Masks and other Art

[Buster's Uncle]

I did get the basic work done on the unicorn horn last night-


-and got everything covered underneath and dry before they got back from the doll show.






Unfortunately, Buster was taken home first - but I've got this commitment crossed off my list in under a week, as promised, before she came by hoping, and that's good.  She'll have my humble efforts at her convenience.

---

On another note, I was thinking I needed to finally finish the pig mask next, 'cause I have pics of the stages of making the appliance and wanted to do the next new JK Workshop page on that, and would want a pic of the mask from it with my part finished for such a page.

...And it suddenly hit me that I need to get around to that a week ago - 'cause my painter's come out of her coma and is painting a half hour most days, and ol' Piggy ain't making me no money if he's not finished painted and in the sto', and he's behind the whole moldy crew right now...

[Unorthodox]

You say unicorn, I was thinking freaky witch hat on seeing the pic. 

[Buster's Uncle]

It does look like that on either side...


Well, I got nothing real substantial done today, but I did get three things crossed off my to-do list...

 

...which is a big improvement over most of this week...

[Buster's Uncle]

Hmm.  It occurred to me that I've never had Mylochka pace out the painting like this before, and it was practical to document her painting process as she went.

This is how she left it Friday - with the pig mask added to the queue.


I don't think taking the weekend off was planned - but she came home tired from the doll show Saturday, of course, and felt like crap the next day, of course -that's just how it works with her brain now- and then we had company/Petey's family all afternoon.

Yesterday, she managed to get in a session, though:


And just wrapped up another while I typed this, but I haven't snuck over for pics yet.  What she was working towards with the blue masks is pretty cool, BTW.


I'm trying not to hover, and when today's session began, I opened with saying so, and got back a quick snotty, "Well don't hover" before I could ask her about the doll-face painting, -and barely managed to suppress the urge to punish that with hovering.  I got me a policy against rewarding people with what they want for being nasty to me.  -But anyway, haven't had a chance to ask, but suspect it's just planning to put down the crackle base and repainting...

[Buster's Uncle]

Hey Geo!  Do you check this thread?  The three masks here are a skyline you saw up close from behind, across the Linville Gorge at the overlook place.


  We had an adventure!/ A mountain adventure!

That's Hawksbill and world-famous Table Rock; it's the western Burke County skyline, and some Valdese heritage for the art center.  She spent more like an hour painting today -I didn't actually keep track- presumably finishing these three.

-In the foreground, she's finally begun on that key gallery mask I want to hang a small publicity stunt on the donation of about the beginning of next month.



Everything else:

The other alien, horned skull and chimp masks top left seem to be going interesting/excellent places, and the oni in the middle of the table should, too - she's never done a non-awesome painting on an oni.  The grey second coat on the pig hints that she has an idea, and it's not to go with pink and cute.

For the rest, I wonder about clowns and old dolls, but I'd be happy enough with some unimaginative straightforward realistic paintings - I don't figure Halloween has any promise for us selling fine art wall hangings, y'know?  Stuff that looks like just a mask you'd wear, the gorilla especially, would probably do better, alas... 

[Unorthodox]

I like those scenery ones. 

[Buster's Uncle]

GEO!

Hey Geo!  Do you check this thread?  The three masks here are a skyline you saw up close from behind, across the Linville Gorge at the overlook place.

  We had an adventure!/ A mountain adventure!

[Buster's Uncle]

Okydoke; some minor developments.  I was late getting sleepy last night, and got a late start today; apparently, M slipped in and put a finishing glaze on the three skyline masks before I even woke up.  Momma told me, before I had been up an hour or finished my first coffee, that Mylochka wanted me to get the old masks she turned up recently strung and labeled with the JK Studio tag inside for her to take them over to the gallery after lunch.  Also the three new ones.  It was short notice, but also my fault because I hadn't gotten it done on the older ones three weeks ago like I intended.

I was only getting started when she showed up to collect, and she told me a little about what she'd been doing with painting while I strung the three new masks.  What happened with the doll face paintings was that she didn't remember what order she did what on the big Doll Face about six years ago, and had painted on three, then realized it needed to be on top of a crackle coat base, and when she sprayed that on with the same old can - it turned out that chemistry had happened over years and now it's just white paint.  She needs to get a new can of crackle or take another tack, and has concentrated on what she could do with other masks until she gets around to that or decides on something different.

She did leave behind one older oni that was actually ready to go, because she especially liked the design on that one and needed it to look at for inspiration.

Eight or so -I didn't count- high-quality masks added to what's available in the gallery now...

[Unorthodox]

So, are these going into the store, or just online?

[Buster's Uncle]

Oh, we are SO not ready to get online sales going yet.

It's simple in concept; Mylochka has a paypal account, we post pictures, yada yada.

-But it takes getting everything together and inventorying what we have, (and being more selective about what's not embarrassingly in need of repairs before we offer it) which probably won't happen at all before we clean out what's left at the gallery end of next month, and Mylochka's excellent glamour photography of the masks -what we need for sales presentation, not pictures I take of masks sitting in my (trash heap-looking) workshop or just laying on a bed- takes some setup with background and lighting that we've agreed on where we'll do it but hasn't happened yet, and also require that a bunch of masks come home first.  Neither of us is very interested in running back and forth from the gallery -or some of my candles would have been on sale three months sooner, and the bulk of the mask put out today three weeks ago- and that's surely going to wait until early November.

The biggest hurdle, of course, is that the sales stuff needs pages with a 'shopping cart' setup that's way over the tech paygrade of either one of us, and has to be done with those [intercourse gerund] Wix templates and hosted there, and she won't admit that she intends me to do all the site-building work, and I haven't explicitly told her that I have no intention of touching the &^%$#@! template until the pages are set up and I'll go behind her and do what little I can to bring the look of the pages into line with my site design as much as possible.  She's been in a productive/creative coma forever, and that's not lining up fortunately with the trend in my mood cycle right now.  -I ain't begun work on a new tutorial page in over a week, and that's with three clear ideas waiting in line.

All this is unfortunate, because of course right now is the time to be hawking masks to the general public nation-wide within reach of a snail mail box and not just the limited local market in a brick-and-mortar venue with an incurable invisibility problem.

tl:dr; Just the sto' for now.

[Geo]

GEO!

YAY!

Yeah, I sometimes check this thread. Like once a week or so?

I haven't seen the ridge from the mask point of view somewhere along the way, didn't I?

[Buster's Uncle]

You've been to Morganton where it can't be missed, yes.

That can also be seen out one of the windows in Mylochka's house in February, but I doubt you did.

[Geo]

Haven't taken a pic from that side then. And perhaps that was that cloudy day in Morganton.

[Buster's Uncle]

I do believe it was.  We came back through Morganton from the South Mountain waterfall hike, and went back a day or two later when I drove you through Caldwell county and we played spot the church.  -The latter was a rainy day, and I think it was already clouding up after the hike.

[Geo]

Well, 3 days in the cold season is a bit short to see a whole county.