Secret project

Okay, the convention is over, and now we're into the seminars... I'm going to post a few pics of the 'secret non-painting-project' I was worked on for the convention, and I'll post more of the actual displayed work/etc at the convention when I have time (as in, maybe not happen until June 3rd, when the final seminar is over and the artists have been taken to the airport).

So, I was making little porcelain maple leafs, right? Well, I started with new-growth maple branches/leaves, twist ties, cutters, and plastic twine:

 Please click on the pictures to see them at a larger size.

Can you guess? I made masks! There was a big gala dinner at the end of the convention, with a 'Phantom of the Opera' theme, so of course, everyone was supposed to dress up and wear a mask.

I've never done something like this before, but I've always had good spacial skills (perhaps it off-sets the dyslexia?) I can imagine something three-dimensional, and disassemble/reassemble it in my head even before I start working.

I created three different ones, just in case I broke/ruined one (or two, knowing me), so I wanted to make sure I had a spare.

To make these involved a lot of trial and error. Quickly, I realized I could only work for an hour or so, leave the twist ties on, and let it dry overnight, or over a couple nights before I could weave more twigs/branches into these. You'll also notice I removed all the leaves from the branches. That was the first learning phase. Trying to weave the branches with the leaves on quickly shredded the leaves and left clumps of them caught between, which was ugly and made it harder to work.


When the branches were relatively dried enough that I could remove some of the twist ties, step two looked like this:

 Sorry that first one is upside-down...

The green twine was used to bend them into shape -> since I didn't want them flat, I wanted them to curve around the face properly. The last four pictures are of the same mask at various bending-stages as this one was the most... expansive? (It was kinda shaped like a clover -> since I've got Irish heritage). It's also the only one I didn't finish.

This bending process took another couple of days, but by that, I still mean I worked on them for only about an hour or so, then had to leave them to dry. So it wasn't as time-consuming as it may seem. I worked on them in the evenings, usually after I'd been doing convention stuff all day.



I never actually took pictures during stage three... mostly 'cause the convention had already started, and I was literally coming back and working on them around 8pm at night after being up @ 5am and running around like crazy all day.

Step three involved resin. You basically have these two bottle and you mix equal parts into a plastic cup, then whip/mix it for a couple of minutes until it starts getting warm and sticky.

Then I used a paintbrush to coat the entire thing. Since there were still twist ties on many parts of the masks holding them together, I coated them over two days/evenings and let them dry in between. I then added real maple leaves and coated them in resin.

Stage four, I added the porcelain leaves and copper wire as accents. I did this... literally Friday night  (the day before the dinner) at around 11pm, and I was so exhausted that I finished one, threw some porcelain leaves randomly on the second mask, and abandoned the third (which is why I never finished it).

Here's what the first one looked like:

An added (and unseen) bonus of using resin was, because to dry it, I had to hang them (otherwise, if I set them down, they would have dried to whatever surface I laid them on), was gravity pulled the resin into the branch tips and created these shimmery little beads that caught the light and sparkled.

This is the mask I wore to the gala banquet dinner on Saturday (the final official day of the convention).

The second mask I finished (but didn't wear) ended up like this:

Since this was the second one I made, the weaving is a lot more complex than the first one, so here are some zoomed-in pictures where you can see the details better.

 This is the underside of the mask (the part that lays against the forehead). You can see the leaves are starting to turn brown because I didn't coat the backside of these leaves... I ran out of time.


In the end, I feel my first attempt at making a mask out of trees/leaves was successful. I certainly learned a lot while I was working. If I'd had more time, and if my poor arm/shoulder had allowed for it, I would have liked to paint scenes (or something) on the porcelain leaves.

In the end, the masks were meant to be ephemeral. Out of curiosity, I'm going to leave them on a shelf and see what happens to them... if they start to crack, or grow mould inside the resin (since I was sealing up a live leaf that is full of moisture). When they are at the state to be thrown away, I am going to remove the porcelain leaves and will most likely use them in a project in the future.

A new project

Something I have to make for the convention, I ended up doing my usual thing:

I could have spend $20 and just bought one...

Instead, I'm making it.

Here's the initial stage of just one component.

 This is porcelain slip. Essentially, it's a jug of super watered-down porcelain. You have to stir it like crazy since all the sediment settles at the bottom, then you pour some into a separate jar/cup/etc, add liquid glycerine to make it malleable (otherwise it crumbles when it dries), and pour it onto bats to dry. I mixed enough to fill one (I think it's about 1/4" thick), and had a little leftover.

 Can you see how reflective shiny it is?

 When the slip turns matte on the surface (it dries from the outsides in), you can cut it with a knife, or in my case, I used maple leaf cookie-cutters. The smallest sized one is about 1.25" wide, the next size up about 1.5", the largest size is about 6" wide.

Note that I laid them down so most of them aren't flat...

And here they are after they dried enough that I could start punching holes in them, but not dry enough that they would crack/break. It's a very fine line between dry enough, and too dry.

Going to fire them tomorrow and see how they turn out. I expect they'll shrink in size by about 25%

Itching fingers

I'm currently banned from using my computer/typing, but also from any activity involving my dominant arm, especially precision-related movements like drawing/painting, but with the convention coming up in May, I've been itching to paint... something...

I mean, isn't it sad that I'm the vice-chair of the board and I'm not going to have anything to display?

Like I'm 'pretending' I can paint... name only... a facade.

Well, I've been in Chilliwack for a couple days helping out with convention-related stuff, and while taking a break, I flipped through the latest edition of Porcelain Flash, and here are some of the images that make me want to say, "Phooey!" to my physiotherapist and pick up a paintbrush, especially the first two by Australian artist Ingrid Lee. Aren't they gorgeously dream-like?

Crows - a near Hitchcockian story

No one outside of the Vancouver area probable knows about this, but there is an unusually large flock (or murder) of crows in Burnaby that is somewhere in the 6,000 count.

A quick Google search will supply videos, and heaps of articles about this odd phenomenon that has been tracked since the 1970's.

It's something I've always known about, but never actually seen it until a couple weeks ago I drove a friend of mine to an early morning job interview in that area of Burnaby.

Coincidentally enough, a ton of them were roosting on the building, in the surrounding trees, the trees across the street, and on the power lines. As I waited for the interview to be over, I wandered around the parking lot and tried to snap a few pictures with my phone, which really doesn't do the experience justice...

I am very fond of crows and ravens, but even this was a little unsettling. Seriously, click the photos so you can see all the birds in the background...

Eagle food

On Vancouver Island, because of poor fishing off the coast, it was common knowledge not to walk your dog off-leash at the beach, or in dog parks, without keeping a close eye up above since the bald eagles weren't getting enough wild prey...

On the Bear Mountain golf course, bald eagles would attack deer and kill them... seriously...

In Vancouver, it doesn't seem like that's as much of a problem, but a couple weeks ago at Jericho, I was walking with Eva and saw an eagle swooping down straight towards us. Automatically I pulled Eva's leash and stepped in front of her, and the eagle immediately turned and landed in a tree not even 20 feet to my left...

Guess it's a good thing my experience on Vancouver Island made me more aware or my little beagle could have turned into a snack for this guy: