Art Work In Process Post 9 (last One)

This will be a long post, and only about the animal heads.

During the last two weeks  I have been working on what I have come to think of as "The Canadian Six."

 Much of the work is a repeat of what I have already shown you, so I just snapped pictures of what was different.

First off several people have asked me "Why dos your Exacto knife have a long red tail?"
The answer is because I go tired of loosing it among the fur and scraps on the work benches.  I can usually spot the red,  and save myself a great deal of looking-for-it time.

Moose Ears:

I use the same fur on the inside and the outside of the moose ears.  To create an "inner ear" I shave the fur with a WAHL clipper.

I also use it to shape parts of the faces and muzzles.

Impala horns:

I use rope to create the ridges on the impala's horns.  I do a layer of plaster cloth, then a layer of Hydrocal and finally black paint and sealer.

The Impala's nose is a little different too.

The white fur is his lower jaw.  The black is a piece of fabric that  I put as the inside of the mouth.  You usually can see it in the end.

I hot glue a "V" of wash-line to define the nose.  This is  covered with black fabric.

Next, I glue the fur to the bridge of the nose and forehead.  The edges of the fur are folded and shaved before being attached.

The upper lip is a bit of a challenge.  I have to fold and shave both sides of the split lip and get it in the center.  The top "rusty colored" part of the muzzle is cut and glued at the same time.  This is easier when the muzzle is all one color!

Getting this step done can sometimes take a couple of hours. I often have to remake the upper lips several times before I am satisfied.

The final step on many of the animals is to give the fur a little extra color or shading.  Large color markings are done with different furs, But here I am adding some sienna overtones to the Impala's forehead by carefully dry brushing acrylic paint onto it.  I also do some black markings around the eyes.  Sometimes if feels like being a makeup artist.

I did learn to use an air brush at one point, but find I have a little more control with a stiff brush and don't need a separate work area. So I sold the air brush at the last flea market!

Not every animal I make is to my liking on the first go.

As I looked at the Cheetah hanging on the studio wall I decided I did not like the way his muzzle and cheeks looked.

The solution was to rip them off and re do them.

The final step for the Cheetah is to give him some whiskers:

I use fish line for the whiskers and just Super Glue them in place.

The last stop before being boxed up and shipped is to get their pictures taken for the Web Site pictures.

We do not sleep in our Master Bedroom.  We keep a studio light set up, camera and computer there.

 It would be a hassle to put it together every time I do a new version of an animal or a new design.

Craig does the photography.  He shoots each animal from several different heights and angles.  Then I get to choose which one goes on the website.

He does all the website maintenance for me.





So, there you have it.  They have been boxed and taken off to FedEx.  Their pictures have been put on the website and my customer has been told they are on the way.

I will have a nagging worry for the next five or six days wondering if they will be lost, or damaged.

Hope he likes them!

What's next?  Last week I got an order for one of my favorite creatures.

 The Giraffe.  Better get back to work.

Art Work In Process Post 8

I'm trying to limit the things I picture in each of these posts to what is new or different for each of the animal sculptures I am doing.

In the last two days I finished the moose horns with a wash of paint and sealer, and he is ready for his fur coat.

I wrapped the deer antlers with another layer of plaster cloth yesterday, and today I did  a wrap of fiberglass tape and a coat of resin.

I did the same for the Impala, but his horns also got a wrap of wash-line rope to give his horns a ridged surface.

I put some extra resin over the rope, and will be doing a layer of plaster cloth over that tomorrow.

Most of today was spent working on the warthog.

I think of the warthog as having a squishy piggy nose, so I start it with a cut out piece of foam rubber.

I wrap this in a piece of thinner cloth, make the whole thing wet, and stain it with black India ink.

Making the fabric wet causes the ink to feather out and not be as black.

Once it dries I glue it onto the sculpture.

A warthog is not "furry" so instead of using fake fur for his skin I use a coarse wool.  When he is finished I will spend al least an hour brushing him with a hard bristle brush to bring up the little "hairs" from the wool.

I did not buy the fabric in a "fabric store."  It is in fact a woolen  blanket I bought at the local Army Surplus store.  I sure would hate to sleep under one, they are terribly scratchy.

This is the finished warthog, before brushing.










Three down, and three to go!

Art Work In Process Post 7

Another day ... another step.

The good thing is it is very hot here and my studio room, being downstairs is very cool!

Over the years I have tried a number of different ways of surfacing the horns and antlers.  I want them to look  boney like real horns or antlers.  Plaster of Paris is not good because it shrinks as it dries and this cracks.  Plastic wood is very hard to work with, but Durham's water putty works pretty well, but it to will crack if the underlying structure is not perfectly rigid.  Some years back I learned about a product called Hydrocal that ceramic artists use to make molds.  It is very strong and does not shrink very much.

I use two coats of Hydrocal to finish the surface of the horns or antlers.

The first coat fills in the smallest texture of the plaster cloth.  The second will cover the larger wrinkles.

After the second coat on the moose antlers I set them aside for a day or more of drying time.  The warthog was put out in the heat of the day and his tusks dried nicely by late afternoon.  I then painted them with a white primer, let it dry, gave them a golden brown wash, let it dry and sealed them with a water base sealer.  He will be ready for his skin tomorrow.

This picture show you the things I assemble to create deer antlers.

I have a deer skull with the antlers attached.  There's a story as to where it came from, but I won't go into to that now.

I also have a very good set of pictures of antlers that I look at.

I start with a PVC assembly that goes into the head.  I cut pieces of plastic that separate the head from the antlers so they do not get fused in the creation process.

I use 12 and 14 gage wires and masking tape for the first part of the structure.

Each wire loop is anchored in the PC and taped together.

Then I bend them into shape.  They don't have to be perfect.

I work a layer of plaster cloth over the wires.   Tomorrow I will work on the shape a bit more and add another layer of plaster cloth.

I did the same for the impala.



Even though the studio was relatively cool, I'm reading a very good book right now and decided to call it a day at about 3:00.



More tomorrow.

Art Work In Process Post 6

Cheetah:

Sunday and Monday were rather busy days for me, doing things other than art work, but I did manage to get in about six hours and got the fur done on the cheetah.

For the zebra, the key stripe on his face was the white under each of the eyes.  For the cheetah it is the black "tear line" from the eye to the muzzle.

I make a new pattern piece with waxed paper for the nose and forehead.

Every section gets a new pattern to fit this sculpture.

It took more than an hour to get the chin and cheeks the right size and shape.

I will be going back and trimming the white fur overlapping the black tear line.

After getting the ears in place, there was only one more piece on each side to do!

The cheetah is missing something, and he doesn't look to happy about it.

His Spots!


I draw his spots on with a black Sharpie pen.  I will be doing a few more here and there over the next few days.  I will also be brushing out the spots with a toothbrush and making them a little bit darker so they look more like part of his fur.

He will also get whiskers made out of fishing line and glued into place with super glue.

His ears are adjustable, and I will play with them a bit to make him look somewhat happier.



Post 7 will include more about antlers, horns, and tusks.

Art Work In Process Post 5

Is anyone still with me?

 I may save these blogs and put them on a CDR for my youngest grandson who aspires to be an artist, or a chef, or a baseball player.  He might enjoy looking at it someday and see how his Grandma Merikay made things.

But for now, I write for you.

Today I did a few "odds and ends."   Steps that only take a short time each, but must be done.

I use PVC pipe couplings to make the horns and antlers removable.

  I make them removable so they can be packed along  side the heads for shipping.  This makes it possible to use a  smaller box size and thus save on shipping costs.  Economical International shipping is  restricted by box size. 


I marked where I wanted the PVC couplings to be, cut thru the paper mache shell with a knife, and used a large drill to bore holes in the foam. I used glue and paper mache to set the couplings in place.

Yesterday I applied a layer of plaster cloth to the moose antlers.  The next material coating is a layer of Hydrocal, a white gypsum cement.

But because it is the same white as the plaster cloth it is difficult to see what I am doing.  To solve this, I paint the plaster cloth layer.  That way I will know that when I can no longer see any paint I have put on a thick enough layer of Hydrocal and have not missed any little places.

Everybody got some attention today! I started building the warthogs tusks.

I inserted a piece of 16 gage wire into the sides of his muzzle.  The "stick" in the center is a bamboo BBQ skewer, and it is keeping the wire in place.

Then I shaped the tusk with aluminum foil and masking tape.

I added a few layers of plaster cloth.

I also made the cheetah's nose today.

I use Sculpty III Clay for his nose.  It was shaped and then baked in a 265* oven to harden.
 I wrapped foil around the muzzle before adding the clay so the nose would be easy to remove after shaping.

I just lift the foil and transfer the nose to a baking sheet.

Later in the day I painted the black clay nose with black paint black.  I also painted the deer's nose which I had made on Tuesday.

I didn't help Craig today, maybe tomorrow.

I think Post 6 will cover furring the cheetah.

Art Work In Process Post 4

I finished the Zebra by early afternoon. Doing the mouth and nose is always a struggle, but  is impossible to illustrate with  pictures.  I just make it work.

This is a terrible picture of him.  Craig will take a better one for the web!

The next task I undertook was to prepare some of the "Plaster Cloth" for the moose antlers.

I buy it in twenty pound boxes from an art supply house in Wisconsin.  It is the same material that used to be used for casts for broken arms and such.
The boxes I buy now are neatly wrapped rolls.  When I started using it I was able to get the "waste ends" and it was much less expensive.

  I used a single edge razor blade to cut it into manageable size pieces.

I worked a layer of the Plaster Cloth over the resin coated moose antlers.

Each piece was dipped into water first, and then smoothed into place. This took less than an hour.




The final project for the day was to install eyes in the other sculptures.

I drew around a paper template to  mark where to put them. This is the deer. I did the same for the other three.

Next I cut thru the paper mache shell to expose the foam underneath.

This is another step I can't really illustrate!  But by cutting, propping with bit of used foam, and crafty hot gluing I get the eyes in place and then paper mache around them.

Sometimes after the paper mache dries, I cut them out again and reposition them as I did with the zebra.

This is as far as I got today.








I'm not sure how much I will get done over the weekend.  I expect to be helping Craig with some drywall work.

Come on back for Post 5 and see whats next!

Art Work In Process Post 3

I feel like I'm going into too much detail, but I don't know what to leave out.

My work day started at about 9:30 AM.  The first project was to do what I call the eye-liner on the zebra.  I do this same treatment for all of the animals.

I have several large steel washers that I use as patterns to cut these shapes out of black felt.  I buy the eyelashes a gross at a time and cut them to length.

 The zebra, deer,moose and impala have eyelashes, the cheetah and the wart hog do not.

I glued the larger circles around the under eye first. The  eyelashes were glued to the inside of the top felt, and then it was glued over the eye.

When I cut out the stripes for the neck, I also cut out the pieces of white fur that go around the bottom of the eyes. This is the last "pre set" pattern piece I  used.  From here on, each stripe was figured out and cut in pairs, making tiny adjustments from one side to the other.

I continued to use waxed paper to make the pattern for each stripe, but since it was not  kept for future use, I traced the shapes onto the furs without making poster board cut outs.

By 2:00 o'clock I had gotten this far, and was tired of working on the zebra.

So, I switched over to my other work bench and trimmed the extra foam from the other head base sculptures.

I had cut out the hardboard backs for them on Monday.

I cut the foam even with the edge of the shell, and cut the removed piece into chunks that will be saved for the next pour.

I then attached to backs to each sculpture with masking tape and made any adjustments to them so that they would agree in shape.

I then applied several layers of paper mache over the back and edges and put them out to dry.

I finished that by 3:30 PM, so I did a little bit more on the zebra before calling it a day.

Come back tomorrow and see what's next.

Art Work In Process Post 2

I love hot dry weather when there is paper mache to dry!  The heads I did yesterday were hard and dry and ready for the next step, removing the shells from the master sculptures.

I ran an oyster knife around the edges and along the split lines.  Most of the time that's all it takes to get the shells to pop off.

I then taped up all the joints with masking tape, and did a couple of layers of paper mache over the tape.  They were then ready to sit out in the sun for a few hours to dry.

I go started on the zebra on my other workbench.

Starting from the bottom I carefully glued each stripe into place with hot glue.  I work hard at getting the edges to abut but not overlap.

Before finishing the last of the white stripes on this part of the zebra, it was necessary to make and install his mane.

I know, it looks violent, but when I am both crafts person and camera person it is a challenge to take the shots I want.  Just imagine my hand holding the knife!

I made the mane using black and white strips of "fun fur" which has a very long pile, doubled over so that the wrong sides are glued together.

I cut a slit down the back of the zebra, and using hot glue and my oyster knife I pressed sections of the mane into place.

I  also cut each section of mane at one inch intervals for a Mohawk effect.

After finishing the mane I turned my attention to making his ears.

I cut the ear pieces yesterday when I was cutting the stripes for the body. Each ear consists of a white back piece, a white front edge, and a black inside.

I carefully glued the white front edge to the white backs being careful to do only the edge.  Next I cut a piece of 16 gage steel wire and folded it to fit inside the pocket created by the white edge.  Once in place, I ran a generous bead of glue along the wire and pressed the white edge piece over it.  Finally I glued the black inside ear in place. I did the same for the second ear  and then folded them.

I used a carpenters awl to poke holes into the side of the zebras head.  The ear wires go into these holes and later the ears will be glued into place.  I didn't glue them in place today, because they get in the way when I'm working on the rest of his stripes.  But making them is one more step finished.

By now the paper mache on the shells had dried and I set up to fill them.  Each of the four shells was turned upside down and set securely into a holding box, or wastebasket.

On the workbench I have latex gloves, measuring cups, mixing cups, plastic spoons, the two cans of X-30 foam and bags of cut up foam scraps from previous pours.  The X-30 is a bit pricy at $130 per gallon, so I save the scraps and add them in as I go.

 Tomorrow I will create a few new bags of scraps when I trim these.

I did the pour in four steps.  It went so fast, and I didn't want to get any foam on my camera so i didn't take any intermediate pictures.

But I did get this one.  This is the last pour on the impala.  A second later I picked it up, held it over the deer shell and scraped the excess foam into the deer.





To finish out the day I cut out the hardwood backs and installed the picture wire hangers, but that doesn't merit a picture!

Come back tomorrow and see whats next!

When I get thru with the six, I will write one more post answering the questions you have asked in the comments, like just how and why I started doing this!