Color Motion

As I ease back into the warm weather habits of the outdoors I find myself lured, quite entranced, back to the shed to resume work on the witch head sculpture. Day job shenanigans all but sabotaged this project last year; the double whammy of learning pneumatic controls and sculpture/mold-making didn’t help things, either. But we’re neck deep in this now and the only to learn is to follow through - so on we go!

I attached a snapshot of the witch’s forehead as I left it. I’m struggling with a lot of creative fronts here - the compression of skin and muscles on the bony ridge of her brow, my unfamiliarity with sculpting materials, and my weak vision for this project. I have attempted multiple times to visualize this creature in the hopes of building a blueprint, a cohesive mental picture to benchmark my progress and guide my hands. I am a far cry from a sculptor but I do know the benefits of a clear creative vision. The trouble is that each time I try to build on yesterday’s ideas, different ideas come out. I never seem to produce a progressively defined, single idea; instead, the more sketches I make, the more variation is introduced.

As a result I started working the clay just for the sake of getting into it and feeling like I was getting somewhere. I don’t entirely regret jumping in and figuring things out along the way, but now I’m paying for it. How can I add clay to the forehead to make convincing brow creases when I don’t have a confident grasp of the skull’s shape underneath? At what point do I know that enough under-structure is in place, so that I can move on to surface structures?

These are of course the high level problems that undoubtedly all sculpture students cope with for years; I can’t expect to figure them out in only 10 projects, let alone 1. I know that the more I work on the witch, the closer I come to the point of marginal returns on my time; I can’t make the underlying features of the head better without starting over completely, so really I’m just taking this opportunity to learn as much as I can from the inaugural n00b experience before I stick a fork in it and call it done. I can’t demand perfection, which means I can stop really any time I want; in a way, that’s refreshing.
I say this happily knowing that the road to good work is paved with all the crap that came before. The crappy stuff is what we should be proud of once we’ve finally progressed to the top of the hill, because even if the crappy stuff wasn’t fun, we had the guts to endure it.

It’s been some time, but the witch head lives on!  How can it not, for it cannot be killed…?

I’m happy to be at the point where I’m adding muscle and tissue under the eyes.  It really elevates the waves of hatred and evil coming off this thing.  When all’s said and sculpted the bags of the lower lids should flow down across the cheeks and join up with the jowls, adding to the ancient, saggy wrinkliness of the thing.  Lots of road to cover still!

Roly poly witch head, witch head, witch head, eat it up - yum!

The right side of the witch’s face has been covered with muscles and the first layer of skin…  The right side is still the underlying structure of the skull.  I decided to build up the head in structural layers to give a more “realistic” appearance - in quotes because, obviously, it’s not a realistic creature at all!

I decided to add some tumors on the left side of the head, but this turned out to be a problem down the road…  If I wanted to add that sort of detail I should have waited until the underlying skull was finished and SYMMETRICAL.  After I took these photos, I attempted to add layers of flesh on the left side to match the right side.  Getting the two halves to look similar is presenting a lot of challenges.

The layers of flesh drape pretty nicely.  I want the cheeks to emphasize age with the sagging cheeks that fall down under the cheekbones.  The low drooping is hiked up by the muscles of the nose to raise the hackles, and so a big challenge I have is realistically communicating the contrast between those flexed hackle-muscles and the sagging, relaxed skin of the cheeks.

I really like this profile.  Getting the other side to match is very difficult!

once this underlayer is finished I plan to etch a great deal of deep lines into the surface to indicate the flowing sinews of the muscle.  From there I’ll add pockets of fatty skin and smooth over spots to indicate the skin covering the muscle tissue…  And on top of that will go the wrinkles, warts. etc.

This is something I love about drawing and it pleases me to see how well it extends to sculpture.  Beginning with an underlying structure and gradually adding layers of detail is highly rewarding.  Best of all, sculpture doesn’t suffer from the frustrating challenges of 3D computer modeling…  I don’t need to juggle the artistic decisions with how I’ve laid out a mesh, and how that presents technical obstacles.  If I want to add a nostril I just add a dab of clay and sculpt it with my fingers, then smooth the transition into the face.

More to come later!

Day 1

In about an hour and a half, I set up the work bench and got the innermost layer of clay on the styrofoam head.  To support the head, I built a wooden box out of plywood with a 1″ hole drilled in its top and bottom.  I ran a 1″ diameter dowel rod through this hole after cutting it to a suitable length and stuck a styrofoam model head on it.  Perfectly improvised turntable!  With that I was ready to begin.

We ordered 50 lbs of Klean Klay for this project, and it looks like we’ll have plenty to spare.  By using a styrofoam wig model head as a base, the sculpture is made much lighter and uses far less clay.  I could feel my brain figuring out the most utterly basic techniques with sculpture as I set to work.

Day 2

I spent about two hours in the shed today working on the sculpture - longer than I originally planned to.  I got so engaged that I lost track of time!

My major obstacle became the integration of our taxidermy purchases - namely the wolf jaws.  This here model head is human; beauty supply stores don’t typically sell wigs to lycanthropes.  (They have hair to spare.)  I knew I wanted the jaw to be in this sculpture from early on, so as soon as the first layer of base clay was laid on the head, I picked up a flat-head screwdriver and went to work.  Somewhat morbidly I chiseled off the lower jaw of the model and dug my way back to the dowel rod support.

I got pretty worried at this juncture - I didn’t use any glue to attach the jaw to the styrofoam head.  Really there isn’t much use in trying - once the styrofoam starts peeling away it comes off with little effort.  However it compacts nicely, so I was able to wedge the jaw into the mass of the styrofoam, which gripped it and holds it mostly in place.  My next worry, of course, is that the weight of the clay (as I build up the muzzle over the jaw) will tear the jaw out.  When I finished today it appeartd stable, but all the same I propped up a little piece of dowel rod under the jaw to prevent this from happening.

I’m pretty pleased so far but I want this head to say “wolf” more than “rat.”  Time to find some reference photography.

That’s all for now!  On a friend’s advice I will keep taking pictures as the sculpture progresses.  It may not look like much now, but who knows - in a couple weeks the difference will be striking!

No, not like Tony Danza

More like:

These are my newest acquisitions from a taxidermist supply store. The eyes will be 24mm, roughly the size of a human eye, or the size of a really large wolf’s. I love the idea of using taxidermy supplies; they’re relatively cheap, very realistic,  and easily accessible. I think the “wolf-witch” idea will be a creepy balance between the traditional witch you’re used to seeing and the “Holy crap WTF is that?” beast that makes you question the last time you used the restroom.

There’s also 50 lbs of clay and some sculpting tools on their way — I wish we lived nearby a decent art supply store.

Now that the art supplies are coming, I’ve got two tasks lined up:

1) Figure out how the heck to program my PLC (but I have a good text!)

2) Acquire a motor and start constructing the cauldron-stirring mechanism

I’ve been away the last few weeks working in another city, which meant all work and no play. Hopefully I can make some real progress this week while I’m back home.

Started this at 9:00 PM and got quite carried away.

I don’t think it says “I’m a witch” as much as “SATAAAN”.  Hmm…  Whether we use it or not, doing this (Wacom tablet in Photoshop) was a great exercise in conceptualizing the forms and textures of our project.  I found it very rewarding.

As May comes to an end, it’s a priority for us to understand the witch’s appearance.  A clear, specific vision of her appearance will keep us focused.

To that end, I decided to start off with a general approach.  What sort of body type should we strive for?  A lot of her appearance and the emotions we want to convey - power, danger, threat, presence of the unknown - will stem from her body language and costume.  Her body type won’t do that work for us directly, however choosing a suitable body type will make that work much easier, in the same way that the shape of a skull influences the facial features.

I sat down this morning and drew three body types to get discussion started.

You’ll see that by “body type” I am also loosely determining the style of dress.  In figure 1, the character has an hourglass shape with broad shoulders and a tapered waist.  I think I drew this body type just to rule it out.  The broad shoulders are too masculine, in my opinion, and for me the body shape evokes images of middle-eastern wizards.

Figure 2 is a study in exaggeration - the sway-backed old hag with spindly arms, oily strands of hair, hopping from one foot to the other.  There is a mixture of benefits and drawbacks here.  The benefit is definite clarity and identity - this is the stereotypical body type of the Snow White witch, used by Disney and other cartoon makers.  People recognize it immediately, and for good reason.  This body type sets us up to realize all kinds of witch stereotypes - old, haggard, a creature from another time.  The downside is that this body-type has very little creative headroom.  I can picture very clearly the limited options this body type allows, and perhaps I’m not being creative enough, but I don’t see a way for this character shape to tell a story that’s evocative and fresh.  It’s too deep in the wheel-ruts of witches that came before.  Not exactly what we want, is it?

The last body type is also a mixed story.  It’s more like the Wicked Witch of the West - schoolmarmish, narrow shoulders and hips, utterly sexless.  In a lot of ways, I like this a lot for a witch.  By forcing the viewer to struggle a little as they identify the gender and stance of this figure, they can’t help but feel a little alienated.  Instant recognizability as in figure 2 breeds familiarity, and body type 3 is not so familiar.  If it is, the familiarity is with school mistresses, who in their day evoked fear and knowing “more and better” than those around them.  That’s another fitting emotion for the witch to instill.  Lastly, this body type is the only one of the three that (I believe) has the power to really communicate danger.  The sway-backed witch in figure 2 might put a spell on you, but her arms are spindly and weak; the witch in figure 3 has sharper nails than you realized and a very, very strong grip that surprises you.  The witch in figure 3 has secrets and concealed ways, and we could dress her in a simple, black manner that says, “RAZOR SHARP - you WILL be cut if you come close.”

All that said in praise for figure 3, but it does have a big hurdle.  It does not communicate all that imagery by itself - that was mainly my imagination opening up and wondering what can be created ON TOP OF this body type.  Figure 2 does so much of that work already, which makes it a tempting choice, but that easiness is deceptive; the body type isn’t the whole story, just like your skull isn’t your face.  If we aren’t up to a big creative challenge and want to go an easy route, we would go with figure 2.  As I’ve written this post, I’ve warmed up to the possibilities presented by figure 3 in spite of the challenges it poses.  (No pun intended.)

I’ve been excited about trying out all the pneumatics parts we got from Grainger for awhile, but little problems kept popping up. First, we didn’t know how the heck to do it, then once we figured out how they worked, we didn’t know how to apply power, or if there was any way to control the beast instead of just pumping constant air through it. I tend to think a little too big… it wasn’t sufficient for the cylinder to just go back and forth repeatedly, oh no, it had to be controlled and timed and fired in sequence with other parts of the circuit but at different speeds, etc, etc. And yeah, if you could throw in some sound and flashy lights that’d be great, too!

Thanks to my robotics teacher and one of the service techs at work, I was pointed into the direction of PLCs to control the pneumatics, and Digi-Key to supply the 120VAC ~ 24VDC power supply. Those parts together cost about $120, but I also got a “mini-PLC”; regular-sized ones are hundreds more. This will probably suit our needs with plenty of room to spare.

Before we could get into the power supply and the controls, though, we had to get the cylinder to fire to prove our circuit was working. Below is a photo of all the parts we used to test it. I don’t have a paint program on this computer, but counter-clockwise from the top: the double-acting cylinder, a flow regulator, the valve, a flow regulator for the opposite direction. The hose coming off the valve in the back is going into the air compressor.

Here’s the valve, flow regulators and hose up-close:

The deal with the cylinder is that you have one line of hose on each side of the piston; one’s using air to push the cylinder out, and the other is an exhaust which pushes it back into its original position. The flow regulators determine the speed of the air through the hose, and the valve is taking the air from the compressor, feeding it to the cylinder to fire it, and exhausting the return air. The valve needs power to it to control it, and we’ll be using the power supply and PLC to do that (once we figure out how).

If you’re wondering why it’s all nailed down to a board, it’s for the sake of safety. I didn’t know how strong the compressed air would be, or how tight the fittings were compared to how tight they should’ve been. The last thing you want is a valve through the wall.

This is the connection from the valve to the air compressor. We didn’t have the right fitting to use, so we cobbled it together with electrical tape, kept the pressure down REALLY LOW and hoped for the best. It’s definitely not a long-term fix, but I’m impatient and wanted to see something happen. I think this is Ross’ best “Don’t do this at home, kids” face.

And this is my “Good God 40PSI can be strong!” face:

After seeing the cylinder fire, the next big step of gratification was seeing POWER BE HARNESSED FOR GOOD! Oh yes, powering up the power supply and the control board. Neither of us are electricians, in fact, we probably do some dumb/dangerous things in the name of science. One of these things is using bare wires on terminals. It seemed okay since it’s just for test, and the actual adaptors are coming in the mail soon. I took a large extension cord, stripped it, and separated out the wires. Two of them went onto the power supply, and when it was plugged in there was 24VDC on the other side. It’s like magic! Wiring two of the output terminals to the board powered it up and gave me a gratifying green light, but there’s not much more I can do from here until I figure out how the PCB gets connected to the valve. That’ll be a fight for next weekend!

The Witch needs to scare the pants off you. Clear off. You notice a draft, look down, and get really confused ’cause you knew they were there a second ago. I think her clothes really need to help create the effect, but I have a hard time putting down on paper (or drawing, because I’m no good at that) exactly what she looks like.

If I was playing Witch Scrabble, I’d be using the words: ancient, wise, ruthless, eternal, earthy, dark, sinister.

This is the witch that has a small shack deep in the woods. She sleeps in the ground because the soil rejuvenates her. She’s one with the earth, but the earth doesn’t claim her. She just is. She doesn’t like humans as a rule and kills them for sport and soup. Disturbing her is a death sentence. If you cross her you can’t beg for mercy or trade for a life of servitude, she already has servants indentured from years before that would beg for death if their mouths were unsewn. You can buy her help, but you give up a part of yourself to do it. She’s the last resort, barely living on the fringes of society and one step short of a deal with the devil. Her clothes are dark and ragged, but not black. She wears a loose shift dress, and it’s not thin but it’s very distressed. She wears a long skirt over it that she either sewed herself or took from a meal. On top of it all is a dark hooded cloak that envelopes her so she can blend into the darkness. Her clothes and hair are caked in dirt, and the nails she hasn’t ground and broken against the tree bark have grown long and warped, but are sharp enough to slice you like shears. She has spells you’ll never see, but she saves the most gruesome for people who cross her path. She wears a rope belt with small vessels and bottles tied to the end. If she doesn’t show you the mercy of a quick death you might find yourself being driven to dig your own grave for days with your bare hands or having to decide when to take your last 1,000 breaths.

So enough description; hopefully you now have the same vision I do. I still have trouble with images, but I can start off by showing you what she doesn’t look like. This is the antithesis of the Witch:

She’s not sexy. She’s not young. She doesn’t wear trend clothes or have a stereotypical pointy hat. Her sleeves don’t drape down stylishly and intentionally. If she wears high lace-up boots they sure as hell don’t look like that. She also doesn’t have a need for a flying broom. Seriously, brooms don’t fly and it takes a ton of effort to levitate yourself. This chick don’t roll that way, foo.

So what about the other end of the witch spectrum?

We still have the goofy hat and broom, but the outfit’s much better. She’s more low-key, simple, streamlined. She’s missing actual character, though. I imagine our Witch with a bit more gypsy style but without all the bold colors, or a peasant style with less of the wholesomeness. Sinister Peasant, my new clothing line

I envision a kind of dress like the white one below, but much darker. These evoke the simple style I’m looking for, but you need to remove the sex appeal from the far two and the youth from the first and turn them dark and gritty.

So how does one go about learning how to design their own costumes? I think I need to start keeping an eye out for some cool fabrics and patterns.

Apparently, Plaster of Paris can give you some mean chemical burns, so that’s not a great option for dipping our faces in. A recommended alternative was Alginate, which is what dentists use to duplicate your chompers. So in the interest of not burning our eyebrows off, this will be coming in the mail next week.

I think the method to our madness is this:

1. We cast our faces Alginate
2. We pour Plaster of Paris into the Alginate mold
3. We use the Plaster mold as the source, and create a cavity pour mold around it
4. We pour silicone into the pour mold
5. The silicone then becomes the negative mold for our witch’s face. We probably want to use a silicone formula to pour into it to create the mask

But where in this process to we add all the creepy features? At the end?