I haven’t sculpted a full humanoid figure in a number of years, so starting off with a Ninja Turtle in a medium I don’t typically use was going to end up one of two ways. Either the best thing I had made to date, or a low res copy with lots of learning curve errors for the type of materials I used. Can you guess how I feel it went? Yeah, the latter and not the former. I will say this though, free standing, a plus, looks like a turtle, kinda, and now it’s done. Three pluses in its favour. A great introduction to Apoxy Sculpt. I like that I don’t have to bake it afterwards. But as I don’t sculpt full time, I’m not able to wait for things to semi harden to go back in and make crisper adjustments, like I would with Sculpey. I have six some odd pounds of sculpey so any more sculpting done this year will use it ( Super Sculpey), rather than the last 1/3 of the Apoxy sculpt I have left. I like the idea of apoxy for weapons or add ons that want to harden before I finish the figure/bust I’m working on. Green stuff is great that way too. Next steps, more sculpting – yeah! And also painting my two finished items.
Work on the shelf unit is coming along slowly, as per usual. Have the box built, and round overd applied to all front facing edges. Needs a hell of a lot more sanding, and some minor fixes on the top display surface. Then I can stain and apply finish to it. Which completes the top. The base requires twelve mortises to be cut, and I want to use my table saw for the through and throughs. The rest get hand chiseled out. Which takes forever.
Plus the actual legs are Ash, so that’s a great hard splinter wood to work with. But sturdy as all get out. Measured the top box, and it is reliably 15 ” and 15/16ths tall. I was 1/16th from my goal of 16″. Not bad, not great. I think the noted thickness for my boards was approximate and not definite, which is where my discrepancy comes from. No matter. It’ll fit under the windowsill which is my main priority. The floor could dip, cup or bow, and I’ll be glad of the extra room to maneuver when I comes time to bring the thing indoors and really get moving on cleaning up the kids toys.
I’m not totally sold on painting the shelf unit white. I’d like to stain it dark, like Walnut, to match the rest of the furniture. We’ll see how it looks unfinished once totally assembled. I can make my decisions then. That’s future me’s problem to wrangle with. My reasoning is, as I can’t let this go right now, is that white paint will show dirty finger prints and scuffs, and hard wear, whereas the dark stain will just start to look more rustic and worn. Which will match the state of the house – ha. I know it’ll get beat up, so why try to draw attention to that by being a brilliant white?
As an aside : I really should put wheels on the toy box so it can get moved into the room to aid cleaning up too. Just a thought.
Today is Friday, and a warm hello to two of my older brothers whom both have birthdays today. If I recall it is #45 & #47! Happy birthday Amigos. Here we are last year on the hottest day of August playing Swamp Golf at the Thunderbird course in Kanata Ottawa. Our father melting in the background.
Greatwall Studios Graphic Design 