Armature

While I was in the studio yesterday (freezing my ass off), I also started an armature for a piece I've been wanting to make.

My workspace is pretty full of...everything...

First a dive into the armature bin...Justin and I keep all of our armatures and repurpose them over and over again. We are still using armatures we made while in school, adding new ones when the old ones aren't quite right. Luckily I found an old figure armature that would work with some tweaking.

We also have a collection of pipe nipples (who decided to call them that?) and flanges and connectors, which is great because when the armature I found had a 3/8" nipple (rather than a 1/2" one, which I normally use), I was able to find a 3/8" flange to match it in our stash, instead of having to go to home depot.

 I did a quick sketch of the rough pose to bend the armature to...the pose will inevitably change (as they always do once I start sculpting) but this was a place to start.

Next I selected a board to mount the armature on.

I marked the placement of where the holes should be and then drilled them.

The flange was a bad casting so all the holes were filled slightly blocked with excess metal, so I drilled that out too so the machine screws would go in smoothly.

Each hole got a machine screw, a washer and a nut. You just have to make sure they aren't too long and extend past the runners on your board.

Once everything was in, I tightened it down.

And then screwed the armature piece into the flange. This was used for a figure in the past, so I turned it around and the wire that would normally be used for the head, I used as the tail. The arms and legs were just re-bent to work for this application.

I added an extra piece of armature wire to the front, so the cat will have a head.

When the wires feel a little loose, I put a screw in the hole...the aluminum wires are soft enough that the screw threads into them a bit, locking everything into place.

I then wrapped that wire with some thinner wrapping wire, which helps the clay hold on better.

See?

And here is the finished armature...I've already started putting clay on it...photos to come soon.

Baby bunny continued...

This is from a Philadelphia Sculpture Gym blog post I just put up but I wanted to share it here too!

I have been dying to start this mold, but since the rubber I had on hand didn't fully set up, I had to order a new kit (The rubber I had was leftover from a commission I got in 2008 so it really didn't owe anyone a thing...I was surprised it lasted as long as it did...) Because it hadn't arrived before I left for the studio (sometimes Polytek's turnaround time is ridiculously fast) I decided to do a blanket mold instead of a paint on mold. Below are some of the process photos.

  Baby bunny before the mold (I still have a few things to tweak before he's fully finished, but like to do that after making the mother mold...just in case.)

I covered him with a thin sheet of plastic to protect him from the clay blanket.

This is me cutting slabs of clay to use for the blanket...which is not easy to do while simultaneously trying to take a photo.

Covering the rabbit with the slabs of clay.

Fully covered. (It looks like an ugly potato.)

   

Now for a flange around the bottom and a strip of clay along the length of the piece.

And 2 pieces of clay that will end up as a pour hole and a vent. 

I then added some metal shims along that key that runs the length of the piece so I could do both sides of the mother mold at once. I Vaselined the board and the shims and then mixed up some plaster, threw on a splash coat and then one layer of burlap. I thickened up the edges so I'd have something to bolt through. Because I did this in about 12 minutes (I was running late to pick up Justin for a meeting at our new space!) and had plaster on my hands, I didn't get any photos of me making the mother mold.

After our meeting at the new space, we stopped at Rocket Cat for some coffee (and an apple for O'Rae). Then back to work.

 

I pulled out the metal shims...

...then carefully removed the first side of the mold...then the other.

 

He survived!

I cleaned out the clay from the inside of the mother mold, placing it all in a multi mix bucket to measure roughly how much rubber I'll need to pour into the mother mold.

I then cleaned up the edges a bit and put it back together. 

 

Once the rubber arrives, I'll finish the mold, so stay tuned for Part II!

Sneak Peek: Baby Rabbit

Here's a sneak peek of the baby rabbit piece in progress...

 

Still needs a bunch of tweaking but so far I'm liking it...

And this guy is something I worked on last night at Fleisher...One of my students, Nikki, brought in her dog, Sammy and a bunch of us had a great time sculpting him...so adorable and so well behaved!!

Fancy lady style

So I've been cleaning up, throwing out, hanging up, sorting, stacking, unpiling, etc in the studio, all in the name of making it a nicer place to work and to make the space make more sense now that Justin is in there with us. One of my sidebar plans is to make my sculpting area an amazingly beautiful and fabulous place to be, so that when I walk in I want to throw down all my bags and run over and start sculpting immediately. And here is one little piece of that, my new fancy sprayer, which is oh so much nicer than a shitty old Home Depot spray bottle, no?