The Dragon is taking a bit longer then expected. I think I'm looking at well over two hundred hours if not over three hundred.  I'm nervous to put forth another expected finish date, as this has been one of the more ambitious projects I've taken on. I will post updates here as I go and hopefully it will be ready to cast some time this summer.  I thought I would go ahead and put up some of the early progress shots.

I started off by cutting a six by six inch wax base and building a thick gauge steel wire armature. Here is a shot of the initial armature with a nickel for scale.  This turned out not to be enough support, after I got most of the wax on.  I've not worked this large in wax before and it supports itself less well then I expected it to. I think I was expecting it to act like greenware ceramic, when the wax was cold.

After I got the armature together I covered it in victory brown wax, causing it to look a bit like an undead chicken. Given recent events I'm glad I went with wax over sculpey in this case, as I'm intending to cast this guy in the platinum-based silicone rather then tin. The reason for the platinum is the shelf life, tin-based silicone gets funny and fragile after a couple of years and as detail is going to be very important with this mold I would like something that will not be prone to losing bits as it gets older.

Once I'd added about 8 pounds of wax I started to have a balance problem. I didn't have the wings on yet to create counter balance so the dragon got really top heavy. I tried adding an additional external support, this did well when it was not being worked on. I needed something  larger to stabilize it while I was working.

In the end I grabbed an old lazy Susan and drilled a one inch hole in it. I then bolted a large treaded rod to it to create a back iron. I liked the idea of a reusing this device as a back iron for other large pieces, so I decided to make the horizontal bar adjustable. I got some cast metal electrical clamps that had threading running horizontally. Next time I will just want to work the back iron into the initial armature.  I think that will be a lot stronger if it is solidly attached, but it was a little late to do that with this dragon. Here is a close up of the adjustable horizontal bar.

Once, the dragon was nicely stable I started adding finer muscle structure. I added the taxidermy eyes as I would then know what size I needed for the casts. It is also really nice to have the eyeballs difficult to damage while you are working on the lids. This applies to claws and teeth as well, though I did not add pre-harden claws and teeth in this case.

Most of my time so far has been in the detailing. It has been about ten percent building up the form and ninety percent detailing.  This is generally not the case with most sculptures. I blame the scales, so many scales.  I will likely be working on this guy at the next convention, which will be Duckon.

Upsetting Sculpey

I recently purchased a new box of super sculpey, the normal pink stuff.  I just used it to make some molds of smaller stuff with platinum based silicone. I lost every single mold I used the new sculpey with the silicone just didn't cure where it touched the clay. I wonder if they added sulfur to the formula. This isn't the first time I've used super sculpey with this silicone, so it was just the new batch. I noticed it was softer then usual and smelled a little different but I didn't really question it until all of my molds failed. Not that it smells like sulfur. Has anyone else had this problem? 

Sorry about the long time between posts. I'm going to put up an update on the Dragon shortly. It is taking a bit longer then I expected.

Show at the Contemporary Art Center of Peoria

I recently picked up my work from the Contemporary Art Center of Peoria. It was not a show that I did under the Necropolis Studios name, but I thought it might be worth mentioning, and they gave me a package of pictures from the show and extra post cards.
Here is a picture of the postcards:


I really recommend the venue for anyone that might have the opportunity to show there. William the executive director, pictured on the left, was very helpful, and provided hotel rooms for all of the artists. They also put on a really nice opening with live music and sushi. The opening was a bit terrifying, for me as I tend to be a bit socially awkward. When Stuart and I got up to the building there were about 400 crows circling around in the dark a bit like a scene out of Nightwatch. I chose to take this as a good sign. When we got in we met K.A. Letts the cubist who gave me some opening pointers. She noticed that I was mostly together when talking about technique but I was very shaky when people wanted to ask about the meaning of the work. It's not that the work doesn't have meaning, but I have a really hard time discussing it and not feeling like an idiot. She suggested before any opening I come up with a three sentence script about every piece.

The other artists Beth Bojarski and Mark Winter had a long conversation with me during set up. They both had lovely collections of work and it was kind of fascinating to watch them flip in and out of professional mode. Here is a shot of some of Mark's work at the show:




I had six pieces at the show, including a 5ft figure that does not fit in my car. The big figure titled "Perennial" was sort of a 200 hour learning experience. I may have to wait a while before I try one that size again. I unfortunately have not been able to get a hold of them, but there are some great shots my family took of people talking around the sculpture that look as though it is participating in the conversation. Here is a shot of it at the show:


Here is one of the other pieces at the show, titled "Uprooted She Creeps". This one also went to Gencon with us as well.
I will likely post some of the other pictures from this show, on the blog at a later date.

Capricon

This last weekend we had a table Capricon in Arlington Heights, our second science fiction convention as Necropolis Studios. Capricon was extremely well organized; they even had the room parties in the convention booklet, a daily 2 page newsletter about all of the activities that were happening last minute, and they provided food for all of the dealers. It was also the most themed con I had ever been to. The theme was pirates and you could pretty much do pirate related things every moment of the convention if you chose to.

Thing went reasonably well at the booth, we learned quite a bit and have a lot ideas about a new booth set up. We also upset our first person, apparently someone mistook "necropolis" for "necrophilia" and was unhappy we would name our studio after such an awful thing. One of the other dealers let us know as they thought it was pretty funny, we thought it was pretty funny as well. A man named David with interesting eyebrows came by and took our pictures, which he then emailed to us, which was very nice of him. We got quite a bit of art done at the con, Grace seems to be getting over her dry spell. I was working on a large dragon that I'm hoping to get casts of in April.

Here is a shot of me working on the Dragon:


Here is a shot of Grace drawing "Wearing My Nonsense Hat Again":


Here are a few pictures Grace drew at the con:

First Post

Welcome to the Necropolis Studio Art Blog. This first post is mostly to see how this service works. In the future this blog will contain information about necropolis studios, art techinques and materials, artists we like, and other assorted topics.