Photoshopped digital sketch. I want to go back and work on details like feet, and see if I can get a more dynamic face. And then maybe put another dragon or two in the picture.

Heh, I was going to do a weekly or monthly art feature. I should never, ever say that I will do anything on a regular basis.

But I still want to try. I think I’ll try posting about just one artist at a time. Linden Gledhill is a biochemist and photographer. His images of water-based paint splashes with shapes made by sound from a speaker remind me of Murano glass, rainbow icecream and strange things in the sea. There are loads more at his Flickr page. His pictures of ferrofluid are also amazing. (And I love this badass-looking steam loco. )

Halfway through healthy week! I piked on evening Tai Chi since it was a busy day. My lunch was served with a side order of potato crisps and I left them alone. Yesterday morning I felt pretty tired, but today I feel ok, though some muscles in my back are grizzling, either from left-handed swording or from standing up and working on sculpture yesterday.

One other thing I’ve cut out is fruit juice. Although I guess it’s nutritious, it’s also sugary. In London I had juice that was completely natural, not made from concentrate, and it was much less sweet, and more refreshing; but I haven’t seen it here. I could get a juicer, but I’d hate cleaning it — fruit/veggie pulp gives me the heeby jeebies; I can’t even drink orange juice with bits in it — so no.

I got hard wax models of Pan and the small horse back. I’m glad I ordered the wax models, as the foundry managed to tear the horse’s mouth and flatten Pan’s ears back (and squash the little cartilage mouldings that I spend fucking hours on into the bargain), and those mistakes would have been cast in bronze if I hadn’t checked. There’s also some damage around the base of a horn. I will probably have to pull the ears off and replace them, though I’ll try softening the wax with heat first and see if I can coax it to bend. I might be able to use the ears from the original wax-clay model, but I have the silicone mould now, so I’ll try injecting plaster into the ears and giving the hard wax model plaster ears that can’t be bent or squashed. I will also ask my teacher about making the mould myself. It costs money to have the foundry do it, and if they screw up and you have to reshape the piece, they have to make another mould, at further cost, etc., though I guess you can try getting them to correct their mistakes at no charge — if you can get them to admit they made a mistake. It might be less hassle to DIY.

I’m sick again. I think it’s the same thing as before. Sore throat, sinuses, bastard of a stomach ache, fever. Fucking tropics. I want a gin and tonic to disinfect my insides, but we only have awful Thai rum, and I can’t face drinking that.

I’ve been running around doing the stuff that always seems to have to be done before going overseas. Today was going to be a work day, but instead it’s been a “play with Wacom to distract from physical misery” day.

ETA: …Right, so, somehow bread with olive oil was a cure? O.o ..

I made a little Pan… I think he’s sweet and I should finish him:

He’s finished! In bronze! And I think he looks awesome His toes are a bit twisted (maybe because the wax-clay model’s feet didn’t have armature wire in them and got bent at some point in the foundry?), but if I really want to I (assume I) can get another wax model cast from the mould, fix them, and get a new mould made for any further casts. In the meantime, I’m still extremely happy with how he came out.

He was hard to photograph — there’s a bit of lens distortion in some of these pictures.

Front

Back

Side

Closeup

Feet

Ears, horns and hair are pretty much done! I’m leaving Pan alone now until I can ask my teacher for advice on how much or little finish to give the piece. I quite like the rough, unfinished torso, but if I leave it that way, I think it might want some graduation between finicky and rough. I carved the grooves into the horns mostly with a pin, a toothpick and a rubber-tipped tool. For the hair I used various small tools and a toothpick. The horns were an absolute bastard to do, I have to say.  On the first go I made the grooves too even and close together, so that it looked artificial, and I had to rub them out and start over. The ears were slightly less trouble, although one of them is very keen to break in half now.

The hair looks ok at a distance, but the close view says more work needed!:

Getting there in general:

Pan now has ears and horns, more or less, and the beginnings of hair. I’ve wrapped the bust over a lump of wax, which makes it easier to hold. At some point I think I’ll have to take it off and put it on a stick, but it’s ok for now.

Plasticine hairdressing — after starting at the top of the head I realised that, duh, it would be better to do the edges first and work inwards, since the higher parts have to sit on top of the lower:

The horns are getting there, but they need work. I made them separate from the head, but had to do the grooves after they were attached to the head so that I wouldn’t end up with the grooves going in some wrong direction. I did the grooves with a seam unpicker, then smoothed most of them over with a rubber-tipped tool to see how it looked. I’m not really satisfied, so I’ll try freezing the piece then working on the horns with a toothpick or something and a paintbrush dipped in methylated spirits. (ETA: metho on the frozen model seems to have little or no effect.)  One horn is made out of hard plasticine, but the other is covered in softer plasticine (I didn’t like its shape and used the soft to fix it, forgetting that the grooves wouldn’t stay in it as well when I smoothed it). The horns are attached to the head on wire, so I can remove them if I have to, but now that they’re in place I’d rather leave them there if poss.

One ear — needs smoothing, and I’d like to get the inner contours better if I can, though they’re probably ok. This pic shows how rough the face is, too. I’m not sure how much to smooth it.

Full view — the model seems to want to lift off the base; maybe the pressure of my fingers is pushing it up? Anyway, I don’t think it matters; I’ll do the shoulders properly when I put it on a stick. I shall pretend that I know what I’m doing.

Luke Jerram is an artist whose diverse oeuvre includes street pianos and a Sky Orchestra of hot air balloons playing music over cities to sleeping people. In collaboration with glassblowers Kim George, Brian Jones and Norman Veitch, and in consultation with virologists from the University of Bristol, Jerram has created a series of clear glass sculptures of viruses and other microbes. It’s a strikingly beautiful rogues’ gallery. Jerome’s website says, “These transparent glass sculptures were created to contemplate the global impact of each disease and to consider how the artificial colouring of scientific imagery affects our understanding of phenomena. Jerram is exploring the tension between the artworks’ beauty, what they represent and their impact on humanity.”

Jerram is colour-blind, and this inspires his research into perception.  I’m inclined to think that material is as important as colour in influencing how we perceive objects before us — so that turning these plagues into finely worked glass perhaps causes information to be altered in translation as much as occurs with coloured renderings of colourless microbes. But perhaps the point is to make us think about perception in general and its inevitable flaws, distortions and biases, whether we’re using our own senses or instruments, and looking at the real thing or a rendering of it?

Smallpox, an “Untitled Future Mutation” and HIV:

Malaria:

I’m back in Australia, enjoying the balmy autumn weather (and a $20 not-half-bad haircut!)

I didn’t have a big enough box to carry the minotaur in — I’d have had to cut him into 3 or 4 parts, and just couldn’t psyche myself up to do it — but I’ve brought the girl and a couple of other little figures, and started two here. I’m going to post WIP shots and progress notes over the next few weeks, and see where they all end up.

1. Gary – poor Gary, I started him a couple of months ago at the same time as I was making the other horse guy (Boris). My idea of “good enough” got fussier while I was taking the classes, so that Gary is no longer as nearly-finished as I thought he was. I’ve cut his arms off to work on the torso. I’m learning that it’s a good idea to plan the order in which the model gets finished — maybe work on limbs seperately and stick them on at the end — whatever you have to do in order to avoid getting your hot hands on finished parts of the model. My teacher recommends cutting finished heads off and keeping them in the fridge, and gluing models to base blocks (you can just slice them off afterwards). Gary is currently sitting in no great comfort on a nail, but he turns around on it, so I think I’ll remove it and go the glue route. He needs bits of work all over, plus a hand and a foot still to do.

2. Fred – I’m not sure that Fred is his name. It might be Bruce or Bill or George or Aloysius or Cedric. He isn’t as far along as Gary, but I’m pretty happy with the basic shape of his torso. The next thing I want to do is his head, so I need to decide what sort of dog he’s going to be.

3. Jenny – she’s just a gleam in the milkman’s eye at present. She’s going to be a bit more complicated than the other two, and I definitely need to think about the smartest way to make her. Right now, I just want to make her head smaller — and, like Fred’s, get it right, which’ll mean some drawings first. So this is Jenny in the first 15 minutes of her life:

4. Pan – he’s been happening fast, in the same green wax as the minotaur and girl, which is easier to work than the brown. I made a female fairy’s head a few days ago, and when I changed an eye that wasn’t working, the head turned into Pan. I still want to do a fairy, but the head might have to be bigger, as it’s hard enough to make a pretty face, never mind on a tiny scale! Pan is going to be a small bust, about 3 inches high. I made his face yesterday, and it’s getting somewhat close to finished, though I still want to poke around at it a bit more — including with a tool I don’t have here, so unless I can get one in Melbourne, final work on the face might have to wait till I’m back in Bangkok. It also needs to be smoothed. Aside from that, there’s still his hair, horns and ears, the angle of his head and neck — I’ll need to look at figures in the same position to see how the neck muscles go — and the chest and upper back, which need to look correct, but I probably won’t finish them as smoothly as I’ll try to finish the face. I think I should do his neck next and settle on how the head’s going to be tilted.

He also needs a support. Instead of trying to saw and file a wooden block down to the right shape to go under his chest/back, I think I’ll make a lump of wax into the right shape and cover it with cling wrap. A lump that size won’t soften in the temperatures here, and it can go in the fridge anyhow.

Starting Pan:

The other side of the face:

The back’s still all lumps!

So, I thought I’d make a minotaur giving a little girl a piggy-back. No sweat, right? The minotuar himself isn’t a problem. He’s still in a rough state, but I know I can finish him ok. The girl, on the other hand…

I tried to fix her face and think I just made it worse:

She was definitely better when her mouth wasn’t open so far. I want her to look happy and excited, but not so much like she wants to eat brains. Stu suggested I play to my strengths and just have her as a zombie — a minotaur giving a little undead girl a ride. I know the green wax isn’t the problem, since I’ve seen figures in green wax that don’t look like zombies at all…

Added teeth and played with the mouth:

Well, at least now she can bite and chew.

Now I’ve painted her face with turps (a tip from my teacher) to smooth it out. It looks better, but I think I need to redo her eyes. They looked better with the shape they had before, or at least one of them did. She’s pretty small — her face is about 2cm across, so it’s all fiddly. I’ve ordered some tools, including a pointy dental tool, so maybe I should wait until they arrive. Hopefully they’ll be better than the toothpick and paring knife I’m using at the moment — though I think the problem is more with me than the sticks and picks!

Eddyway, the turps fumes seem to have helped clear my nose.

ETA: I think that instead of continuing to fiddle with this head I should make another head and see if I can make it any better, and if so, swap them.

ETA2: Well, I didn’t take my own advice, I fiddled with the eyes some more. I got them into a better position, not so buggy. Now she looks perhaps a little like Anthony Hopkins. Evil! But maybe a girl riding a minotaur should look evil? In which case I could stick a bandit’s mask and scarf on her, and be done with this facial farnarkling!