Hello again.  It's been a while.  Quite a lot has happened in the last month and a half.  The base was the first thing I dealt with after my last post.  I cleaned off all the rusty spots, removing the patina around every one of the nail heads.  I put a spot of Rustoleum over each of them.  It covered pretty well, but when it dried, you could still see bits of the nail and I didn't want to risk any more rust, so the next night I added a second dab to each.  I gave them a couple nights to dry and then reapplied the patina to those areas.  It looked like it was working for a little while, but by the time I woke up the next day, they had turned brown again.  Not as bad as the first time, but still pretty bad.  Although I had cleaned up around each of the nails, the rust had leached much further into the surrounding patina than what I had cleaned off.  Now it was working its way back into the new, still damp areas.  Bummer.  At least the Rustoleum was working.  I decided at that point to completely remove the patina from the entire top surface of the base.  That was probably overkill, but I figured that way I would know I had removed all the rust.  I put a wire brush on my dremel, donned my goggles and particle mask, and over the next few nights, worked my way through every nook and cranny of the wrinkled copper, removing every bit of patina I could.

At this point, I also decided something had gone terribly wrong with the green patina on the body.  It had been almost two months and nothing was changing.  No rust was forming, no variations in color coming out of the green.  It looked as if I had spray painted her.  I had gone over her about five times with a tooth brush by this point, exposing bits of the steel in a few spots, but nothing was changing.  I started to panic a little.  Art walk was coming up in less than a month and this was NOT how she was supposed to look, and by my estimation, she would be no closer by the time it arrived.  I wracked my brain to figure out what I could have done wrong.  All the samples I had done in the months prior looked great.  The hair looked great.  It was just the green body.  The only difference I could think of was that I had used a sponge to wipe it on the samples, because they were small and I could get the sponge to touch all the surfaces.  But when I applied it to the body, I used a small artists paintbrush so I could cover all the hard to reach areas.  It was obvious that the oxides went on fine.  It was definitely green.  It was the acid, that for some reason, was not working.  The two will separate in the container if left untouched.  Thick green sludge on the bottom, dark watery acid on top.  I kept it mixed fairly well with a wire whisk while I was painting it on though.  I finally determined that I had probably been dipping the brush too deep, swabbing the green oxides off the bottom of the container.  The bristles (as opposed to the sponge I used on the samples) must have sopped up all the green, but when I pulled the brush out, the acid didn't stick to it at all.  This seemed to make sense.  I basically just painted it green. 

I came to this conclusion a day or so before leaving town for a long weekend.  I was going out to the desert to help some friends with their projects for the Coachella music festival.  Before I left, I took the container of the green patina, carefully opened it without mixing it up, dipped my brush into the acid, careful not to get any of the green oxides on the brush, and painted it onto her achilles heel.  By the time I got back from Coachella a few days later, that little strip of metal had begun changing color and was starting to look like the samples had after the first few days.  That was it.  The samples had taken about a month to reach the point I wanted them to, and at this point, there were only a few weeks left til Art Walk, so I was already behind the curve.  I carefully opened the container and repainted the entire body with a layer of the acid.  A few days later, I gave it a second coat.  A few days after that, you could see the variations in the green, and after about a week, rust was starting to form on all the exposed areas.  Victory.

Last thing to do before art walk was reapply the patina to the base.  This time, with the nails covered in Rustoleum, and no rusty patina left on the copper, it worked beautifully. 

By the time Art Walk rolled around, the piece was looking good.  Still pretty green, but at least a nice mix of varying shades, with spots of rust beginning to show.  I may add one more coat of acid, somewhere along the way, but I'm guessing in another few weeks to a month, she should be where I want her and ready for a final clear coat.  And then… done done.  Like, totally, completely done.  Very exciting.

I'll post some photos soon, but here's a little teaser from art walk.  I guess I can finally announce the name here too. 

shake dreams from your hair

2013

Writing this blog has been an interesting experience.  On one hand, it's been really fun doing something new and sharing my process.  On the other hand, writing has always been tough for me.  As simple as these blog posts are, they usually take me a few nights of writing, editing, rewriting and on and on until I finally beat the words out of myself.  I'm not sure if I'll keep this up with any future projects.  Maybe.  But if not, the one thing I will definitely miss is posting music.  Music is such a huge part of my process that it's been more fun posting these tracks than it has the updates.  Definitely easier.  This past month, I've still been listening to Alt-J and Jim James, but I've also been listening to some new-to-me bands, Exitmusic and Now, Now.  I've also dug back into another recent favorite from the last year, Nightlands.  I had wanted to post a few tracks from Exitmusic and Nightlands for you, but for some reason it won't let me post either of the songs I wanted to share.  So instead, I'll post this.  I heard this song on a cassette called An American Prayer the summer I graduated from high school.  It was an album of Jim Morrison reading his poetry, with background music written by the Doors after he died.  I loved the Doors back then.  Can't say I'm still a big fan, but the lyrics at the beginning of this song struck me as incredibly beautiful, and have stuck with me for over twenty years.  When I started working on this piece, I realized why they've stuck with me for so long.  They held the title of my sculpture.

That's all for now.  I'll check back in, hopefully with more photos, once the patina is finished and I do the clear coat.