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.  =)