Three Weeks

I said to mum just now, hey thats only taken 3 weeks, the footballer, to get to this, i reckon if i keep getting faster i might get it down to one month to make a life sized man!
Its not near finished but its coming along really fast. He's even got a collar on his shirt. No face yet, but i just got to sit down & sort that in a couple of days & then it'll be not much left to do.
She said 3 weeks? Its been 1 week.
I said no no no etc.
But actually if my welder has been in the shop since 1 week ago yesterday, well that was the day i welded up the armature, see, so i didn't start any earlier.
8 days :) :) :) F***!!!Wow!!!
It sure FEELS like 3 weeks cos i been working so damn hard, and it really seems like 3 weeks worth of sleeping as well...
Weird. But COOL!

It helped to have the other body there, which made the beginning of it all much easier. I think this really (as usual) points to the old masters being right - make a bloody good first model (i do that), then make a largish one, where u solve all the problems, then do the full size. I never do the large model usually, thinking i don't have time. But actually if it SAVES this much time... This was a full sized "model" but having it there was just so handy. It made reproducing it really easy, and i actually changed it significantly cos it had some scaling issues (i.e. it was a touch too big & the legs were just slightly wrong).

They're always right, them old fellers. Charles Sargeant Jagger wrote a rockin good book, & his teacher old Lanteri, who wrote the sculptor's bloody bible, awesome stuff. Every hard earned thing you figure out painfully over ages, well its all in those books. You see it on repeated readings sometimes just a tiny few words you never noticed last time you skimmed thru.

And to be truthful i really enjoy being back home & working in the yard. Its better than a studio in this weather. I'm working really hard cos i don't have to drive anyplace or plan my day to avoid peak time traffic (the afternoon peak is from 2.30 to 7pm thank u very much!), i can write myself off if i want cos i just go sit down & rest. I eat healthy lunch too. Its nice to be outside in spring in the front yard, there's lots going on & neighbours give me big smiles. I'm making a foul mess of the carport though, its all white & dusty.

Anyway my 10 months of bludging is kinda coming to a close. To the .0001 person who reads these words, i feel a responsibility to come to some conclusion about what happened to me during this time...

Well i won't probably be able to figure it all out in 1 blog post but some things that changed...

While doing this latest bloke, i got so much stronger that i can now break a geek's neck like a twig. My hands are abraded from rasping plaster. My hair is feral. Since my hairdresser retired & i got 2 ratshit haircuts, i decided to either get a #2 skin head or just let it grow long. For some reason i've gone with long. Inertia i guess. With a kilo of plaster dust in it, its got the consistency of mummified straw, a bit like dreadlocks on a corpse. There is a schizo killer on the loose & i'm *sure* the cops went round the block & stopped next to me at the lights to check me out yesterday. If you seen the chap i mean, my hair is like that... but hey it was twilight, i don't have the killer expression, really. I guess i better get it neatened up slightly before going back to work.

My finances didn't improve massively during the time, but i saved a few grand so i didn't do the usual 'starving artist' thing.

I didn't get a chance to go away, at all. I never went to Italy or Paree. Just never actually had time... It may have been more a programming issue. I guess i could have got 2 weeks out somewhere if i could have planned ahead. But if you have 10 months off - wouldn't you try to squeeze more than 2 weeks out of a trip OS? Does it seem worth going for less than a month? Obviously grabbin 2 weeks would have been better than not going. But, fact remains i never went. Didn't even go down to Mystery Bay for the weekend. Pathetic really.

Never traded my falling apart car either. Though i still got time, thats an ongoing task. An indicator fell off it last week, at about the same time as all the fluid finished draining out of the steering.

Did i decide i was a sculptor? well yeah, but there's lots of sculptors working in IT. Do i feel like i should quit work to be one? Well YEAH. But i'm not feeling quite confident enough right now to do it. One more year at work.. maybe. If i can stay a year ;)

Lookin for my MS SMS text book to study up for work. I think i hid that book very well :(