I had intended to make this post before Thanksgiving, but it was a crazy week and I was pretty short on time, so I'm a little behind here.  I just got back in town after a great ten day visit with my family.

I hit a big milestone before I left town though.  I finished the neck, meaning I've finally finished the entire body.  All that's left to actually sculpt is her hair.  So close now.

I already knew the position I wanted her head in, tilted to her left and back just a bit, so figuring out the length of the neck was probably the trickiest part.  I started by attaching two wires to the top of her spine.  I found the right length and angle, got a nice "back of the neck" curve, then held the head in place with a few spring clips while I welded the wires coming from her spine to the back hairline.  I started working on her right side first, which is the stretched, straighter side of her neck.  It was pretty easy going and when I finished it, it looked great.  Then I moved to the other side, but after struggling for an hour or so, I realized her neck was going to be about 3 inches thick.  I had attached one of the first wires on the other side in the wrong spot and her entire neck was off center.  The head was still in the right place, but the neck was completely off.  Fortunately, I didn't have to cut the whole thing off and start over, though I did have to cut almost every wire, bend it a little further to the side and reattach it at another point.  It was a fairly easy fix though, and this time, it really did look great.  The other side of the neck is sort of scrunched up, so it has a lot of wrinkles.  It was a little trickier than the first side, but it worked itself out.  I got to bend a few nice complex curves to accomplish the wrinkles.  I filled out the front of the neck last, and that was all she wrote.

There were a few bumps along the way.  I burnt through a few wires.  I wish I would have kept track of how many times I've done that on this piece.  You'd think I'd learn, but I always push it just a second too long.  Then I say bad words.  Then I fix it.

So anyway, I finished the neck.  She looks amazing.  I am so beyond happy. 

I picked up a new patina color, vista burgundy, but it ended up looking pretty chocolaty.  The original vista rust, now that it's been working the steel for about a month, is starting to look good.  I may still try the red, just to see how it looks, but so far I think I like the rust best.

I also started doing a little work on the base.  I can't get too far ahead of myself on the base, because I can't really do too much to it until I've finished the patina and clear coat on the rest of the piece, but I got a little jump on it.  I was originally going to try to cover it with a sheet of wrinkled copper foil.  After further consideration though, I realized that I'd need to cut into it in two spots to get it around the feet, and that would leave two seams across the top.  It also wouldn't really work for bending it around the sides, as the base is an odd shape.  Instead, I've decided to cover it with overlapping strips of the wrinkled copper foil.  That way the seams will look/be intentional and a little more uniform throughout the base.  Also, I decided to put one long strip around the sides, rather than trying to fold it over from the top.  I measured the circumference of the base (a little under 15 feet) and bought an additional 15 feet of the foil to supplement the original 10 or 15 feet I bought.  The base is only 3.75 inches tall, so I rolled out the entire length of foil and cut it in half lengthwise.  It's 1 foot wide, so that gave me two strips of foil at 6 inches by 15 feet,  I rolled one strip back up and began wrinkling the other.  

When I finished wrinkling the whole length, I laid the first eight feet along the edge of a sheet of plywood and bent a nice straight line along one edge, sliding it down and continuing the line until I finished all fifteen feet. I then marked a line on the plywood at 3.75 inches, lined the folded edge up against the line and repeated the process, folding the other side.  Now I have a fifteen foot long strip of the wrinkled foil with clean folded edges at the 3.75 inch height of the base.  Starting in the back V of the base, I wrapped it all the way around it, finishing at the other side of the V.  As I said, I can't attach it until I've applied the patina and clear coat to the sculpture itself, but at least I got a jump on it and I now have a good idea of what it's going to look like.  I love it!

So next up is the hair.  Still not 100% sure how that's going to play out.  I have an idea of what I want, but I think I need to look at some images online to get an idea of how I want the hair to fall.  Definitely going to be long and wavy.  My model had shoulder length hair and I asked her to tie it up anyway, so I could get clear shots of her neck and shoulders, so this is one aspect of the piece that I have no reference photos of.  I'll be using all thinner wire for this part.  I need to figure out a better way to heat this stuff up.  It's taking me forever to get them hot with the little propane torch I have and I need to do it to about 50 more pieces.  Oy.  So hair.  That's what I'll be focusing on through December.  Wish me luck!

Winter is my least favorite time of year, even in a temperate climate like Los Angeles.  When daylight savings ends, it gets dark before I leave my day job.  "The darkness" also brings with it cooler days, cold nights and rain.  But not even good rain.  Usually just enough to be uncomfortable and a nuisance.  Only rarely do we get a good heavy soaking in LA, and it's even more rare that we get any thunder and lightning with it.  Summer rains are almost non-existent.  Being part lizard and loving the warm summer nights, this cold, gloomy time of year is always a bit of a downer for me.  But on the flip side, it always brings a beautiful musical shift to my evenings, with lots of bowed strings and more melancholy music. I got off the plane last night and it had apparently been raining all day.  The rain had stopped, but everything was wet and just chilly enough to need a light coat.  When I got home and unpacked, this song bubbled up, perfectly fitting my emotional state.  I have no idea what he's singing about, but the textures, dynamics and tones speak volumes to my heart.  It was a perfect song to listen to while standing back and assessing my metal lady after nearly two weeks of being away.

Getting closer and closer every day. 

I finished relighting the dragon, the jellyfish and a seahorse just in time to clean up my loft and squeeze in a few hours of sleep before I opened my doors for our fall art walk.  Ever since our spring art walk, I had really been hoping to have this piece done in time for this one, as it's sort of the one year mark that I've been working on this piece, but alas, as close as I am, I'm not that close.  Had a great weekend anyway though, and as soon as it ended I got back to work on the face.  First I gave her a hairline, closing off her forehead, and added a few more swirls.  Ears were next.  My first attempt used one line that swirled its way through the entire ear.  I made one and wasn't that excited by it, so I scrapped it and tried again, this time with a design using a few lines.  Laid in the first line and an accent line, and loved it.

The second line that finishes the ear actually works its way into the ear from the jawline.  This time the design was dead on and the ears look great. 

Instead of creating a wire scalp for her and building her hair off that, her hair is going to start off her hairline and then continue building off itself.  I still needed to figure out the shape of the rest of her head though so I found a few images of bald female profiles to help with that shape.  I temped in a wire starting at her slight widows peak, working its way over her head and down her neck. Once  I locked the shape in, I added the hairline at the back of her head.  Then I continued working on her jaw and chin. 

 

I've pretty much finished the head now, and am ready to start on her neck.  The first few lines I lay in will be starting at her spine.  I'm not expecting this to be too hard once I get started, but these first few lines are going to be tricky.  They'll be the lines that define the angle and position of her head, and it's a pretty important aspect of the sculpture.  The way she holds her head will determine the emotion of the piece.  I've been holding the head up and moving it around trying to find the right position for the last few days.  I had been envisioning her head tilted and turned to her left with her chin slightly down.  Tonight I decided to keep it tilted and turned to the left, but to also let it roll back a bit instead.  It definitely gives a more sultry, and more importantly, a more languid feel to her pose.  This exposes more of the underside of her chin though, and I realized that needed a little more work.  I ended up cutting a few welds on the chin and reworking the wires.  I'll finish that up tomorrow and hopefully by the end of the night, her head will be attached to the body.

I also spent some time this past weekend playing with patinas again.  I picked up more of the green that I'll be using for her body to do some more tests.  It's looking good.  I had been thinking of a burgundy patina for her hair, but was swayed at the last minute and ended up picking up a rust patina instead.  It's still working the metal, but so far, I don't really like this color for the hair.  I think I'll probably end up picking up some burgundy and see how that looks in comparison.  I also started putting a little focus on the base.  I wrinkled up some strips of the copper foil and laid them out around her feet.  My current plan is to use that blueish green patina I tested a few months back, but after seeing the large strips of the copper on the base, I'm considering not using a patina on it at all.  The wrinkled copper looked so beautiful in the light.  It looked like she was walking on the surface of the sun.  I'm not committing to either idea just yet, as I really do love the blue green as well.  Probably won't decide on that until the rest of the sculpture has been finished with the patinas.

So that's where I'm at.  The rest of this week is going to be all about attaching the head and building up the neck.

This has been a pretty excellent year in music.  There have been a lot of great new releases by Grizzly Bear, Tame Impala, Solid Gold, Kaki King, Alberta Cross, The Album Leaf, The Raveonettes, Polica, Chromatics, Sinead O'connor, Cookie Duster, Silversun Pickups, Miike Snow, Patrick Watson, and even an amazing new release from The Smashing Pumpkins, who I gave up on in the late 90s.  I think my favorite album of the year though, is the third release from an awesome little Canadian band called The Luyas.  I love their first two albums and I had high hopes for the new disc, but I wasn't really expecting to love it as much as I do. Needless to say, I've been listening to them a lot these last few weeks as I've been working on the face.  This track isn't from the new album, but it's one of my favorite tracks from their last album.  So quirky and beautiful.

Well, so much for posting pictures as elements of the face came together.  I was making such good progress, and liking said progress so much, that I didn't want to stop and I've now finished the face!  I also hit a big milestone last week: the one year mark for working on this piece.  Looking back, it's hard to believe it's been a whole year.  On the other hand, it feels like forever and I can't believe I'm still working on it.  I am still incredibly happy with it though, so it's been worth every second.

When I started this piece, I knew it was going to be my biggest challenge as a sculptor yet, but I felt pretty good about the whole thing.  Except for the face.  I was completely intimidated by that one section, far more than the rest of the piece.  Sure there are details like fingers and toes throughout the body, but for the most part, it's a lot of smooth surfaces with slight shifts here and there for muscles.  That really frees up the reins for the design aspect of the wirework.  The face, however, has a lot of detail in it.  I wasn't sure if the idea I had for translating it to wire was going to work.  My stomach has been twisting and turning for the last twelve months, thinking about how I was going to do this.  And that's not even counting the years I spent planning this piece.  But after all that time spent worrying about it, it actually wasn't that bad.  I mean, it was actually pretty easy.  Well, that may be an exaggeration.  Maybe not easy, but it was a lot easier than I expected.

Using the mannequin head was a tremendous help at times and a bit of a hinderance at others, but when all is said and done, I'm really glad I used it for this part of the sculpture.  There are so many complex curves working their way through all the facial features that I'm not sure I could have done this freehand.

I decided I needed to start with something fairly central and work my way out from there.  The nose wouldn't work as a starting point because of the design (the tip and bridge of the nose are only connected to the rest of the face at one point, the forehead), so I started with the lips and chin.  I was able to move through them pretty quickly, mostly because they're soft, gentle curves.  I added a few lines in the lips to give them shape and hint at the natural lines that are there.  It looked really good.  I actually even cut two of the lines back off because I didn't need them.  I then made the little divot above the lip (I looked it up, that's called the philtrum) and the two nostrils.

With this groundwork set, I began to move outward from there, and on to the sides of the nose.  That slowed down my progress.  A lot of hard curves twisting about.  I used the thickest of the three thinner wires the first time and after struggling for a full night, I got the shape, but the wire was too thick and made the line, which should have been delicate, look a little too strong.  I tried it with the thinnest wire next and it was considerably easier to bend.  However, I've learned that heating this sprung steel wire before I use it makes it easier to bend when it cools off, but it becomes really brittle.  As I was twisting my way through all the curves around the nose, I kept breaking the wire.  I spent a few nights playing with that, to no avail.  Finally I used the medium thickness wire and wrestled with that for a few days.  It finally worked.  Those nose lines then work their way up into the eyebrows.

I decided from this point on to do one side of the face at a time, rather than matching lines, side to side, as I moved through it.  Bending the wire into the eye sockets was a little challenging, though not as bad as the nose.  When the wires meet at the outside of the eye, they erupt into swirls spreading across the temples towards the ears.  There were a lot of swirls, so that took some time, but it looks gorgeous.  I used the medium thickness wire for most of these, but made some of the swirls with the thinnest wire.

I added the tip and bridge of the nose next.  That gave the nose some profile shape.  I started with a tear drop shape at the tip, which turns into a single line running up the bridge.  It continues on to the forehead, a fairly smooth surface with a simple but pretty design, ending in a small heart centered on her forehead.  I also put a small dimple into the chin to give it some definition and profile shape, as well as fill in the open area that was left when I put in the initial chin lines.  The eyes were still just the sockets, so I added the closed eyelids.  Eventually, when the welding is all done, I'll be adding eyelashes with jewelry wire.  Finally, I added a few more swirls to the forehead, and with that, the face was finished!

The were a few unexpected hiccups along the way.  I broke more than a few welds and had to redo them.  This wire is so thin that I can't really hold the welder to it for too long or it burns through the wire, even on the welder's lowest setting, so the welds don't really bite that deep into the metal.  Then I grind the welds down so much that there's actually very little filler holding the wires together.  When I put stress on the welds by grinding another area, or trying to bend wire that's already attached, the welds break.  I tried to leave a little extra filler on them when I re-welded them, but I couldn't leave too much or it started looking chunky.  I also had to extend the face a little bit, as the mannequin head is close to human sized, but just a little too small.  I ended up shaving her bottom lip off the mannequin head to be able to extend the face a touch.  Between the weld burns and the shaved lip, this poor mannequin head has taken quite a beating.

So with the face done, there's not much left to do on the head.  I still need to work on her hairline and add ears.  That'll be interesting.  When that's done, I can make the neck and attach the head to the rest of the piece, and then all I have to do is add the hair.  I'm a little nervous about that, but not as nervous as I was starting the face.  At that point the sculpting is done and all I have to do is finish it off with the patina and cover the base in patinated copper.  I feel like I'm almost done, but I realize I do still have a fair amount of work left.

Fall Art Walk at The Brewery is coming up this weekend.  I had to take a break from the face for a couple days last week to change out about 2500 Christmas lights from the dragon and one of the seahorses.  I'm actually still working on that.  I have to clean up and organize my space too, so it looks like I'm done with the piece for the next week.  Once art walk is over though, I'm going to finish this thing!  My guess now is that I'll be done around Christmas.

As I've been working on the face independently from the body, I took the support pipe off the sculpture's base and have let her stand free for the last few weeks.  What a difference it makes looking at her without that thick pipe running up to her back.  She looks so light and free and... natural!  I'm so happy with how this is turning out.  If I can keep it up through these last few months, this is going to be a really beautiful piece.

I did skip out for a few nights over the last few weeks to see a few concerts.  The Black Keys with Tegan & Sara and Peter Gabriel.  All amazing shows.  I've been listening to a lot more Black Keys since the show.  This is a favorite.  Another that sounds great loud in my loft.

Well, I made it back from the desert in one piece.  Turned out to be a big year for me out there this year.  Not only did I decide to bring two fairly large projects out to the playa next year, I also got engaged!  It's going to be a busy year.  I've got a playa wedding to plan, an art car to assemble and my first static installation for Burning Man to build, which will also be my first big project with my fiancée.  I've already started making lists.  Long lists.  I have a lot to accomplish in the next eleven months, but first I need to finish the lady.

Got back a few weeks ago and as usual, I had a lot of cleaning and laundry to do once I landed in LA, but I got back to work pretty quickly.  I immediately shortened the fingers on the second hand.  As expected, it was pretty easy and only took me a few days.  I'm much happier with it now.

Next up was to start the head.  So far, I've been doing everything entirely free hand.  For the face, I decided to draw the design on a mannequin head I picked up a few months ago and try to bend the wire around it.  Drawing is one of my least favorite parts of this whole process though.  I draw like a 2nd grader with a crayon tucked into my chubby little fist.  Drawing three dimensionally on a mannequin head?  Well, I wasn't looking forward to it, but fortunately, once I got started, it actually went really well.  I found some nice lines within the natural lines of the face, and augmented it with some really pretty swirls coming out of her eyes and lining her hairline.  The lines I drew are far from perfect, but at least I have an idea of what the lines will look like now.  It took me three or four days to work it out, but I finally started bending wire a few nights ago.  I'm using the smaller wires again, but this time I preheated the wire and it's actually really easy to bend now.  I'm welding some pretty small curls though, and it's pretty tricky, putting some of these pieces together.  It's slow going, but I'm pretty confident it's going to look great.

So, it looks like I'm going to be working on this for the next few weeks or so.  I'll try to post some pics as elements of the face come together.

I've been wanting to post this song for a while, but I haven't found it on youtube yet.  Just found it on soundcloud, so hopefully this link will work.  It's called "Cut Me, Focus" and it's from Cookie Duster, a side project of Brenden Canning of Broken Social Scene.  Doesn't sound anything like BSS, but I love it.  It sounds amazing in my loft, really loud.  =)

Well, I've finished the second hand.  All that's left now is the face, the hair and the patina to finish it.  I meant to write when I finished the arm but things have been pretty crazy with Burning Man coming up.  The forearm was trickier than I thought it would be, mostly because of the twist in the arm, and trying to match the design and size of the first arm, given that twist.  It ended up looking pretty good though, and it's at a nice angle, with this elbow dropped considerably lower than the first, and the forearm canted slightly forward.  The difference in the position of the two arms gives it a very natural and realistic movement that ties in well with the positioning of the legs.

I started the second hand next.  I had already made the fingernails and bent the outlines of these knuckles when I did the first hand, so I had a pretty good jump on it, but I still needed to make the wrinkles of the knuckles and then attach each of the finger segments.  Since the first hand was bent forward and the second hand is bent back, that meant the wires leading to the first knuckles of this hand didn't flow out of the arm like the other, due to the wrinkles created by the bent wrist.  I attached those first knuckles and moved on to the palm.  I found myself once again working with the stiff thinner wire and it fought me the entire way, right down to the last weld.  I didn't use my friends suggestion that I mentioned a few posts ago, of trying to heat it up first, because I'm not sure of what the side effects of doing that are just yet and I wanted to make sure the hands matched.  I will use that trick when I move on to the face though.  When the main lines of the palm were finished, I started building up the meat of the fingers and attaching them, starting with the pinkie.

These fingers are also in a different position than those of the first hand, so it was fun getting them into the right shapes.  As I had hoped, the positions of the fingers add a graceful elegance to her pose.  Admittedly, the hands aren't as dainty as I had hoped them to be, but she's not really a dainty girl to begin with, so they fit her body fine.  Alas, when all was said and done though, I realized that the fingers on this hand are a touch too long.  But I saw that coming.  It all started with the pinkie.  I wanted to make it curl in and touch the palm, and in doing so, I extended the length between the first and second knuckles a little too far, and as I worked my way down the hand, that length got a little longer, finger by finger.  By the time I got to the fourth finger, it was getting a little out of control, so I actually already shortened a few of them, but I need to shorten all four fingers one more time to make myself okay with it or I will see it every time I look at the piece.  No biggie though, could be worse.  It'll maybe add one day of work.  It's just the one segment of each finger, so I can cut along the welds (three per finger), shorten the wires, reattach and grind.  Easy enough.  But for all intents and purposes, they are done and it looks great.

So now, as far as sculpting, all that's left is the head and hair, but I'm taking a break before I dive into that.  I leave for Burning Man in one week.  It's time to pack and I'm super excited.  I've been working on this piece, daily, for over ten months now.  By far, the longest I've worked on any piece.   Calander-wise anyway.  As far as straight hours, I'm probably pretty close to the same as the dragon, but I packed that into 5 1/2 months, working 80 hour weeks the entire project.  This has been ten long months of working on the same piece, day in and day out, and to be honest, I'm getting pretty burnt out.  Granted, the majority of the piece is done now, but with the amount of design and detail in what I have left, it's easily going to be the most challenging bit of sculpting I've ever done.  Bad time to lose my juju.  But now I get to take a break, go out to the desert, recharge, get inspired, get motivated, then come back here and finish this piece.  The timing couldn't be better.

Burning Man changed my life in 2001.  It started me on my path as a sculptor, and has been a huge part of my life ever since.  It's my new years, birthday, and Christmas all rolled into one.  It's how I mark time.  When I look back at any of the last eleven years, I see them measured between burns rather than being bookended by new years eve parties.  It's when I reflect on what I've done in the past solar cycle, and what I want to accomplish in the next.  Friendships, relationships, projects, life events... all tie into burns, or fall in between them.  I sat at the base of a massive sculpture called Bliss Dance one night two burns ago, marveling up at her, and decided it was finally time to do my nude.  It had been smoldering in the back of my mind for over four years at that point, but until then, I wasn't ready to tackle it.  But as I sat there that night, I realized that the time had come.  I came back to Los Angeles completely inspired.  Over the next few months, I thought a lot about the pose as I finished up a few other small projects, and finally took my first few steps towards starting the project.  I had one fairly large setback though, right out of the gate, and ended up taking a step back.  False start, and I lost my momentum.  Before I knew it, it was time to head back out to the desert.  At last years burn, I was really disappointed that the year had passed and I hadn't bent a single piece of wire for this piece yet.  I reflected on the failure and fears that made me take that step back and then let those fears be carried off with the playa dust.  And, as always happens out on the playa, I got inspired.  Really inspired.  Fired up.  I came home and had one month til Art Walk.  I took that time to prep for art walk, but also to find and hire a model and photographer, shoot the model, start the design and start figuring out the base.  When art walk ended, it took me one week to start bending wire.  Now the year has passed, I'm heading out to the desert again, the piece is almost finished, and it looks even more beautiful than I had hoped.  It's been a struggle, no doubt, but I am thrilled with the way it's turned out.  What a journey the year has been.  I'm so excited.

So now as I leave you for a few weeks, and I leave my metal lady here, waiting for my return, here's one more picture.  This is what she looks like tonight.

I've been hearing word from friends who are already on the playa that it's incredibly dusty this year, one of the worst in memory, with heavy windstorms.  So I leave you with this...

Just a quick update.  I finished the second arm up to the elbow and started working on the forearm.  Tricky matching the diameter and circumference of the first arm, but I think I got it so far.  It's looking good.  Onward!

Started working on the second arm this week.  I'm trying to match the design pattern of the first arm to keep them symmetrical, but this arm is in a different position, creating different planes and angles.  Like the first arm, it took me a few days to really find those first few lines and dial them in, but now that I found them it seems like the rest is starting to fall into place.  Hopefully I'll hit my stride again this weekend and work though it pretty easily.  I don't want to get too cocky, I just started it, but I should be able to finish the arm and maybe even the hand before burning man. 

One of my friends and mentors stopped by this week to check in on my progress.  He hadn't been by in a few weeks, so it was his first time seeing the hand.   We chatted a bit about the sprung steel and how I was having a hard time working with it, but I couldn't find regular mild steel rod that thin.  He broke me off some amazing knowledge.  He asked if I had tried heating up the spring steel.  I explained that my experience with heating up steel has been iffy at best.  It's good if I'm trying to bend a tight curve or a sharp point, but if I'm trying to get nice smooth curves, it just doesn't work that well.  That wasn't what he meant though.  He told me that if I heat up the sprung steel rod and let it cool slowly, it would soften up the metal.  !!!  I tried a test piece tonight and it worked pretty well.  Some of the curves were still a little chunky, but it was a *lot* easier to bend.  I'm going to do another test piece this weekend and try to heat it a little more evenly and see if that makes any difference.  Even if tonight's experiment is the best I can get it, it's still going to make the face a thousand times easier to shape.  So that was a nice surprise.  The face is going to be tricky enough without having to fight the wire.

I'll probably bring the mannequin head out to the desert with me and start drawing on it seriously while I'm out there.  The madness and beauty of the playa should provide some good inspiration. 

That's all for now.  Hopefully I'll have some cool pictures of the second arm soon.

Well, it took me a few weeks, but I finished the hand this past weekend.  It was without a doubt the hardest part of the sculpture so far, but I love the way it turned out.  As expected, working with the thin, sprung steel was a real challenge.  I must have burned through ten pieces while trying to weld them, and bent as many more into weird unusable shapes.  In the end though, it was worth it.  I managed to pull off the "lazily curled fingers" I was trying for.  The photo doesn't do it justice, but you get the point. 

This means two things.  First, all that's left is the other arm/hand and the head/hair.  And of course, the finish.  But that's it.  And second, this means I've finished the highest point on the sculpture.  Hopefully I can spend less time on the ladder now.  I already knew I have bad balance, but it was painfully obvious having spent most of the last month almost falling off the ladder while trying to grind and weld.  I'll probably need it a bit for the hair, but the other arm is positioned much lower than the first and I won't need it for the face, as I'm doing that independently from the body and then attaching it at the neck.

I also made a decision over the last few weeks that's going to result in a pretty big change for the finished piece.  I decided I'm not going to chrome it.  Instead, I'm going to patina the whole sculpture.  I'm still going to wrap the base in the crumpled blue copper, but the green patina I was playing with was actually intended for ferrous metals.  It looked okay on the copper, but when I put it on the steel scraps of the original ribs that I cut off months ago, it turned them into a beautiful mottled green and rust combo.  Gorgeous.  So I'm going to do that to her body, and then use a burgundy patina for her hair.  The chrome was a cool idea, I like shiny things, but I absolutely loved the earth tones of the patinas and I think it's going to be far more beautiful like that.

I also decided that instead of pausing when I reach the elbow of the next arm and making the face before finishing the arm/hand as I had planned, I'm going to finish the whole arm before I move on to the face.  This arm is angled considerably lower with a sharp bend in the elbow leaving the back of the hand near the face.  I initially thought it would be good to have the face in place before I placed the hand, but now it seems like it would probably be better to get in and finish the inside of the forearm and the back of the hand without the face getting in the way.  I may just be trying to postpone the inevitable, but having completed the first hand, I know I'm going to need that extra room when I start working on the second hand.  *And* I get a few more weeks reprieve before I have to start working on the face.

So that's where I'm at.  I've been doing a little Burning Man prep this week, but I finally started bending wire tonight for the other arm.  Hopefully I can finish it before I head out to the desert.

I listened to a lot of Smashing Pumpkins while I was working last week.  I used to be a huge fan in the early 90s.  They kinda lost me after Mellon Collie though, and I reached a point where I couldn't stand any of Billy Corgan's projects from the mid 90s on.  The Pumpkins (BC is the only original member left in the band) just released a new album though, and a friend convinced me to give it a listen.  Turns out, it's probably the best thing they've put out since Mellon Collie.  This album definitely hearkens back to the good ol' days.  Over the weekend I got sucked back into Gish and Siamese Dream, two of my favorite albums of the 90s, and remembered why I loved them so.  The first song of theirs I heard was Rhinoceros, soon after I moved to Los Angeles back in the summer of '91.  There was a weird local UHF music video channel here at the time that my roommates and I used to watch, and one afternoon they played this video.  I had never heard anything like it.  That voice, the dreamy guitar, the heaviness when it finally kicks in, and the psychedelic imagery... it was love at first listen.

Apologies.  It's been nearly a month since I last posted.  I worked on the forearm for about a week, then didn't get much done over the next few weeks as "life" was happening to me from every direction, but I've been getting back up to speed this past week.  I finished the arm up to the wrist.  Really happy with the way it turned out.

Those two unresolved wires you see coming off the top of the wrist then became tendons leading up to the first knuckles of the index and middle fingers.

The hands are going to be slow going.  I'll be using a lot of the really thin sprung steel wire, as I want the hands to be more delicate, and as I've said before, the sprung steel is really hard to work with.  I also decided that since I'm not going to be doing the other hand for quite some time, it might be a good idea to make knuckles for both hands at the same time to keep them equal in size.  I know that once this hand is finished it's going to be next to impossible to get inside there to match the knuckles, so I've now shaped all fourteen knuckles for each hand.  This week I'll start adding the little lines at the bends.  That too, will be very slow going.  A lot of small wires and lots of grinding.

I also started putting a little focus on the base this weekend.  I had originally planned on using grassy/mossy fun fur to cover the base, but realized that after a year of working on this thing (by the time I'm done), putting fun fur on the base would completely cheapen all the work I've done.  To be honest, I never really liked that idea anyway.  It was just sort of the first thing I had come up with and I hadn't really put much thought into it since then.  Over the last few weeks, however, I decided to wrap the base in patinated copper.  I've never worked with copper or patinas before so this was a really exciting idea to me.  I went to Industrial Metal Supply this weekend and picked up a roll of thin copper foil and a few different patinas, and began experimenting with them.  I did some cold applications, some hot applications, mixed colors, reworked pieces and altered the colors some more.  It was a lot of fun.  This was the first batch of cold applications and alterations.

So far, this is my favorite.

But this is a close second.

I'm going to play with them a little more this week, but I need to put my focus back on the hand.  I'm going to be heading out to Burning Man in two months and I'd like to finish this hand and the other arm out to the elbow, then get a good jump on the face before I go.

Speaking of Burning Man, I've been so focused on this sculpture for the last eight months that my annual pilgrimage has been quietly sneaking up on me.  I guess this year's ticket fiasco plays a part in that too.  So many people that would normally be going didn't get tickets, so the usual pre-playa chatter has been oddly missing this year.  Normally I start getting amped up and start having little playa flashes around mid-March, but it just hasn't happened this year.  Until today.  I was hit with a flash of art cars, donwtempo electronica in the distance, and the smell of burning wood.  And there I was, on the playa, for a few short seconds this afternoon.  Two more months.  In honor of that, one of my sunrise songs from 2010, which I was just listening to a few nights ago while I was working on the knuckles...

Done with the first arm up to the elbow!

I've been working on the first arm, her right.  It was a little tricky getting started.  There's been this flow moving up through her body, all going in one direction... up.  But with the arm, there's a sudden almost 90 degree change in that direction.  There are a lot of new shapes converging here too: muscles, shoulders, shoulder blades and underarms.

This is also the first time in the seven months I've been working on her that I don't have the four thicker wires laying the ground work, setting the parameters for how everything else is going to be filled in.  It's all the thinner wire now.  It took me a couple days to find the first line, a fairly bold one at that, squiggling its way down the underside of the arm, but once I found it, the other lines began to fall into place.

With every wire I add, it gets harder and harder to get the Dremel in to grind the welds inside the underarm and shoulder blade.  With the finished shoulders closing in the torso, I can only get in through the arm and neck holes.  It's going to get even trickier when this arm is finished and I move on to the other arm, as I'll only be able to get in through the neck hole.  It'll ease up a little once I get past the underarm/shoulder blade though.  Then I'll be able to come in from the unfinished end of the arm.  I'll just have to grind each weld as soon as I do them.  Up until the shoulders, I was able to pop in multiple welds, as many as eight, before I had to go back and grind them down, but it's starting to get tight in there now. 

It looks really pretty so far.  I've finished the shoulder blade and the underside of the arm all the way down to the elbow.  Since this first arm doesn't get too close to the head, I think I'm going to go ahead and finish it out to the fingers.  The second arm bends back towards the face, so I'll probably finish that one to the elbow, then move on to the head before I finish the forearm and hand last.
 

The hands will be a challenge, but I'm looking forward to it.  Her lazily splayed fingers will hopefully add a layer of delicacy to the piece that's been hinted at so far, but hasn't fully emerged. 

Getting sexy...

Still at it.  I finished off the last two of the thicker wires last week.  They run up along the front of the arm pits, outline the shoulder muscles and end back at the shoulder blades.  They're only the outlines of the shoulder muscles, but they already hint at the direction of her arms.  She's in a really interesting place right now, so I decided to move her over to an empty wall so I could get a few clean photos of her at this stage.  At this point, all that's left are the arms and the head.  It's really scary and exciting.

I've been working on the shoulders this week.  One is done, the other is almost done.  Once I've finished both of them, I'm going to fill out the shoulder blades, start on the arm pits and work my way out to the elbows.  Since one arms bends back so the hand is near her face and the other stretches up over her head, I'm going to pause at the elbows and move on to the head so the arms don't get in the way while I'm working on her head.  I had considered just facing the music and starting on her head once the shoulders were done, but I realized the open space between her shoulders will be my only way to get in and grind down the welds inside her arm pits.  Still not 100% sure how I'll get in to grind down the welds on her neck, but it may involve leaving the back of her head open and building the hair up off her hairline rather than giving her a scalp and attaching the hair to that.  It will probably look cleaner that way as well.  We'll see.

So I've been obsessed with another song lately.  I first heard it as the soundtrack to a claymation video, which, in itself is one of the more beautiful things I've seen on the web, but I've fallen madly in love with the song as well.  The song is "It's Raining Today," by Scott Walker.  Here's the claymation video with the song.  Watch it full screen.  You won't regret it.  Kick back and enjoy. 

Sooo... still had a lot going on these last few weeks.  Went to Coachella with some friends and their massive, beautiful project, then came back and installed a sculpture I sold at the art walk.  Both great things, but they sucked up some time.  Things have finally settled down though, and looking ahead at my calendar, it looks like my schedule is finally back to normal.  Hoping to get back on track.

I have made some progress recently though.  I've almost finished the bust completely.  One small section on each side of the chest that moves up into the shoulder is still open, but other than that, they're done.  I finished out the two thick wires of the clavicle, crossing over (as well as defining) the shoulders, and ending at the shoulder blades.  Yes, ending.  I am now down to just two of those thicker wires that started at the feet and have wound their way through her entire body.  That's great news for me.  The more you bend steel, the harder it gets to bend.  That's because when you bend it, you're rearranging the atoms.  The more you bend it, the less the atoms line up and the harder it gets to bend.  This is called work-hardening.  Well, these wires were the thick, less malleable wires to start with, and after twisting their way ten feet through her whole body, they had so many bends in them that they were nearly impossible to work by the end.  I'm hoping the two remaining thick wires, which still need to curve their way through her shoulders, will still be workable by the time I'm finished with them.

So now that I've pretty much finished the bust and  begun defining the shoulders, it's time to look ahead again.  All that's left are the shoulders, arms, head and hair.  The head.  Ooooh, the head.  Still not sure how that's going to work.  Still many challenges ahead, but I am finally seeing a light at the end of the tunnel.  Hard to believe, when I step back and take a good look at her.  I'm coming up on the seven month point.  Probably another four months or so to go.  She's almost here.

Well, after an incredibly hectic and scattered few months, I'm finally starting to feel some peace sinking back in.  Summer's on its way.  The days are getting longer and it's starting to warm up.  Have I mentioned how much I love daylight savings?  Thoughts of my annual pilgrimage to the Black Rock Desert have begun to surface.  I'm seeing a light at the end of the tunnel with my sculpture.  Life is good.  This song really spoke to me this last week, as things began flowing again.  Justin Vernon of Bon Iver with The Roots doing a stunningly beautiful version of his song Perth.  Feel the peace sinking in...

Hm.  Took a look at the piece when I got home from my day job last night and realized the breasts were a touch too high on the body.  The torso looked a little too long.  Decided to drop the breasts about an inch.  Fortunately, that top wire on the ribs that they were attached to was still only attached by one weld, so they weren't too hard to remove.  Just took a little reworking, getting the angles right, for their lower placement.  Looks much better.   Onward!

Alright, I'm back in action!  I took a few weeks off to help with a friend's Coachella project and prep for the spring art walk here at The Brewery, then taxes and recon at a potential clients house.  Busy busy busy.  All good stuff though.

Well, it's been a while, so let me take a second to get you up to speed.  I finished the ribs.  Really glad I shrunk that larger side down a bit.  Not only do both sides match now, but the side I shrunk even has a little sexier shape to it.  I laid in one final line at the top of the ribs to denote the underline of her breasts.  Her torso is looking really good.

I took the two thicker wires at the sternum, brought them up to the neck where they veer off into the clavicles.  They'll curve around a bit on the shoulder and probably end there. 

I took the two thicker wires at the top of the spine and started curving them out towards the shoulders, then down and around, shaping the shoulder blades.  Since the shoulder blades press out from the body, there's a real nice three dimensional quality to that area.  When they're filled in, it's going to look great.  The thick wires continue on through the bottom of the underarms to the front of the body.  They're going to follow that tendon along the front of the underarm, up to the shoulder, where they'll outline a few muscles at the top of the arm and end there.

So that's where I left off going into art walk weekend, with her back finished (minus the insides of the shoulder blades), and the front of her body done up to the underline of the bust.  I had her displayed nicely for art walk, and people seemed to get a kick out of seeing an unfinished piece.  I got a lot of great feedback and it gave me a little boost of inspiration, seeing how excited people got about it.

Now I'm back in the saddle.  This past week, I've been working on the breasts.  Pretty tricky curves.  I found myself at an all night grocery store at two in the morning a few nights ago, feeling up various citrus fruit.  Awkward.  I found a perfect grapefruit though, and brought it home to help shape the breasts.  I started with the nipples, then swirled my way back and forth down through the underside.  I finally connected both of those to the body today, and they look great.  Smallish, with a nice curve to the underside.  And I like the nipples.  I had been trying to decide between a spiral, or a more minimalist loop, and I ended up going with the spiral.  

So this week, I work on filling out the breasts.    I'll probably only get a few days of work in, since I'm heading out to Coachella Thursday night and need to start pulling out my camping gear and getting prepped, but I should be able to get a little more work done.  Once Coachella is over, I'm hoping to be back to a normal work schedule. 

Oh, and I've hit the six month mark.  I just looked back at my first blog entry, and I had predicted this piece would take about 4 to 6 months, realistically thinking it would take six.  Now, I'm guessing I may still have six more to go.  Didn't see that coming.

This song has been in my head all week.  It comes with a preemptive apology...

Things have been moving ahead, but I've stalled to prep for art walk this weekend.  Back to the grind next week.  I'll post an update soon to get you up to speed.  Til then, my art walk display of the new piece...

Well, it's been a productive few weeks, but not in the way I was expecting.  I finished the ribs up to the bust, then stopped for a moment to take stock and figure out what was next.  I've reached a point where a lot of things are converging at once.  So far, I've been able to focus on one thing at a time.  Leg, knee, stomach, butt.  Now the bust, underarms, shoulders and shoulder blades are all sort of coming together at the same time.  While reworking the design for the four larger wires as they work through all these areas, I realized the spine was too short.  I cut those wires apart and lengthened the spine about an inch.  Then I decided to revisit her ribcage as well.  While I had been working on it, I noticed that her right side was becoming a little larger than her left.  Not  enough to look freakish, but enough that it was noticeable if you looked at it for a moment.  I had continued to fill in the ribcage, trying to even it out as I went, but I was fairly unsuccessful and it continued to fill out a little larger than the other side.  I had also been mildly bothered by her sternum.  The bends were a little off there, too.  So now as I stood looking at it, I realized there was no way I could leave it like that.  I cut the thicker wires of her sternum apart, rebent and rewelded them, then cut the wires from her ribs along the thicker wire outlining her ribcage on her right side.  I shortened those wires, rebent them, and began reattaching them to the thicker wire.  It's not done yet, but it already looks a thousand times better, and I've saved myself an eternity of looking at it and being annoyed, knowing it was off.

So this weekend, I hope to finish that and start working on the shoulder blades.

It's supposed to rain all weekend.  I predict some cello music.  I fell in love with another "new to me band" this week.  School of Seven Bells.  ::swoon::  I'll be listening to them with the rain too.

Well, it took a while, but I'm finally happy with the ribs.  I put about a week's worth of time into them, and suddenly realized I didn't like where they were headed, so I hacked them off and started over.  They were a little too literal, and weren't fitting the rest of the piece.  Since I redid them, they fit perfectly.  Still look like ribs, but stylized like the rest of the piece.  The back has also been filling out really nicely as well.  Beautiful design.  I've finally reached the bust.  Which I've also redone.  Remember a month or so back when I adjusted the lines of the thicker wires to follow the underside of the breasts?  Yeah, undid that too.

So now, looking ahead, I'm going to be focusing on the breasts, shoulder blades and underarms.  Then the face.  Ohhhhh, the face.  But first I need to dial in those thicker wires, which are now bent way out of shape and filled with chunky bends, and lock those in at the shoulders.  Oy.  Fun days ahead.

Here's a pic of the back.  Loving this compared to the way the ribs were originally.  This has been an incredibly challenging piece so far, but I'm thrilled with the way it's turning out.

Hi again.  I disappeared for a bit, but I'm back!  Been a crazy but eventful few weeks since I posted last.  I loaded in for a show at Barbara's, the bar/restaurant here at The Brewery, got caught up on some personal stuff, and started dating someone.  Needless to say, I've had my hands full.  I've started sliding back into work mode though.

Last time I wrote, I was trying to lock in the four thick wires at the shoulder.  I realized I wanted to rework the lines on the front two wires.  There's a really strong line along the underside of the breast, that turns into the tendon at the armpit, and then into the muscle coming out of the shoulder.  Unfortunately, my two wires were going in the wrong direction to catch those lines, so I had to try a few different things.  I wasn't really happy with either.  I kinked up the wire a little more than I'd have liked to, and put some serious bends into it.  I decided before I went any further and worked those out, that it might be a good idea to start building up the ribs first.  So for the last few weeks, I've been working on her back and her ribs.  I finally got them to start looking good and working my way up to the breasts.  When I get a little closer, I'll revisit those thicker wires.  In the mean time, her torso is taking shape and starting to look really good.

I really feed off mellow, beautiful music, but I've lately been needing some upbeat jams to keep me motivated and focused.  Love these weirdos.

Well, she's done from the waist down now.  Having done her belly before her bum, when I got to the concave curves inside her bum, I had a really hard time getting my dremel in there to grind down the welds.  Kept bumping the back end of the dremel against the belly and couldn't quite reach the welds.  It was slow going and I had to get creative with my approach, but I worked through it.  I'll have to make sure to be careful when I'm working on her upper back and her bust.  I'll have more of those inverted curves inside her breasts, so I should probably do the bust first, then the back.  Noted. 

Moving into a new section, it's time again to look a few steps ahead.  I'm back to working on the four thicker wires, trying to get them shaped all the way up to the shoulders, which means defining the shape and size of the whole upper body.  Not ready to lock the shoulders in just yet, but it's getting pretty close.  I'm currently trying to get the right profile curves in the spine and the chest.   Then I can go back and start filling in the ribs and back. 

So much fun watching her continue to take shape.

Been falling in love with a new (to me) band this week.  Wye Oak.  One of many songs I can't stop listening to... Siamese.

Reworking the two thick wires in the back.  They may not be the spine anymore.  We'll see.

I didn't post a photo last time, so here's where I left off...

Started working on her backside this week.  Reworked the spine a little to give it a more natural flow (though i liked the heart shape it made around the hips before), and then started bending a couple wires to temp in an outline of the side profile of each cheek.  Initially, I kept giving it more of a ledge on the underside, because I'm particularly fond of that curve, but it was a little too much.  I finally smoothed it out a little and found a nice flow.  I want to make her curvy, but I don't want it to be too big either.  Tonight I laid in the first few wires, one on each side.  Nice curves.  This part is going to be tricky, but the whole thing is turning out to be tricky.  I think with a little extra focus, I'll be able to get the right shape.  Curvy, round and sexy.

Good couple days.  Looking forward to the weekend.

This is a favorite from H.U.V.A. Network.  Been listening to these guys a lot lately.  Good moody music.   Dark and ambient with a little kick.

Hello again.  And Happy New Year!  Sorry I've been a little slow on the updates.  I took a few days off after tearing my thumbnail, and then just rolled right on through Christmas.  Been a rough end to the year.  Can't say I'm too sorry to see it go.  But I have been back to work this week.

Spent a few days working on the thicker wires at the hips.  I had a hard time finding the line.  I had a few false starts, and tried a few different things to no avail, until finally it clicked.  It's a pretty complex curve, but it's a beautiful curve, as it segues from the hip bone, through that little divot in the waist, up into the rib cage.  By the time I finally got the wires into shape, there were so many bites from my channel locks that you could barely touch it without getting a metal sliver.  Had to do a little grinding to smooth that down.  The next step was to put in the sort of hour glass outline of the belly.  This was another of those moments where the piece took a huge leap.  Suddenly something major that wasn't there a day ago, showed itself.  Next was the belly button.  This was important because this is the point of the belly that sticks the furthest out, so it sort of sets the tone for the rest of the shape.  The rest filled in nicely and she has a cute little pooch belly now.

At this point, I realized I could probably take down the rigging to give myself a little more room to work, so I did and now the piece is completely free standing.  Another big step.  I may need to put it back up later if the torso wires get a little too crazy, but for now it looks great standing by itself.

With the belly done, the next step was to shape the other two thick wires in back into the spine.  I tried a few different things and finally got that into shape last night.  Now it's on to her bum!

I've been listening to a lot of piano and cello music lately, and I recently fell in love with the music of Dustin O'Halloran.  I'm not a huge fan of remixes, as a lot of the time it feels like they detract from the song they're remixing, but I do love this one.