Eight pairs of sparkly Elton-John-sized Kevin Rudd glasses made for Shortis and Simpson’s lastest political satire, Three Nights at the Bleeding Heart, currently at the Street Theatre.
props
Purse frame bags
These two bags are theatre props I made yesterday. They still need some handles and some special things happening inside them, but I am pleased with how they are coming on. There is some relief, too, as I had intended to buy a couple of bags and modify them, but couldn’t find any that were right. I also had trouble finding the purse frames here in Canberra. I resent the fact that most craft shops here now just have scrapbooking supplies.
I hadn’t made bags like this before, but looked up patterns online, and I am indebted to u-handbag for her purse frame demystified tutorial. Isn’t the web great?
A little heffalump
I’m starting to get fond of the little elephant that I have been making over the last few days. That’s always a good sign.
He can do tricks! And now has cool trunk to look down modestly while trying to pretend he isn’t a Brave and Clever Elephant.
I have to set him aside to finish in March now, as I have to move on a couple of other projects that are vying for my time.
All the wild little horses
I loved making these two little horses recently for an up-coming theatre production, Emma’s Dynasty, by Jigsaw Theatre Company. They are based on an earthenware Chinese Han Dynasty horse that is here in the Australian National Gallery collection, but they are tiny in comparison, only 17 cm high at the head. I really like how stocky and wild the horse is, and how he looks like he has come to a screaming halt.
A while ago Andrew at PuppetVision linked to a super sculpey sculpting tutorial by Peter Konig, and it was really useful to me while I was doing the horses – thanks to you both! The tutorial is much more detailed than what I am going to write here – no sense repeating – and I can really recommend it.
The first steps were to make an armature using armature wire. In this case the strength the armature gives the legs and tail is particularly important. From the nose to the tail is one wire, and then the legs are separate wires, wired on with fine wire (Peter has close-ups on how to attach them), and set in place with Knead-It, a Selley’s two-part epoxy. You knead the parts together, and it sets as hard as a rock in five minutes – invaluable stuff!
I also used wire and Knead-It to attach the armature to a firm stand. I struggle with being too impatient at the beginning of a project to go to the trouble of making a firm base like this, and I often regret it – and know I’m going to regret it, what’s more! However, I’m getting wiser about this, and decided to follow Peter’s advice, even though the horse was small.
Another tip that I appreciated was to make a cardboard cutout of the silhouette of the horse to use as a reference while sculpting. I usually sculpt by eye, but this allows you to check how you are going.
I padded out some of the bulkier parts of the body with aluminium foil, as a way of saving how much super sculpey I needed to use later. Wire is wound around the armature wires to give something for the modeling clay to grip onto.
Now the best bit, the modeling! I’ve only recently started using Super Sculpey, and its a real pleasure to work with, because it remains soft for a long time and takes detail so well. Peter says to check it’s soft when you buy it, in case its been on the shelf a long time, and to keep it in a zip lock plastic bag.
So she kneaded it and punched it and pounded and pulled till it looked okay… You can use mineral turpentine to gently bush the surface detail to smooth it, and almost model the tiny detail with the brush.
Into the oven to bake. I had trouble fitting it in my oven still attached to the stand, and ended up putting it in on its side. I thought trying to cut off the support before the horse was baked might risk the horse getting squashed. Maybe next time I should make it so it unscrews instead.
Sawing the support bolt off was a little tricky, but manageable. There were a few small cracks, but I gather this is quite common, and took Peter’s advice to fill them with sculpey and blast it for a few seconds with a heat gun, only in my case it was with a hair dryer. Instant glue is effective for mending breaks. Then, on to the second horse.
Super sculpey takes acrylic paint very well, and I used a dappled mix of greys and terracottas to get the final finish.
There are more photos here. I guess I got a bit carried away, but sometimes that just happens.
Flying ducks again
The ducks have progressed to the painting stage, and I should finish them today. When the paper mache dried fully, it somehow warped the necks and top wings slightly, so that the ducks didn’t sit flat against the wall, so I had to do a bit of surgery, making a cut in each tension point, and filling it to push the part back. I also spent quite a lot of time smoothing the surface and sanding and filing the feather shapes, as the paper mache doesn’t allow fine shaping, and dries just a little bumpy. It’s also proving tricky to get the glazed translucent look that the ceramic ducks have. I am putting a lot of hope in the final varnish!
Update:
This is how they turned out. They are for “1 in A 100”, a play about mental illness (synopsis here) written by Mary Rachel Brown, directed by Carol Woodrow, design by Imogen Keen, at Canberra’s Street Theatre in May 2007.
Flying ducks
I’m working on several projects at once at the moment. One is making a set of those flying ducks that people had as wall ornaments when I was growing up. I’ve been lent a couple to model from, and looking at them up close I can understand their attraction, despite their kitsch reputation. Since the ones I am making are theatre props they only have to look like the real thing. Inside, they have an mdf structure, and I have bulked them out with polystyrene. I like carving styrene, except for the mess.
The next part of the process is covering the shapes with a commercial paper mache pulp. It starts as a dry mix, and when you add it to water it turns into a thick paste, which can be smoothed on and sticks to most surfaces. Here I’m half way through adding the paper mache to the big duck:
The pulp takes a couple of days to dry, but I’m always impatient with things like this, and I have been hurrying it along by putting the ducks in the sun,
and the oven:
I’ll have to add more detail to the shapes, like the eyes, tails and feather patterns, and then its a matter of getting the surface smooth and painting it to look like china.
We have four beautiful white pet Indian Runner ducks, and it was funny to see them charging across the back garden in a line just as I was photograhing these in the kitchen.
