Haven’t done (IT) in a while.

My bookshelf of curiosity.

The IT in question is sculpting stuff by hand. Several months ago I began a Ninja Turtle bust on a walnut base plate, but it has sat untouched since there was snow on the ground, and I have gone to Florida twice since that point. I was taking some time to teach my oldest daughter a few things about making an appropriate armature, and building up the rough forms before you get too far into your sculpt. And by too far into the sculpt I mean working in details when the bulk of the forms (read muscle groups, fatty tissue deposits, bones, and general thickness) hadn’t been placed upon the armature yet. It can be pretty seductive, those fun details. But best to get the whole thing in order before you put hours into skin texture, clothes, or artful extras. But I digress.

I have five full blocks of clay left untouched. As a general rule, mainly because I am cheap/not rich, I limit myself to only one block of clay per sculpture. That way I can do more! I don’t always adhere to that rule, and I have been known to try to knock out two smaller items off of one 2lbs block of clay. Living on the edge here people! Watch out.

I also have a stock pile of Super Sculpey which I intend to use on a new fair entry. Not all at once. But I have enough I could do four 6-8″ tall busts along the lines of what I usually do. Ogres and beastmen of all types, goblins and gnomes, evil elves, and sailors alike. I have a minotaur that I sight copied from a fantastic sculptor from Greece. Whose name now escapes me. Fantastic sculptor though.

I could try a faircrow bust, of our event mascot, for this fall’s fair. That might garner some attention. Feels like pandering if you ask me. But whatever, at this point. Sculpting, much like any art form outside of the use of AI, is a use it or lose it scenario. Because I tend to go on a hot streak, and then move on for months st a time, I constantly have to relearn how things feel in my hands, and how the Clay’s react go my touch. If you don’t do it 24/7/365 you lose your sensitivity to it. I’m not paid to do it, so that’s ok with me. I can take a few days or a week or two to get back into the groove.

I do the same thing with wood working, playing guitar, writing short stories, and model building/painting with an air brush. My focus pulls from one to the other, on and on, all year through. I’m ok at a bunch of stuff, but not exactly a killer at any one thing. Duh!

On another note, I encountered a smell/sensation that reminded me of when I was really sick in 2015, and it has me a little spooked today. That was when I had EBV. Really unpleasant 6-8 weeks. Plus a nasty lung infection/pneumonia to go along with it. So… yeah. That’s not cool.

Latest on the bench, been left untouched for months now.

Trying to do more things.

Spent some time yesterday getting reacquainted with some of my hobbies after a fairly long break, due to travel, and various other things. I busted out the Karaoke for about an hour, and sang my way through my favourite songs, was even able to hit my current favourite twice! Even worked in some new (to me) songs I’ve been vibing with. That made me want to play guitar, so I did that for an hour as well. Jamming along to the JBL Boombox. It’s a concert in my office people. After I was done jamming, I pulled out my airbrush kit and finished off some cheapo 3d printed minis I had lying around. I did them up with a black base colour, then two shades of green, followed by a slime green dry brush. I plan to use this group as an undead/spectral horde. No need for fine detailing. Which reminds me, should I ever actually receive that Blacklist mi iatures I bought from Kickstarter 2.5 years ago, they’ll have all the details you could ever hope for, for a finely painted set of monsters and such. Followed that up by playing Diable 4 for a bit. Watched some baseball, and finished the night off watching a hockey game at my buddies place. We were hit with the mother of all tornado warnings (luckily for me my friend Leslie works for a weather tracking/mapping/research facility and was able to tell us we were really far south of where the actual threat was, but to be prepared for a heavy downpour and lightning) which was very helpful.

Today I had a moment so I took the inner frame of my resin kit and added a cohesive layer of light grey primer. I fear I thinned it too much. I hate having to unclog the machine once the primer kits off, but I might have gone overboard with the thinner portion. Live and learn. I’ll try it again with less thinner, see if I get better, and a more saturated (in colour) coating.

My cardboard box spray booth. Mainly to collect over spray, and save the stuff around me from getting coated in misted paint.

I was able to replace the innertube on my daughters bike the other day, cut the grass, and go grocery shopping, and do laundry. So it’s been a full week regardless of the holiday long weekend which we just celebrated.

If I can work in reading my book, rather than Twitter, and try to get some more of my Ninja turtle bust sculpted, all that’s left is to do some wood working and I’ve done just about everything, except painting on a canvas (which I substituted painting on minis, and on the resin kit so all good there) and trying to do some creative short story writing. It’s too much. I know I have a finger in too many pies, but I plateau and get bored fairly quickly. I find moving around between them all makes me like each one more, as it offers up some very different feelings, actions, and sense of reward for trying. Yeah I’d get much better and any one of them if I narrowed down to just one, possible two things, but I find that to be too inhibiting. Some of them I treat as seasonal endeavours, which really helps to open up the schedule to doing all of the things. Just not a once, this ain’t no fantasy camp for the arts here bud. That was college. Glad I went. Great times.

I personally would love to spend a week someplace where I could devote 16 hours each day to art stuff. I’d plan it like this.

8:00am wake up. 1hr work-out and a jog. 1hr for a shower and then breakfast. 2hr life drawing, 2hr painting, 1hr lunch, 1hr creative writing, 2hrs wood shop, 1hr music (playing an instrument or karaoke mixed) 2hrs sculpting, 1hr dinner, 2hrs free time (gaming/reading/model building etc…), in bed for midnight. For a week straight. Now that would be a vacation for the ages. That would be awesome, especially if there were talented folks there who you could ask for advice on stuff, or watch them for brief periods to learn new techniques. Fantasy artist camp. I’d go. I might squeeze in some computer software time to work in Photoshop & Illustrator to build some skills there too, if I had the option. A little skills workshop for the old day job wouldn’t go amiss.

I think my eldest daughter, and even my youngest might get a kick out of a retreat like that as they get older. My wife is quite crafty too. She used to paint rocks up as flowers, do beading, and stained glass projects. She might like it aswell now that I think about it. Ah, to dream.

It’s Thursday today. May 23rd I believe, of the year 2024. 2 years ago we had that massive Djericho storm that traveled 800km from Windsor to Montreal up the highway 7 corridor tearing up trees, rooves, and knocking down barns. Followed by a 26hr long power outage. What a day that was. Have a great day. Ciao Bella.

What to build next…

I know I have a model kit on my work bench at the moment but I’m starting to think about building a small self contained terrain piece. Like a specific set of ruins for a church or temple. I have a couple of good chunks of foam board left, and a whole bunch of air dry clay that I recently recieved. I guess if I can find a brick pattern stamp I could do the flooring aswell inside the terrain piece. Then using industrial adhesive, super glue, and a hot glue gun, I could put it all together pretty quickly. Give me the chance to try properly ruined architecture.

I don’t have any more trees on hand, but I do have grasses, scrub brush, and a few shrubs and flowers. So it’s not like it’ll end up barren looking. I have sand, stone and grout too. I could do something from a desert climate. This is when I wish I had a closet full of rock moulds, plaster, trees, and static grasses & an applicator. Damn!

Half full bags of materials.

I don’t have a whole lot of room left to store stuff, so it’ll need to be shoe box size or smaller. My shelves aren’t that tall, so I can’t make the whole temple or church ruin. I guess it would be more of a diorama piece. Damn. Now I’m excited about it. It’s going to stay on my mind for ages now. But I already bought a new paint series of eight colours for my VF-1 Valkyrie model. I should really complete that first. I should… but.

Box of parts that need to be cut off sprues, and partially assembled before I can prime & paint them.
Shoe box sized self contained dungeon.

The other day I had an idea for a new sculpted bust too. So I’m going to need to make a bunch of new bases on the lathe. That takes a day or two as I have to glue up a bunch of Walnut pieces, or find a suitable maple log portion to be turned into fancy rounds. That’s a good way to get my wood working fix in without having to touch a hundred icy cold hand tools. If I use a long enough chunk of wood I can get at least four or five bases out of it. Plus sanding and slicing it up, more sanding and finish. That will satiate a bunch of create pangs I’ve been having.

I think I am slightly more interested in painting my model kit, than the initial (and very important) build up. I need to be more slow and methodical, so that it looks better generally than the last one I constructed a few years ago, and only recently painted. I can see several rough spot where I didn’t cut all of the tabs away. And my build was sloppy. Forgotten pieces, and glued on elements that shifted or fell over entirely. My decal application left much to be desired as well. Yikes.

Previous build up, with recent amateur paint job.

Plus a new larger paid project came in so I can’t jump on any of this stuff right away until the majority of my day job projects are well under way. Glad for the work though. So now I just have more time to day dream about my hobbies before I actually start any side projects. Not to worry. Once I’m in a comfortable spot with my open design jobs, I can pick up a brush, nippers, or a file and chip away at all of this stuff. Plus somewhere in the middle I will find the time to play guitar/bass and the keyboard songs I know. Sometimes I think I have too many hobbies, but they really do add a dash of something extra to my daily life. So not all bad then eh? Right.

I’m going to do it, I think I’m going to do it, I want to do it, I think I will do it, I feel like I should do it. I’m… not gonna do it. But, I want to do it. I think I’m going to do it… damn.

Ah, the endless loop of thinking about making a slightly larger than usual purchase on something for myself. I have been thinking, dreaming, wondering, hoping to learn to play the bass guitar, and now that I have a line on a good used bass amp, and a decently priced slightly above beginner guitar, I feel like I should go and pick them up to make this years long dream a reality. But I’m stressing out about it for some reason.

Probably because it’s a selfish purchase, but on the off chance one of my kids wants to learn an instrument in their teens I have guitars and a bass for them to choose from. Alongside my wife’s clarinet, and our violin, and our keyboard. I hope they decide to pick up an instrument. Hours and hours of fun, and a great way to appreciate personal time, and learn something new. The intrinsic value of picking up new songs is really something special. Playing in a group with like minded friends is also a fantastic experience. I played the trombone in the middle school band, and the orchestra in junior high and it was amazing. Jamming with buddies in high school was wicked as well. Ten stars, do reccomend.

The thing is, I find that when I hit a plateau with guitar playing, I need to shift the focus to a different instrument, and that new way of thinking/executing music teaches me something helpful with my guitar playing, in a round about method. I love to noodle about on my guitar. I love to tickle the ivories on our keyboard, and it all seems to pay off in the end. Plus, ahem. Halfway decent instruments that have been looked after tend to have a 60-70% of retail resale value, if that brand hasn’t exploded in popular culture and doubled, or nearly tripled in price, a la Gibson Les Paul’s, and my random Fender that’s now worth three times what I paid for it. Could also plummet in price too, so don’t take any of this as investment advice ok? Great.

Heading into day three of camp, and so far we’re all smiles and excitement. I have a feeling it’s probably a bit more free wheeling than we might have expected. But last week or summer, we have zero expectations for it, other than our kids remain safe and looked after during the hours of their stay each day. I care not if they choose to focus more on dance, than singing or acting, or if the youngest gets an extra hour to slap paint around with a brush. Like I said, no expectations of new dance routines or a recital of cumulatively learned dance steps. It’s for the best.

In other news the kids gymnastics will start in mid September, so that should be an absolute riot! I think they are gonna love that! Or, conversely hate itvwith every single fiber of their being. Or, third option, my favourite. One will fall in love, and the other will hate it, and we’ll fight every time I have to take them both with me so that one of them can keep doing it, and the other just has to sit for an hour watching the very thing they hated so much. It’s going to be spectacular – for me. I think they have Tae Kwondo to look forward to as well. I wanted jujitsu for the full body usage, grappling and striking. But Tae Kwondo isn’t awful. That’ll help them defend themselves as they get older. Anywho… Ciao Bella !

Welcome to the future…

It’s really very similar to the recent past but otherwise it offers you hope, if only a sliver. The weather outside is pretty strange, seeing as the temperature is slightly positive in January, in southern Ontario Canada. The roads are clear enough we can ride our bikes or roller blade, which is very strange. The snow seems to hold off longer and longer, if it doesn’t absolutely dump down on November first in a 12 inch blast of school closing insanity.

We were all in bed asleep by quarter to eleven last night, because we have small kids who wake up exceedingly early, and can be a real bear to deal with by seven pm. After getting them off to bed and watching an hour or two of HGTV no one felt the need to greet midnight, and a potential 5:45am early rise from one or both kids. I was going to pour myself a drink and watch a movie, but my enthusiasm for that waned quickly and I watched part of a Jim Gaffigan stand up special on Netflix, but turned it off half way through instead. The life of a rock star over here folks.

Things I’d like to do more of this year are, and in no particular order; creative writing, sculpting, wood working, miniature painting, assemble the giant G-System Best resin model kit. Obviously if I am able to gather, retain or reclaim more paid work in graphic design/illustration & packaging, those items will take precedence. But I have made a plan to utilize my down time to be more rewarding personally. It gets all too easy to climb into YouTube or put on a movie and space out for 2hrs on any given day.

First things first though, we have to get COVID-19 under a modicum of control so that our kids don’t get violently ill at school, or develope life long medical issues due to rampant exposure. This fact alone will have massive knock on effects for our day jobs, and hobbies, not to mention the whole rest of our childrens lives. It is no small matter. It weighs heavily upon us all. Welcome to the future, the same as before, only different. Hello 2022.