Monday 24 December 2012

Baubles !

 It may come as a surprise to some but goths do Christmas too - complete with tree (and no, it's not black). We even added some shiny silver baubles, not that they stayed on there for long....
 Those who read our last post know we've made a model Stephen using, amongst other things, some of our tree decorations. But where, you wanted to know, were his baubles ?


To get the range of movement we needed in his shoulders we needed ball and socket joints - we could have bought them online but having come up with the idea of making a Stephen, naturally we wanted to play with it now and couldn't wait that long.



 We had a bag of black plastic beads left over from making bookmarks and some tubing that would fit into that to make our ball- but what to use for the socket? It turned out that the little collar with the hanging loop on top of our baubles was just the right size- and joy of joys, they simply pop off !


 We cut a small section of tubing and glued it into the hole in the bead. Rich cut a hole in the top of the collar and threaded the ball part through post first to complete the set.


 The collar was then glued into a hole cut into the main body, making sure not to get any adhesive on moving parts ...


When that had set, the post was covered in glue and slotted into a hole drilled in each of the limbs. Then we had to wait impatiently for the whole thing to dry before we could play with it :)


The first model was such a success and has already been useful in setting up drawings that we then made a hand to scale for him. Of course, that did mean going to buy another tub of baubles......

Tuesday 18 December 2012

Monster in motion


 From an artists' point of view, demons have a lot in common with cats- they don't want to know until it looks like something else is getting all the attention... of course, those of you who know Stephen already will appreciate why, when it comes to elbowing everyone else out of the way, he wins every time.



That's all well and good but he's not the easiest thing to draw straight from my head, it's far too easy to wind up with a bit on backwards/upside down. So over coffee Sunday morning I asked my other half if he thought we could make a model of some kind. That way, I could play with different compositions and get all my lighting right before starting a big piece.


 I'll get into the 'how' properly in my next post but you may be amused to know that our new Christmas decorations didn't last long on the tree before we found an altogether more fun use for them :)
Of course, I'm saying 'we' but you're probably under no illusion that I had anything much to do with the actual construction asides from working out the sizes of various bits, some sanding and the important task of watching what was going on. 



Today the last of the glue had dried and I was able to start playing with him- just some test shots with a lamp of a new pose I was working on but he's amazingly effective - I can even get him stood on his back legs reaching up and adjust his limbs in sequence. Of course, I now want one of each of our resident nightmares done like this - best get some more baubles in !


This last has to be my favourite shot so far, stretching up - that shadow makes me grin every time I look at it :) In my next post I'll get into more detail of how we did it, then in the new year drawing should start in earnest of Stephen in action...