Masks and other Art

[Unorthodox]

Oh, I like the flowers themselves, just don't think the kitties were suited to them. 

In fact, done right, the flowers on a skull mask would be wickedly cool, if too obscure for most to realize the thought behind it. 

[Buster's Uncle]

Oooh!  I get it!

-I'll pass the daisy idea along.  It's not like there's no skull masks waiting for a paint job...

[Buster's Uncle]

Gentlemen, the most powerful mystic artifact in Earth's history -and I've (re)found my next project- the Helm of Nabu:

The color is not an attempt to paint it gold-like-Doctor-Fate's-helmet gone wrong; it's just been sitting out unfinished since some of you were in elementary school.  -Before you were born in Beru's case.  Plaster gauze gone brown with age, and badly in need of some adjustments to hammer out old dents, get left and right symmetrical, the ear slits need rounding, and so do the bottom of the eye holes.

-A solid plaster helmet would make a horrible, thick and heavy, costume piece, but I believe I can manage a base for paper mache impressions that I can spray paint gold and gouge comic book geeks big-time, all without waiting on my partner.  Doctor Fate's helmet is a classic design, IMO, and I've never seen/heard of anyone cosplaying him.

It's going to be a job, and a messy one involving lots of sanding and plaster dust, and I imagine it's not going to want to bond with old plaster gauze, but I always wanted a Dr Fate Helmet, and I'm excited...



-For a bonus for y'all, Fate has had many hosts in recent decades; here he is as a hippy.

[Buster's Uncle]

As shabby Dr. Fate looks on, Ken takes the plunge.

-It felt like adding the paint sped up the curing on this slow tube of putty considerably.  -The Barbie boots mold is still not completely firm this morning.-  This was firming up non-trivially/palpably as I finished up.  That's ten squirts of putty, most of the tube.  I'll mix the last, I estimate, three squirts with putty from the next tube when I start the rest of the mold without as much color, which should slow it down and give me time to work, but cure in a reasonable time frame.

With a material that's going to set up flexible, I didn't worry unduly about getting exactly half/widest point, as I would with something like a plaster mold.

Since I'm counting on being able to keep the two parts of the mold from merging with a liberal smearing of Vaseline, I plan to overlap/wrap the edges of part two slightly, and I figure I'll have to cut the mother in half offset by 90 degrees, and tie/rubber band it shut for pouring.  -In fact, would I be better off contriving a container big enough and doing the mother in solid plaster?  I think there'll enough give in the mold material for that to work...

I didn't try to get much of the pedestal in, since that part fouled up asymmetrical on this original and it's easy enough to make a new base in the big yogurt cup and center/level the first casting, attach, and extend the mold...

[Geo]

You've been watching Swift's Blank Space video again, haven't ya? 

[Buster's Uncle]

Sure.

-I don't know what that is, though...

[Buster's Uncle]

When I got up to make coffee half an hour ago, I poked at a thick bit on the mold, and it was still mighty soft after three hours; so, thinking of how the patches in the Ken bust mold seemed to set up while hot wax was being poured in -each candle needed less fingernail scraping than the one before, until the fourth had no real flaws- I took the whole shebang and set it in the oven at 170.  Fingers crossed...


In other arting news, I've been working on an overall style for the webpage, and just as well use my picture gallery here for one there, while I'm at it: http://alphacentauri2.info/JKStudio/JKStudio-WorkshopGallery.html  -I've only made a start...

[Buster's Uncle]

Somewhat over an hour and a half later, the statue doesn't seem to have exploded -170 is barely over summer car-in-the-sun temperatures- and the oven smells quite vinegary.  I've turned it off, now.

[Buster's Uncle]

I brought it back down to my office -- it set some in the oven, not as much as I'd hoped.  We'll see how it is in the morning sitting on my desk.

-If I end up trying the 170 some more tomorrow, I should pop the storyteller and Moai molds on a plate and give them the treatment, too...


If anyone had a look at the webpage link above soon after I posted it, I've added yet more pics this thread has already seen.  -Most people, even the ones who'd be interested in seeing the art in progress, haven't.  It's a work in progress, mostly to nail down the style of the proposed site; just as well keep adding content that'll still be there when Mylochka's brain is awake enough to make a useful call on the Shangri-La font nobody but us has, and you can't see when you view the page I've finalized the overall look and change the top.

[Spacy]

I have used Wix quite a few times before.  One school I worked at had kids make a web page as part of their graduation requirements, with them writing about why they deserved to graduate (if they said because they put in their time in a seat and passed their classes, I passed them, but Admin didn't like me for that).  I also have my old web page.  Only half done, but they keep changing the school rules on us each year and, well, I don't feel like redoing a whole web site each year. 

Here it is if you want to look at it.  http://rwolson.wixsite.com/science
As I said - probably not even half done, but it really isn't too hard to set up and keep up - particularly if you plan on using it as your primary sales outlet, just spend an hour or two every day as "part of your job" and it will be in shape in no time.  Hardest part is probably figuring out how to set it up to take and track orders & payments.

[Buster's Uncle]

Click on next column/box. Click Image button.  Paste code, backup space and increase # by 1.  If a mask pic appears and not a cat, [cntrl]a, [cntrl]c, click "Don't use alternate text" (probably later, but grinding it out right now).  Link tab. Paste.  Dimensions tab. Click "Custom Size" and enter 300 for width.  Click "Okay".

Repeat.

...

-This is to go on for 38 pages of album, 15 shots to a page, and I'm on page 34 now, working up from the back/beginning.  I'm grinding right now, and lucky my current game of Alpha Centauri is in the grind stage, too, or I wouldn't be making any progress.  (When the next in sequence is a cat picture, I go back to the Masks album to get the next code...)

[Buster's Uncle]

I have used Wix quite a few times before.  One school I worked at had kids make a web page as part of their graduation requirements, with them writing about why they deserved to graduate (if they said because they put in their time in a seat and passed their classes, I passed them, but Admin didn't like me for that).  I also have my old web page.  Only half done, but they keep changing the school rules on us each year and, well, I don't feel like redoing a whole web site each year. 

Here it is if you want to look at it.  http://rwolson.wixsite.com/science
As I said - probably not even half done, but it really isn't too hard to set up and keep up - particularly if you plan on using it as your primary sales outlet, just spend an hour or two every day as "part of your job" and it will be in shape in no time.  Hardest part is probably figuring out how to set it up to take and track orders & payments.

Yeah see, the thing is, The Tech is not that incredibly strong in me - but I can operate a .html editor competently, and design the hell out of a page, with more emphasis on utility than pretty, but that, too - and Wix template pages all look like template pages, incredibly generic and so wasteful of vertical space that even Thunderfall himself would say "Dang!  I had to scroll too dogon far down to get to the content!"

I'm an artist with some actual formal training in layout and design -unlike a lot of things I'm accomplished at, but wholly self-taught- and I don't need no steenkeeng template that won't let me arrange things on the page as I deem sensible and attractive.

---

If I knew JavaScript to make a shopping cart system and all that work, I'd cuss Mylochka and you both out for even suggesting that I take My Work within a mile of stupid Wix and the crap templates.     -And the joke about Thunderfall was a damnable lie; every CFC theme ever is proof positive that having to scroll too far down is an alien concept to him.

[Buster's Uncle]

-Which is not to say that you didn't school the Wix template pretty hard, because that's a nice site.  You design a pretty good page, too.

[Buster's Uncle]

I got all the pics up last night, making for a very loong page.  http://alphacentauri2.info/JKStudio/JKStudio-WorkshopGallery.html

For the next page, I reckon I'll do up the post(s) from this thread late last year going into detail about the making of the first Captain mask.  There's other how-to pages to be assembled from what's already at hand, but that one's what I recall being already in the format of thoroughly-photoed demonstration and already written up in more-or-less that form.  There's some pretty good pic material about my construction process making facial appliances and whole shell base forms -most recently, a lot of photos of the pig snout in the making- but those will tend to need more writing to explain what I did/the new user is looking at.


-Again, these bits of content that don't actually sell anything will (A.) Serve as clickbait, raising the site's SEO, and may well get the links spread around in their own right, (B.) Ultimately feature links at the top and bottom that go to pages that DO sell stuff, and (C.) just plain serve as entertaining content to lure users back and have them spending time on a page that, again, has links to the section that sells stuff.

-Also, It's parts I can work on now, while I'm waiting for my partner to come back from mental vacation.  Her brain hasn't liked the weather here lately...

[Unorthodox]

I see a lot of blanks on there that seem to scream 'make me a clown' since clowns are the rage this year.