Jam # 104: Kid's Art and Tool Art

[Kilh]

You know what I mean

[scubasteve]

This Jam taught me several good lessons. One that you never have enough time to sculpt, two that I need a picture of what I am trying to make and three to stop trying to salvage something and it is easier and possibly quicker to start over.
Somebody on here has a tag that says "sculpting should not be frustrating". This simple little thing was very frustrating and I am not sure why. I loved the idea and love gargoyles just as much. I am happy with the sculpey - firm mix I have now but this thing felt like work. I will revisit this in the future.
As the Jam guidelines state post what you have weather it is unfinished and even if you are unhappy.
So here it is the first cup broke then I was happier with the second but I never came close to the face I wanted.

[jedideni]

Hey Steve, don't be down on yourself. You gave it the ol' college try, not once, but twice! You get an ATTABOY! for that.

Personally, I find that I learn the most from the sculpts that drive me absolutely insane-batty. That doesn't mean I enjoy it though.

Is that a PVC pipe? Did you sculpt the first one on it? I wonder if it cracked during baking. The PVC might have expanded with the heat, putting too much stress on the Sculpey.

I like the block tower look you have there. How did you get that stone texture? Seeing your cup gives me an idea. A better one than I had which was....

.....something similar for the candle jar I salvaged. It's concave in the middle, like a power plant/nuclear generator is. Which is what I was going to make. If you saw the end of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, I was going to make the tower with bits and chunks blown out of it and Deadpool's laser eye blast cutting a spiral down through the wall. After comparing how much material I'd have to add to the jar to get the same profile as the full size generator, I kind of lost interest. Plus, it still has a bunch of sticky candle wax in it that I wasn't looking forward to cleaning out.

[scubasteve]

Dennis - The world is a better place because of your presence, Thank You.
Both tower things were made around the PVC. The first one busted because it was a wafer thin and I was trying to add the gargoyle mass to it after I had baked it and pulled the PVC out. The second one I added foil an dclay to the PVC but did not bake it until the gargoyle and the bricks were added. Since the pipe was covered in foil it pulled right out of the clay, after I chopped the creatures head off so it would pull out.
To make the bricks I wraped three layers of blue painters tape around the pipe. Then I removed the center layer and scribed the edges of the tape. Then I removed all the tape and used a wide craft stick and scribed its edges for spacing. The texture was done with a rolled up ball of foil.

That was about the only part of Wolverine I liked. There are several PVC with reducer ends that could be used as a starting point. Hmmm if a cooling tower is 390 feet tall that would be a nice size 1/6 scale build.

[amusedjester]

ScubaSteve - First off, thank you for posting even if you weren't satisfied with your work and it collapsed. i think that learning from our past mistakes is a great teaching tool and allows us a chance to get better in the future.

I think adding a wire mesh in between two layers of SS around the cup would help strengthen it in the future. I don't think you made the layers too thin, It looks fairly thick to me. How long and how hot did you have it in the oven?

The design of the Gargoyle is good, specially wrapping his wings around the cup. Good idea on having several photos of the image you're going for. At least, you can look at specific features.
I like the stance, specially on the second to the last pic. It has a monolithic/ guardian feel to it.


Junior

[scubasteve]

The first cup broke because I was really mashing clay into it. Pushing on the torso on the front and holding onto the cup in the back. On the second cup I did all the bulking out BEFORE the first bake.

Junior - You are thinking guardian and I couldn't get demented Kangaroo out of my head which might be a cool sculpt in itself.

I have a sheet of 40 sculpts that I want to do and I willjust add this one back to the list. It is rare I ever get anything right on the first try. (Maybe skydiving is not for me - as the saying goes)
I wanted to do kids art and was going to bribe the grandchildren to draw me something but these two weeks flew by and to make matters worse I just added a new hobby and spent 20 hours working on it yesterday alone.

[amusedjester]

It's good to be able to come back and see posts again.

I want to wait until the CH is stabilized before posting the new Jam topic. Hope this is okay with everyone?

[jedideni]

My access has been spotty at best today. It really does put the dampeners on the hyper-drive sculptivator.

A new Jam topic once everything is back to normal would be best, too, I think, also, as well.

In the meantime, Dan has set up a forum we can divert to while the CH undergoes repairs.
http://www.theclubhouse2.net/index.php

[amusedjester]

I haven't been able to view any posts for three days. It seems to be running fine now but I want two consecutive days of normality b4 putting the new theme up.