After the ghastly school shooting in Florida, I am so horrified that of course I prefer not to think about it at all; from my safety I have that luxury. But that seems so wrong, and I listened to NPR list the shooting victims with a brief statement about each of them as provided by their families. Now I have a title for the bird piece above left: “No Safety”.
A few days ago the holiday season hit me, and yes, that is how it felt!
So I made myself a very personal holiday season “tree”, after realizing that my resin casts of a piece of coral would be great hanging ornaments! Yes, it looks a bit more like a menorah than a tree, but that is coincidence: the brass candlestick is just heavy enough to balance my chosen curly branch, and the design went from there based on just the right things coming to hand in my studio. Well I did spend an hour searching for the dried poppy heads after realizing the one at hand was so perfect!
I had already started on “Three Ships Come Sailing In” but only have two ships so far…
These are the first resin moon snail casts from my Moon Snail limestone carving, so I am excited!
I experimented with brushing in powdered pigment, in addition to adding pigment to the resin. This fast cure polyurethane resin is bright opaque white, so I added a little pigment to make a light warm grey throughout the first cast, and a lighter off-white on the second cast.
Brushing color into the mold is always an experiment, as you cannot see in advance how much color is collected by rougher surfaces of the mold, etc. I tried for a light touch with highlights, which is more difficult than a full surface coverage.
I was not satisfied with the results, which were too patchy and high contrast, so I brushed & rubbed additional colored powders directly onto both casts until I liked the result better. I used a clear matte acrylic spray to fix the color. This surface color is thin & susceptible to scratches, but then that’s art for you 🙂
I have offered the first one to a friend who may want to buy it. Her price is based on my rough estimate for the cost of materials… and this price is for friends only! But she may prefer to hold out for another material or different coloring. I do plan a few more casts, but will limit the number. Not sure about the size of the edition, but under 25, I think.
I have managed to drag success, kicking and screaming, from potential disaster:
This is art as a technical challenge: I made a really bad silicone mold of my carving Bluestone Ruins, ruining a layer of silicone with the wrong pigment, then running out of material. But I was able to salvage it sufficiently for this resin cast, and I may be able to get 1 or even 2 more from this very problematic mold.
This “Blue Ruins” cast has two layers of tinted resin. The upper layer is more translucent, but both let some light through. I won’t back light it, since the fiber and a sheet of mesh in the bottom layer would show up too much. However there is a subtle effect from light around the edges in the right light.
Note the effects of lighting: the first 3 images are the dark translucent resin cast under different light. In the 3rd image there is an optical illusion created by the scanner lighting. The relief appears reversed, with all the “outs” appearing to be “ins” :-). I have added a hanger & protective piece of acrylic to the back, so the piece hangs well now. It would definitely benefit from careful lighting however.
I certainly hope I do a much better job with my Moon Snail mold, coming next: the materials are on order.
Working on variations of an unfinished pastel:
Despite appearances the much modified print at left is the larger of the two, at 18″x12″. The print at right is only 11″x8.5″. I printed the smaller size accidentally due to a glitch somewhere in my Epson printer software, which sometimes fails to update both paper size and a separate setting for print size same as paper size!).
In both cases I printed my unfinished pastel drawing on a special Epson watercolor paper for inkjet, then worked further to make each a completed piece. The larger one on left, with the pink, is all pastel over the archival inkjet print. The smaller one has both colored pencil and a touch of pastel over the inkjet base.
The larger piece retains the softness of the original concept, with much more refinement and additional colors and shades. The pink evokes early morning or late evening light in the far north.
The smaller piece is darker, and has greater sharpness and detail. The blues are more predominant for a very different mood: perhaps early morning at a different time of year.
I hope to visit both of these in my dreams 🙂
