thin cheap handkerchief tissue wrinkly, skin look. The others will have a scale & tissue skin combination to them when i get them to that stage later. Now apart from the few more required frons & neck stretched skin effect when i went rooting through my back up supplies to check for some more glue sticks i realised my family had been using my supply of tissues faster than they had been replacing them, er!, essentially they had NOT replaced any of the entire boxes they had taken away - gotta love they're little butts huh lol.

So this all took place over the weekend just gone. Since it was art supply run time of the month anyway yesterday, i figured okay leave this here for the weekend, come back to it next week when i get my art supplies topped up again. Find something else to work on over the next four days, art supply run days are always on a Tuesday at the end of each 'lunar' month (every four weeks) as a rule. 

REPAIRING MY WALL MOUNTED GRIM REAPER - UPDATE:

So remember my wall mounted grim reaper? No, never mind there should be a picture in the right hand columns the finished projects listing. Here is a picture of him finished 'before' one of my eldest sons kept ignoring my warnings about running down the stairs, firstly because it is something we have tried to instill in ALL our children (as you do!) & secondly because most of my children are or are going to to be six feet plus. Well he ran into poor grim three times before he got the message. The last time he got a damn good clawing across his left arm, unfortunately he snapped the left arm damn near off the poor grim too. Here is the finished grim pre-damaged:

I still have to repair the arm (the one holding the sand) but when i came to doing it this weekend gone i thought to myself "That scythe is pretty crap. Plain & boring!". So i decided to re-model the scythe to what you see below:

As you can see i kept the blade but scrapped the shaft. The original straight shaft was just too boring & where the blade connects to the shaft at the top was just too plain. So i am in the process of making a new shaft as you can see with a few curves to it this time. Where the blade connects to the shaft at the top i have now added a skull to liven things up a little.

I still need to add another 5/6 layers of news paper strips to the shaft before painting, but the skull simply requires a couple of coats of bone mix dragon skin to finish that off. A few rust effects added to the blade along with some dried blood effects & viola' a new improved scythe.

MORE TRICKS & TIPS:

I have  few more tricks & tips for you to come still  which i will slip in between posts as i go once i get the pictures formatted etc later, so stay tuned for those coming very soon folks.

SO YOU WANT TO DO ART, PAPER MACHE ESPECIALLY BUT YOU DON'T HAVE MUCH IF ANY OF AN ARTISTIC BONE IN YOUR BODY?

Paper mache is possibly the cheapest form of art going whilst being possibly the most planet friendly (recycling) art form out there. Yes i know there are 'other' artists who recycle tins etc in their art. Paper mache how ever can be paper/card stock only or it can also include 'mixed media' too & i mean anything media wise & STILL be classified as paper mache.

Now whilst planning (creating them NOW)  a series of projects using life sized & smaller size  ranges of skulls in paper mache. There are a 'few' things i want to make that for fire safety, strength/durability & speed of creation, paper mache is simply NOT best suited if at all. So 'some' of the skulls i am currently working on are going to be made from either 'solid' plaster or 'hollow' plaster forms. Not only will these have they're OWN dedicated Etsy shop created for them but i might even create a totally new separate blog for them too. I have not thought 'that' far ahead yet.

Now even though i go on my art supply runs to buy specific items (PVA glue, paper of varying types, 140/180 grade paper & box salvaging etc) i always keep my eye's open for 'ideas' that can be found from many & often totally unexpected sources be they materials or indeed  'whole' objects too. Here are a couple of items i picked up at my local ASDA store whilst grocery shopping during this months art supply run (rice, pasta, curries favourites & the like i buy for myself lol) whilst spotting the store had just gotten in this years Halloween products.

I spotted these fantastic polystyrene foam skulls (one third life size) that were a steal at three for only £5.00:

Now the  untrained eye or put another way those who may not know too much about anatomy may not easily spot the few short comings in these skulls. They are few but very 'fixable' faults. The worst one that i feel 'must' be corrected before these skulls can be used to any serious manor: The side of the temples as you can see from the central skull here are not 'sunk in' as with a real skull. The long bone running along the skull from the cheek bone stops short slightly & there is no 'hole' for the ear as in a real skull. The other faults are minor & can be glossed over later or simply ignored. I will show you in a future HOW TO just how to 'alter' these skulls in a way that you can adopt & modify with similar skulls of either foam or wax materials & sizes with a mind to copying them using paper mache techniques whilst altering the initial design making both a version of your own & mass copies.

Another bargain:

These all plastic champagne flutes. Now whist there is little room for copying & re-creating these with enough of a design change to truly call the 'new' copies your own design i have an idea in mind for these little plastic beauties that again i will show you how to not only copy  using moulding latex with these complex forms but also modifying them along the way like the foam skulls above. I will show you how to copy these 'then' transform them along with the skulls into totally NEW & functional objects that will please any true dark Gothic fan or Halloween fan alike.

WHY AREN'T THERE ANY NEW HOW TO VIDEOS LATELY?

I think i mentioned my only decent source for video shooting was my PSP hand held  3000 series which  my two youngest broke a little while back? If not then i apologise folks. So i haven't made or uploaded any recent HOW TO videos recently as i say my only decent video shooting tool was wrecked.

I did how ever replace this on my art supply run.  Now someone is bound to be thinking why replace that when you can get a far superior dedicated camera instead,. Well i did have the PSP (not the newest smaller model) to which i still have my camera, PSP to PC cable (PS3 USB power cable which is cross platform friendly between the PS3 & the PSP range), eight gig memory card & a few games (they  broke over two hundred pounds worth of my UMD games too) so i only required the PSP replaced. Now i simply can't stand the newer model &  could have bought a pre-owned PSP for some £79.00. I how ever am loathe to buying 'other peoples' potential troubles not knowing the history of an object & will ONLY do so when lack of cash forces me to do so which is rare. So shunning the wealth of available pre-owned models i simply purchased a brand new series 3000 model, amazingly it still cost me around £139.00. The original one i had cost £149.00 some two years ago!. Don't you just love a money grabbing greedy companies that are out there?

Any way long story short (eventually) i NOW have the means to do more HOW TO videos for YouTube & will get back to it as son as i possibly can. 

There now all done for now. I warned you this was a much bigger post than normal didn't i lol. More soon on ALL the topics raised in this post. Now i have way to much to do so i will shoot off for now, but i WILL be back sometime next week with updates, full HOW TO's & more. Oh i will be here to respond to any comment posts of course lol.

Back soon.