2015 Progress Report: February

In February, I finished up my mixed media work and moved on to ceramics. During this time, I also had a show but I'll talk more about that in a different post. For now, enjoy these pictures.

2/1/15: The bottom of P2 was spray painted. This was done outside during the day so it's easier to see everything.

2/1/15: P2 sitting upright after the spray painting work is done.

2/1/15: The bottom of P15 after the spray painting work.

2/1/15: P15 standing upright after the spray paint work is done. At first, I thought this piece wasn't going to turn out very good. It wasn't until the spray painting was done thatI foun out that the glass bead texture actually would work out just the way I wanted it to.

2/2/15: The name label is in place for what is now known as Stone Cold. Usually, when I make these, the labels themselves are done on a computer, then printed out. Up until recently, my methord was to use rubber cement to glue the label onto a tick pieces of bristolboard which itself has hot glued onto the bottom of the piece. Soft molding paste is used around the edges because it dires quickly. I miscalculated the sizes of these name labels and as a result, my name does not appear on this or the other two pieces I was working on at the time. I should also mention that as of this year, I switched the typeface on my labels from Nosferatu to Crimson Text, the same typeface I use on my blog.

2/2/15: The label is in place for what is now known as The New Dawn.

2/2/15: The label is now in place for what is now known as Dissonance.

2/2/15: Stone Cold in it's final form. The final colors used were a mixture of black and white. Silver metallic paint was applied using a palette knife. My only problem with this piece is that the polymer gloss I used dried too quickly and it shows. Some people like the effect it created. I didn't.

2/2/15: The painting is done and the felt is in place.

2/2/15: The New Dawn in it's final form. The different colors and four holes are supposed to represent the changing seasons.

2/2/15: The painting is done and the felt is in place. One thing that continues to be a pain in the ass after these projects are done are the stubborn strings of hot glue that remain. I try to get rid of them and always end up finding more of them.

2/2/15: The painting and felt work is finished. This one was a little tricky.

2/2/15: Dissonance in it's final form. Out of all three of them, the form on this one is not my favorite, but the texture and usage of glass beads are. Everything looks even better with the usage of polymer gloss.

2/11/15: I guess this is technically the first clay project I started in 2015 but it wouldn't be the first one that I finished. Starting where I left off in 2013, I've come to rely on the usage of negative space for my ceramic pieces which explains the large hollow area. The smaller hallow area is for the eventual name label placement. For right now, we'll refer to this as the square project.

2/11/15: The bottom of the square project. With future name label placement, I tend to do an inverted cut because it allows to use that same piece of clay to seal the top. It saves me time from having t create a whole new piece just for that purpose. Although it's not pictured here at this stage in the project, it must be pointed out that I usually tend to give my word rounded edges. The ends here are still very flat.

2/11/15: This is the second clay project I started but it was finished before the first one. We'll refer to this one as the circle project, even though it ended up being more oval-shaped.

2/11/15: You can see some of the rounded edging here. You can also see the removed piece of clay that would eventually be used to close off the name label area.

2/11/15: The square project is nice and rounded and is ready to go for further development.

2/11/15: The bottom of the square project is nice and smooth. You'll notice the holes by the name label area. This give the two joining piece breathing room in order to prevent air from being trapped inside during the eventual firing process. Trapped air inside a shrinking form can casue the piece to explode.

2/11/15: The circle project is now ready for further development.

2/11/15: The finished bottom of the circle piece.

2/11/15: Here we have the third project which for now, will be referred to as the triangle project. I must point out now that this was the first attempt at this project. Early on in development, this piece broke beyond repair and I had to restart it.

2/11/15: The bottom of the triangle project.

2/18/15: The circle project is coming further along. The textures for the bottom part have been completed. The major problem I had was that the project wasn't sealed well enough and the clay that I'm using seems to dry faster than the college's clay that I'm used to using. This is both a good and bad thing. It's good because it means I can build projects faster but it's not good if I'm not careful about giving it enough water or keeping it airtight for a week.

2/18/15: With most of the projects that I worked on between February and May, they usually started out with slabs and were hollow on the inside in order to reduce the weight of the piece. As they got higher and the pieces got smaller, I had to use coils, which would normally be heavier but the weight evened out since the coils were small. Since each piece was based around a shape or a number of angles, each of the slabs/coils were also based around that. These pieces here were made from four sides.

2/18/15: The triangle project is starting to come along at this point. Sadly, it won't progress much further than this.

2/25/15: As I said earlier, the circle project wasn't the first project I started but it was the first completed project. As with the other project I would be working on for the next few months, I tried to incorporate multiple textures. At this point, it's ready to be fired.

2/25/15: The square project is slowly coming along. The complicating part is applying the texture to parts that are hard to see and are hard to get to with my needle tool.

2015 Progress Report: January

I apologize for a being a little lazy with posting. It'll get better from here on out. This entry along with the next few entries will focus entirely of pictures of the progress I've made so far this year. The first picture at the top is my mixed media project Duality which was completed last year. The only reason I'm showing this is because not everyone will think to look at my portfolio on Facebook when I make references to past projects.

This piece is named Duality. It was completed in 2014 and served as a blueprint for the first few projects I would be working on in early 2015

1/15/15: I started off the new year with a new project. Normally, I don't like starting too many new projects without finishing up more old ones first but the first three projects I started were meant to be used as experiments for new mediums.

Before this was finally named Stone Cold, this was known as P1.

1/15/15: P1 has a similar design to my 2014 piece Duality. This was not an accident. I liked that design a lot of wanted to see what else I could do with it. It's not the same either. With the first three projects of 2015, I wanted to take that design and have it evolve while retaining some similarities. It should be noted that the P1 design is much smaller than Duality.

1/16/15: Chickenwire work was done with P1. Due to how fragile the piece is, I had to use extra hot glue around the thin edges. P1 was made to be very thin on purpose.

1/16/15: The bottom of P1.

1/20/15: The canvas work has been done. It really wasn't that easy with this piece. On parts of this, I had to cut out the canvas in long lines and run them along the sides of the holes in order to maintain the overall shape I wanted.

1/20/15: Even the bottom had canvas work done to it.

1/20/15: This is would would eventually become The New Dawn, although it started out as P2.

1/21/15: P2 made quite a bit of progress in just a few hours. Like P1, it also heavily borrows it's design from Duality.

1/21/15: This is what would eventually become Dissonance. At the time, it started out as P15. For the last few years, several projects have used the name P15. This is because I keep finishing them and there are always more than 15 projects that I'm working on. P1 was balanced on three sides at the bottom. P2 was balanced on four sides. P15 was balanced on two sides.

1/21/15: Here's the bottom of P3. There's not much to see. Like with most of my work, I made a area at the bottom were I eventually placed a name label.

1/21/15: The design of P3 is similar to the other ones but starts to stray away from that basic design.

1/21/15: The gesso work was done on the top half of P1.

1/21/15: The gesso work was done on the bottom half of P1.

1/23/15: Regular molding paste was placed on the bottom of P1 in order to create a stable surface and to add just enough weight at the bottom that keeps the otherwise extremely light sculpture from easily getting knocked over by accident.

1/23/15: The chickenwire work was completed on P2. It wasn't easy.

1/28/15: The chickenwire work is done. This one was difficult to work with. It took a lot of glue to hold everything in place.

1/28/15: I finished up the initial cavas work. It was a little difficult because of all the little pieces of canvas I had to work with.

1/28/15: The bottom of P2 after the cavas work was complete.

1/28/15: More difficult canvas work. I had to tightly wrap think pieces of canvas smeared with hit glue around the think parts and this took a long time. If the canvas looks dirty, that's because I'm using older cancas that was used for doing clay work on and other things. The nice thing about canvas is it has multiple uses and can still be used for projects like this.

1/28/15: I'm trying a medium I never used before. It's Pumice gel. I figured the easiest approach would be to let it dry in layers.

1/28/15: The gesso work on P2 has been completed.

1/28/15: The gesso work on the bottom of P2 has also been completed.

1/28/15: The gesso work on P15 has been complete.

1/28/15: The gesso work on the bottom of P15 has also been completed.

1/30/15: The molding paste work on the bottom of P2 has been completed. I know I mentioned this before but the reason I do this is to add further stability to the piece, to weigh it down a little so it won't be too easy to accidentally knock over, and to flatten out the bottom a bit.

1/30/15: The molding paste work on the bottom of P15 has been completed.

1/30/15: The Pumic gel work has been completed. This actually wasn't as difficult as I thoought it would be.

1/31/15: I spray painted P1 with flat black spray paint. I always use the black spray paint for projects like this so I can hide the white areas and it wouldn't be noticable if I missed a spot with the acrylic paints.

1/31/15: The bottom of P1 was also spray painted. This was also done for concealment purposes. It also allowed me to get the ares I might have missed when the piece was turned upright.

1/31/15: I'm using another gel medium I never used before. This is a glass bead gel.

1/31/15: Yet another medium that I've never used before. This is fiber paste. It's similar to molding paste in a lot of ways but it looks more like plaster when it dries and has a slight texture to it that molding paste does not have. I'll probably end up using this a lot in the future.