Cloisonné Pear and Skull

If I kept going with the "enameling is my new significant other" metaphor, cloisonne would be that hot thing they do with their tongue. Or in less sexy metaphorical terms, cloisonne is the technique of melting thin metal strips into enamel to create boundaries (check it out!) that you can then wetpack with enamel. I'm a little in love with it right now.

These were my first two cloisonne tests from today- I've been dying to try it out, but I've been intimidated by the process. I even have silver cloisonne wire to work with, although I did these with thin strips of 22 gauge copper for testing purposes.

Skull! I had this design banging around my sketchbook from last term, and it seemed simple enough to fashion out of thin metal. Gave myself a nice slice with the metal when I was trying to straighten it out with my thumb, which'll show me to use my meat implements on metalstuffs. I spent the rest of studio time trying to keep glass dust and shards from breaching my usually awesome bodily defenses that keep that shit on the outside. Not even my ninja bandaids were up to the challenge :(

This was a fun abstract piece that I decided looked like a pear once I was done. I love how enamel gives me license to play with colors abstractly- I used citroen yellow and olive cuz they spoke to me from the enamel cabinet. I roughly enameled a jump ring to the top of it after I accidentally closed the drilled hole, which I'm going to have to get more careful about.

The back- straight transparent olive enamel on metal, no flux. I've been getting into utilizing the backs of pieces to experiment with colors I'd want on the front and I've been getting some interesting results.

In conclusion, cloisonne and I are going to need some "alone time" with the kiln over the next week. Awwww yeah.

Anti-VD Heart piece

Slightly belated, I know, but I spent Valentines day being unbelievably romantical, which is so completely out of character for me I never got around to posting my yearly anti-VD art piece. This year I was experimenting with enameling, and was shooting to do a stamped letters under transparent enamel heart. That...obviously did not happen. And hence the recent obsession with making technical samples before slapping enamel on projects.

The good thing that came out of this project was that I learned a hell of a lot about wetpacking and manipulating wet enamel. I redid the lettering about 10 times before I was satisfied, and by then I felt I really had a good handle on the process. It still feels unfinished to me, and I'd like to enamel a thick chain of some sort to the spiky handles when I have some time to kill in the studio.

This is the back- I used clear flux as counter enamel, which is what I really should have done to preserve the original stamped text in the first place. C'est la vie.

Mistakes are learning!

HELL YEAH FIGURE DRAWING

OH MY GOD, I MISSED THE NAKED PEOPLE SO MUCH.

I love figure drawing. Loooove it. But, thanks to Evergreen's wonky budget cuts and my schedule (namely, the only offered figure session is the morning after Designated Drinking With my Circus People night), I haven't been able to do it since....jesus. Last year.

Well, this morning I dragged my sorry ass out of bed, fought the hangover demons (and WON. for the morning, anyways), dredged up some newsprint and my dust-collecting chalk pastels, and went in. I only caught the last hour, but I was rewarded for my efforts by this great model- good proportions, solid poses, didn't spend the entire time with his hand on his dick. Which is a thing I've noticed with almost every male bodied model I've drawn. Don't get me wrong, if my genitals were external, I'd feel a little vulnerable being scrutinized by a room full of people too, but occasionally it'd be nice to see some poses that didn't revolve around "INSTINCTIVE PROTECTION OF REPRODUCTIVE ORGANS".

Anyways.

The only spot open when I showed was the unenviable foreshortened top-of-head-tips-of-toes angle, but eventually I maneuvered around to get him from the side. I only had an hour to play with, so I think I put 20 minutes or so into this one.

Now that I realized how much I miss staring at naked people while clutching pastels I'm going to kick my ass into going to the rest of the sessions this term, hangover or no.

I LOVE YOU, NAKED PEOPLE!

New old posters!

Nnrgh. My studio time has been EATEN for the past two days by a poster contest for the circus group I run. Making large scale poster art is so very anti-metalworking brain for me, it's been a struggle to get anywhere on my Artificial Tears piece. On the plus side, I made a kickin' poster that I'll try to photograph sometime tomorrow, but damn, it ate my life this week.

But! I do have art to blog aboot, although it's already appeared once here. I have a few Skül! posters left over from Christmas that I'm trying to get rid of. They're on my etsy all kinds of marked down because I want them OUT before I do another run of that print. So if anyone saw these when I first put them up and hungered for a delicious ink-skull of their own- have at it.

Here are the four remnants of my pre-holiday printing frenzy!

Work-in-Progress Sundays: Artificial Tears

This is the piece I was doing all those blue enamel samples for. It's very much in-progress, but I thought I'd toss up some shots of how it's going. I'm still working out some design aspects of it, which is why I haven't enameled any of it yet. (Planning and thinking before rushing ahead- I'm learning!)

I like the look of it thus far, but I'm debating adding little droplets with jump rings to the bottom of the wavy pieces. I put one on the far right to see how it looked (you can see it more in the picture below). One of the nice things about enamel is that I can cover any holes I drill, so I can do a fair amount of physically designing before I fire the piece.

I'm not thrilled with how it hangs on my face, and I'm considering attaching a chain to the nose chain that would go up and over my head, then attach to the two side chains in the back. I'm tempted to get all chain-design happy like I did with my last mask, but I also want to make sure this piece stands on its own apart from that one. I also need a new MANNEQUIN or other cunning display method, which is why I'm saving this one for next weeks critique as opposed to showing it this week. Time to whack the idea tree again.

Feedback, particularly on the hanging tear drops, gratefully appreciated.

Science by fire- orange enamels

One of the cool things about enameling is how you can manipulate the texture through firing time. Over-fired pieces get an "orange peel" texture (check it out!), which can be good or bad, depending on what you're going for. In this case, I was going for Science, so it's all good. I used orange enamel because I've been dying to see what it looked like, and I harbor a slightly paranoid distrust of the existing enamel samples in the studio.

This was one of my first solder experiments I did last term, so it's fitting that I effectively destroyed it to experiment with enamel now. I cleverly forgot about how the kiln melts solder like marshmallows in a microwave, but I managed to remember as soon as I peeked in and saw the piece collapsing. You don't really learn things until you fuck 'em up anyways.

In the spirit of "it's already fucked, let's fuck with it", I sprinkled on a little flux, and painted some heat resistant liquid on the solder joint, but no dice- it still melted like fondue. But now I know!

It's a good thing I did this one before I went on to destroy this piece, which was next on the enameling chopping block. I'm still eyeing it for potential, but I think it'll escape the kiln this time around.

Enamel samples- bloo

I did a series of blue enamel samples on scrap copper to test out colors for a piece idea I'm currently fooling around with (working title- artificial tears). I'm usually crap about testing things out well in advance to making a piece, so these little pieces of glass with the enamel number and color dutifully recorded in sharpie on the back are kind of a big deal for me.

Turquoise, 326

All of these are transparent, because I'm still experimenting to understand the properties of transparent enamel. My first piece using transparent enamel completely covered up the liver of sulfur etched text, and I am going to find out why. With SCIENCE.

Blue bluebell

I overfired this one deliberately, since it was starting to look clearer the longer I left it in the kiln. And I wound up with firescale in the middle (?!). MORE SCIENCE IS NECESSARY.

Cascade, 2510

This one was also overfired, resulting in the blackened edge. But it's also the prettiest out of all the samples.

Cadmium Blue, 321

This one was fired perfectly, so I had to crack the glass at one point so the others didn't get jealous. Also I wanted to see what happened.

SCIENCE!

East of the Sun, West of the Moon Enameled Bird Piece

Enameling metal is my new significant other.

A little bit about this fresh love of my life. Enameling is the FREAKISHLY COOL process of firing glass to metal. You can do seriously awesome things with it (you can also make godawful kitchy crap, but we're going to avoid that.) It appeals to me because you can add deep, rich, textured color to metal, it's a deceptively simple process with huge amounts of potential, and it takes about 1/5 of the time as anything else in the metal studio.

The really nice part of enameling for me is that it's a perfect side project. I can fire up the kiln, do a bunch of test pieces, and not waste too much time away from anything big I happen to be avoiding. And I wind up with all these bright, shiny, colorful pieces of metal on my desk to toy with!

This is the first serious piece I did using enamel. I had a pierced strip of copper that I was trying to make into a collar with a bird suspended over the throat left over from last term. The bird is suspended by a little jump ring, as you can see from the movement. Not firing enamel over the hole for the jump ring was hell and a half, and I wound up covering the bird's hole (snerk), so the jump ring is just bent into the divot that the enamel left.

This is the other side of the piece- it's got a slight curve to it so it stands up independently. This was the only decent shot I got of the white side, because the glass reflects light so glossily. I might try to take a few others to do it justice. Enameling metal requires using both sides of the piece so that it's equally weighted and doesn't crack the glass, which I was deliberately designing for.

The title refers to one of my favorite fairy tales, because of the whole White Bear, black night, transformation bit. God, I love that story. I wanted the piece to evoke a fanciful, storytale, shadowbox without being too blatant about it, and it think it's my favorite thing I've done so far this term.

(You really have to hold it and watch the little bird twist and turn from black to white to appreciate how much I'm in love with it.)

Prong-tacular!

This was a quick test piece I did while avoiding my real project the other day. We learned how to set stones with bezels and prongs last week, and it piqued my interest in using prongs in one of my masks.

I'd like to use mirrors in place of eyes in my next piece (apparently all my work this term is going to be inescapable creepy). The idea bouncing around my head is to create elaborate housings for the mirrors using prongs to mimic and stylize eyes.

This is the back. I just used a scrap piece of copper I had lying around, so it already had some interesting negative space going on before I sawed out the prongs. I shaped it a little with the bend so that it would stand up on its own on my desk.

Prongtacular.

New metalwork!

First of all- apologies. Non-consensual hiatuses, even in the nebulous world of internet-land, are uncool. I disappeared to the East Coast for a month over the holidays, and when I got back I had to throw myself full-fledged into a new term of metalworking. I just now managed to get my head above my work long enough to bring my camera into the studio and photo my first piece of the term.

It's untitled, or at least a good title hasn't come to me yet. I'm spending the next term doing a series of facial jewelry- delving into masks, but not necessarily using masks as my starting point, yanno? Theoretically, I'll end up with three pieces by the end of the term, although I'm hoping to have time to make more.

I spent the first three weeks of class shaping and forming the eye piece, and trying to create a matching mouth piece to hang with a chain on either side of the nose. I didn't bring in Simone here to model it until the day before critique, and when I slipped the piece on her, the mouthpiece looked a BDSM mouthgag gone horribly, creepily, WRONG. Wrong in a thousand ways that didn't crop up at all when I was working it on my face.

I scrapped the entire mouthpiece and started from scratch with some chain I had been idly putting together in my free time. I set up a little liver of sulfur bath at my desk so I could patina it as I went (we were at t-minus 3 hours before the studio shut down for the night). I learned more about chainmaille that night than I have in five months of metalworking.

I wanted to incorporate some fake fur that my partner-in-crime Claire had let me have, so I glued it around the eye piece to soften the look a little and create contrast. It originally exploded out from the mask and overwhelmed the metal, but I trimmed it down and let it be more fuzzy.

By this point in the night, I was comfortable with the mask and chain, and I let myself get into dressing the model. I took a bunch of metal scraps and jump rings and pierced her up (no flinching, she was lovely and stoic). The fur made a great collar and hairpiece, which I gave up on keeping on her head, and by the end of the night I was pretty fuckin' pleased with the end result.

The critique went really well, with one hitch- everyone wants to see another mannequin in my next piece. Which is fine and dandy, but the mannequin tree (read- dumpster) has been scarce this season. Anyone have a spare body lying around the donate to Art?

(Extra long post because I miiiiiissed you all! Mwah! Mwah! I kiss your face, internet.)

Who wants to buy me a drying rack for Christmas?

(If you're still hoping to be at all surprised by what you get for Christmas, I highly suggest putting your hands over your eyes right about now)

About the drying rack- I kid, I'm building one out of cardboard and chewing gum. No one run out and buy me anything like this. Or this.

Being in full giftmas production mode has made the garage a leetle ridiculous. I worked in glorious technicolor all day, and I got great shades on some of the prints. Some less so (see the yellow orange misregistered one), but I'm overall happy with the results.

I particularly like this one And there are fewer imperfections than usual on it!

I'm increasingly strapped for time, leaving tomorrow morning and all, so I'm probably just going to hunt down some bleach and a toothbrush when I get to the East Coast to clean these up. And bring my makeshift tear down bar (metal ruler) and some erasers for backup. And hope I can find a big enough table to work on at home. AND find something huge to weight them down, because I decided to transport everything rolled up in my magical art tube.

I do love seeing all my work spread across the floor, though, especially with all the colors. It's like a morbid rainbow!

Skül- now with more paper!

It's snowing like fuckery outside today, but I had the Job of Doom that I've been trying to finish for my client (the one that has thus far suffered from expired chemicals, broken hoses, and lately, overly thick emulsion application), so I put on everything warm I could find and went out to the meat freezer that is my studio in the winter. That screen YET AGAIN failed to work, but I decided not to let it get me down and pull a bunch of prints I'm planning to give to folks when I go home to the East Coast fer Christmas. (I'm making a bunch of other ones, so don't go thinking that y'all know what you're getting early or anything).

My very advanced drying techniques, in the absence of a drying rack, consists of clothespins and a string of prayer flags. I'm finding that, working in my grimy studio without a sink or wash-out booth, that the 15 minutes we spent on cleaning up messy prints in class is increasingly more valuable than all the time we discussed using the humongous expensive exposure unit. And if anyone has any tips for cleaning up imperfections on paper, I'd loooove to hear them.

I started out with the screens I've already had some success with making into prints (das fishy, and Le Pixelation de Psyche), but I wanted to experiment with a third, so I got out my Skül screen and figured I'd print large before tearing the paper down to see how it looked. And because I was getting tired of black on white, I threw in some blue ink.

I fucking love how it came out- the blue adds a hell of a lot to it that I didn't expect, and I wound up with this great graphic rock poster look. I've been using color very tentatively up till now because I associate it with having to be used in layers, but I forgot how dynamic a simple rainbow pull can be.

Freshly pulled glossy wet ink! You can just see the blue tones in this one, I let the black generally overwhelm it to keep it simple.

Next hurdle- figuring out how the hell I'm going to get all these across the country without damaging them anymore.

Trio 'o Shirts

I pulled these three shirts while yelling along with Amanda Fucking Palmer in the garage today. It's a Christmas commission for an etsy client, who specified the metallic fade ink and the designs. The photography is a little quick 'n dirty, but she loved the shirts.

I love how the ink faded out because of the placement of the skull. I was going to get brave and test my new 16" squeegee on this, but I chickened out and used my old 6" one instead.

This is the top half of the modified mannequin Michael made (say that 3 times fast) who occasionally models shirts for me. I never caught her name while Michael was around, but I've been called her Simone in my head. Her bottom half is white plaster over gold paint- any suggestions? Michael? Name your creation?