I went to an auction today for a house. I didn't hold a whole lot of hope really, but, if everybody else forgot to come to the auction, etc. It was bad news in the paper for property, some real estate noob was saying the inner west had "died in the arse", it was dark & rainy, and i'd done all the prep for it so i was bloody well going to at least be there. I really liked the area this house was in. It had a swamp just out the back gate & you could see airplane tails moving way off in the distance over at the airport. It was way cool.
I had committed myself in my mind to staying in my irritating job for the rest of eternity to pay it off. Thats a huge step. I was ready. But there were 100 people there & it went for about 740K, a number that my wildest nightmares wouldn't provoke, yet here was reality (or what passes for it in sydney real estate). Sigh. The goon had been saying 550-590.... you don't even add 100K to that shite anymore do ya.
But you know, as every loser in creation has ever repeated ad pukeum: it was a good experience, i'm glad i tried, i learned something. Bleah.
Anyway... i bought a rocking chair up the street at a garage sale, so the trip was not entirely wasted.
I'm alone at home now for a month. I started out well, i went shopping & made a lovely big stirfry that will last two days. Healthy. Nutritious. A good start that will probably deteriorate to 2 minute noodles spiced with frozen peas by the end of week 1... but like if u don't START good then you're quitting before u begin.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Thursday, May 20, 2010
A visit from the studio cat
We have a studio cat that lives about the studios. I almost never see her but this evening she came & visited me. She hadn't been in my studio before, so she travelled all around & under everything & negotiated the chicken wire trap & even tried to go under the tarp taped on the floor. She regarded the large man sculpture with great caution & in a very different way to anything else. I think she thought it was a very weird very still person. When she passed by under its gaze she scuttled low on the ground. Didn't stop her though she soon worked out it was not moving. She's still kitten like & played with my tape measure & bounced her paws off the metal rod i was using to make a new arm for the big dude. I cut off his left arm cos it was wrong & it wasn't moving. No matter how much i hurt myself trying to bend that arm, it weren't going anyplace. There's another person coming for a viewing tomorrow, but i'd rather it had no arm than a bad arm, i think thats better really. I adjusted its eyes too. Thats kinda important.
I'm pretty well realising my new surform is a load of shite. What a shame. I took one back already cos a piece broke off it in 3 strokes. Now this second one has only about half as many teeth that are sharp as what its meant to have. Its just about uncontrollable. U dunno what you gonna get when u run that over something. It'll either do nothing, or gouge a stonking great rip in it, and anything in between based on what bit is in contact, its all different all over the place in either the x or y axis if u get my drift.
F*** it - whatever happened to quality control? I got the EXACT same one 2 years ago & its still working, if slightly blunter. I only got this one cos i wanted to have a spare. Was that hubris? Was i asking too much of the universe? I need to find someone who sells the Stanley version & not this shitty brand - which i would mention the name of in order to blacken its rep, but i've forgotten it. They're yellow n black, anyway.
Hmm i just re-read that & it seems a little heated for a simple tool review. But its a really important tool ok!!! And you know i don't have a life. The camera man asked me yesterday how did i do a FT job & the sculpture & i said i just don't have a life. None, nothing at all. So a SURFORM is really important, man, ok! LOL
I'm pretty well realising my new surform is a load of shite. What a shame. I took one back already cos a piece broke off it in 3 strokes. Now this second one has only about half as many teeth that are sharp as what its meant to have. Its just about uncontrollable. U dunno what you gonna get when u run that over something. It'll either do nothing, or gouge a stonking great rip in it, and anything in between based on what bit is in contact, its all different all over the place in either the x or y axis if u get my drift.
F*** it - whatever happened to quality control? I got the EXACT same one 2 years ago & its still working, if slightly blunter. I only got this one cos i wanted to have a spare. Was that hubris? Was i asking too much of the universe? I need to find someone who sells the Stanley version & not this shitty brand - which i would mention the name of in order to blacken its rep, but i've forgotten it. They're yellow n black, anyway.
Hmm i just re-read that & it seems a little heated for a simple tool review. But its a really important tool ok!!! And you know i don't have a life. The camera man asked me yesterday how did i do a FT job & the sculpture & i said i just don't have a life. None, nothing at all. So a SURFORM is really important, man, ok! LOL
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Tv tv
Today the dude himself was coming to the studio & he was going to check out the sculpture's progress.
He told me what was wrong with the arms & that. He said he wouldn't really move like that, which is fairinuff, cos he'd know. But then he looked at the little maquette & he said that was fine. So the problem was in how i'd interpreted that & we worked out what that was. One arm was pointing in the wrong direction. Typical i had made such a damn complicated pose that i couldn't understand it myself. But like hey whats the point of doing something easy.
I told him stories of Egyptian travels while we sat around waiting for the tv guys. There is one thing you can get from a nightmare trip like going to egypt, & that is spellbinding stories of horror. Heh.
The tv crew & presenter turned up to do a piece on the making of. I hadn't get enough notice to get my hair cut or even get the studio trackie dacks laundered. So i kept on my street clothes for the tv stuff. It went quite well i talked good & they asked good questions so it was easy. The only problem is that i'm in it, but then so's the subject & he's cool. Luckily the head of the sculpture comes off & on, & that novelty's probably going to be a feature of the film.
They're gonna film at the foundry too & all that later & then show it on the day of the unveiling, on telly. The cameraman knew my sculptures already & he liked em :) How cool is that.
Anyway... i been working very hard on this sculpture lately. Bin a while since i blogged but i been flogging the work pretty hard. Its about half way there. the socks are good. The head looks like the dude on one side & not on the other. But thats pretty good cos usually it doesn't work till about version #3. This guy's got an easy head! About time i got one like that :)
He told me what was wrong with the arms & that. He said he wouldn't really move like that, which is fairinuff, cos he'd know. But then he looked at the little maquette & he said that was fine. So the problem was in how i'd interpreted that & we worked out what that was. One arm was pointing in the wrong direction. Typical i had made such a damn complicated pose that i couldn't understand it myself. But like hey whats the point of doing something easy.
I told him stories of Egyptian travels while we sat around waiting for the tv guys. There is one thing you can get from a nightmare trip like going to egypt, & that is spellbinding stories of horror. Heh.
The tv crew & presenter turned up to do a piece on the making of. I hadn't get enough notice to get my hair cut or even get the studio trackie dacks laundered. So i kept on my street clothes for the tv stuff. It went quite well i talked good & they asked good questions so it was easy. The only problem is that i'm in it, but then so's the subject & he's cool. Luckily the head of the sculpture comes off & on, & that novelty's probably going to be a feature of the film.
They're gonna film at the foundry too & all that later & then show it on the day of the unveiling, on telly. The cameraman knew my sculptures already & he liked em :) How cool is that.
Anyway... i been working very hard on this sculpture lately. Bin a while since i blogged but i been flogging the work pretty hard. Its about half way there. the socks are good. The head looks like the dude on one side & not on the other. But thats pretty good cos usually it doesn't work till about version #3. This guy's got an easy head! About time i got one like that :)
Sunday, May 9, 2010
An inch or 3 off all over
Hm righto so i got started early today. Its sunday, a traditional very quiet day at the studios. I dunno why.. you'd think people would "art" on the weekend a lot more than they seem to do. Anyway its usually dead quiet there on a sundy & i park my bike behind a suddenly rhomboid set of drawers. I guess something happened to em last night during the BBQ party cos i'm pretty sure they were straight square yesterday. No idea why there is a set of drawers in the driveway but its one of many things i don't understand there & like all tedious mysteries, a little goes a long way & after a while u only see them when they change shape.
I had printed up a ton of photos of my subject in his prime & blutacked them up. Yes i HAD looked at em earlier, but since then i'd been studying the photos i took of him when i met him a few weeks ago. I was kinda dismayed to see that he had been hella skinny in his playing days, not so much the muscular hunk i was making, sadly. Bloody hell thats annoying. I had met the guy, and he seemed very fit & gorgeous. Now i find out he was fitter and much skinnier (tho still gorgeous).
Oh dear it'll be an inch or 3 off all over now, i guess. Oy... :(
Mum sez, i should never meet them til i finish. Feel she is right. There must be a great advantage to seeing them, but so far its not really been the case with the sculptures... that its not done much more than confuse me. Not what i'd expect. I guess what i'm making is someone from history not reality. So seeing the reality is gonna be like red herring.
Enjoyed my ride home. Bike is lovely. So high up.. its quite a surprise when i can hardly reach the ground at the stop lights. But when i'm sailing along all high up its almost like flying. And then standing up is cool too. Likely to fall on my nose doing that but its great fun.
Then when i got home i need to do the shopping. I drove my car out & it was rammed home instantly how dreadful that car is. There's nothing like 2 days riding on good suspension to make u realise that the characteristic entertaining wibble your car does is actually worn out shocks with flat tyres wallowing under the hideous dead weight of a huge rusted steel shell and its totally rooted & yer lucky yr wheels don't fall off.
I had printed up a ton of photos of my subject in his prime & blutacked them up. Yes i HAD looked at em earlier, but since then i'd been studying the photos i took of him when i met him a few weeks ago. I was kinda dismayed to see that he had been hella skinny in his playing days, not so much the muscular hunk i was making, sadly. Bloody hell thats annoying. I had met the guy, and he seemed very fit & gorgeous. Now i find out he was fitter and much skinnier (tho still gorgeous).
Oh dear it'll be an inch or 3 off all over now, i guess. Oy... :(
Mum sez, i should never meet them til i finish. Feel she is right. There must be a great advantage to seeing them, but so far its not really been the case with the sculptures... that its not done much more than confuse me. Not what i'd expect. I guess what i'm making is someone from history not reality. So seeing the reality is gonna be like red herring.
Enjoyed my ride home. Bike is lovely. So high up.. its quite a surprise when i can hardly reach the ground at the stop lights. But when i'm sailing along all high up its almost like flying. And then standing up is cool too. Likely to fall on my nose doing that but its great fun.
Then when i got home i need to do the shopping. I drove my car out & it was rammed home instantly how dreadful that car is. There's nothing like 2 days riding on good suspension to make u realise that the characteristic entertaining wibble your car does is actually worn out shocks with flat tyres wallowing under the hideous dead weight of a huge rusted steel shell and its totally rooted & yer lucky yr wheels don't fall off.
Saturday, May 8, 2010
Babysitting & Biking
Today was a different sorta day to what i was expecting. i got new tyres put on the motobike & that took til 2.30 down at the bike shop cos everybody likes a chat. I chatted with a number of new people i'd never met before. Bikes are so great for that. It matters not what u look like yourself but if you have a bike there will always be people happy to talk to ya & really connect with ya. They really should tell all awkward young kiddies this fact... its a marvellous thing.
There is a retarded teenage kid who hangs around the bike shop lately. He's very nice & likes to help. Its a real worry. He's so helpful he had somebody ride their bike up onto the bike platform & he clamped it in with the handle, when nobody else was out the back. He did a nice job of clamping it but nobody rides up onto the platform on their 20K motorbike, its oily & slippery steel. They always push em up by hand. And he only wanted a pink slip anyway he wasn't needing any work done on it. It make yer blood run cold what could happen if this rider slipped in some oil & it all went down off the platform. If the rider survived to blame somebody, who's fault is that? Its one of them things, where by being nice to someone, the whole bike shop could get its ass sued right off it. It is a difficult thing. Its kinda like babysitting - kids are hard work.
It turn out my new bike is quite impressive to people who know about such things. I knew the previous owner had loved it & kept it immaculate & added a few things but apparently it don't get any better than what he's done to it. I can't take any credit for it of course, but its way cool to know its so awesome. And it is awesome, with the trailwings on it & the knobbys off it, it rides tons better on the road. It was like riding on blobs before, which it was. Now its like riding on real tyres. Cool.
I rode to the studio & carefully parked it at the front door behind the trees. I thought that was nicely outta the way.
I did sweet FA on the sculpture, i got sucked into a discussion about art in the next door studio & hours passed, my cup of tea got ice cold, and darkness began to fall. I started to realise there was a party happening upstairs too. Lots of little kids were coming down & i was having to chase em all out of my studio cos they kept going in to find things & empty my buckets etc. One little girl come up & asked me, she wanted to play with wax like before, she said. I fobbed her off by saying i put all my wax away cos i was using plaster now. Them kids are cute n all but i needed to get some work done & they really suck away your life force in that situation. And there was so many of em i could see my whole studio overrun within moments. All them little kids look the same to me really but obviously i met this one before. I'll probably recognize her next time... i'm not a complete freak, i hope.
I guess this is another situation of babysitting being hard work & there being more to it than just letting them do what they wanna.
I gradually came to realise my motorbike was now parked in the absolute middle of a party with BBQ, tables of food, loud pumping music, DJ, decorations, @40 children & many adults. Geez. I was gonna have to ride thru a frikkin party to escape...
Luckily the bike is awesome & i actually can ride, & regardless of how crap i may be, at least i been doing it for 20 years. So i didn't embarrass myself by falling off it or crashing into the BBQ as i rode thru the party & slipped thru a 6 inch gap between the BBQ & a stack of pallets. The little girl wanted a ride. I asked her if she had a hat cos she couldn't ride without a hat.
I'm getting good at fobbin this kid off..... LOL.
It was a good day of talking to people, if totally unproductive. Tomorrow i start EARLY & get loads done. Time's short.
There is a retarded teenage kid who hangs around the bike shop lately. He's very nice & likes to help. Its a real worry. He's so helpful he had somebody ride their bike up onto the bike platform & he clamped it in with the handle, when nobody else was out the back. He did a nice job of clamping it but nobody rides up onto the platform on their 20K motorbike, its oily & slippery steel. They always push em up by hand. And he only wanted a pink slip anyway he wasn't needing any work done on it. It make yer blood run cold what could happen if this rider slipped in some oil & it all went down off the platform. If the rider survived to blame somebody, who's fault is that? Its one of them things, where by being nice to someone, the whole bike shop could get its ass sued right off it. It is a difficult thing. Its kinda like babysitting - kids are hard work.
It turn out my new bike is quite impressive to people who know about such things. I knew the previous owner had loved it & kept it immaculate & added a few things but apparently it don't get any better than what he's done to it. I can't take any credit for it of course, but its way cool to know its so awesome. And it is awesome, with the trailwings on it & the knobbys off it, it rides tons better on the road. It was like riding on blobs before, which it was. Now its like riding on real tyres. Cool.
I rode to the studio & carefully parked it at the front door behind the trees. I thought that was nicely outta the way.
I did sweet FA on the sculpture, i got sucked into a discussion about art in the next door studio & hours passed, my cup of tea got ice cold, and darkness began to fall. I started to realise there was a party happening upstairs too. Lots of little kids were coming down & i was having to chase em all out of my studio cos they kept going in to find things & empty my buckets etc. One little girl come up & asked me, she wanted to play with wax like before, she said. I fobbed her off by saying i put all my wax away cos i was using plaster now. Them kids are cute n all but i needed to get some work done & they really suck away your life force in that situation. And there was so many of em i could see my whole studio overrun within moments. All them little kids look the same to me really but obviously i met this one before. I'll probably recognize her next time... i'm not a complete freak, i hope.
I guess this is another situation of babysitting being hard work & there being more to it than just letting them do what they wanna.
I gradually came to realise my motorbike was now parked in the absolute middle of a party with BBQ, tables of food, loud pumping music, DJ, decorations, @40 children & many adults. Geez. I was gonna have to ride thru a frikkin party to escape...
Luckily the bike is awesome & i actually can ride, & regardless of how crap i may be, at least i been doing it for 20 years. So i didn't embarrass myself by falling off it or crashing into the BBQ as i rode thru the party & slipped thru a 6 inch gap between the BBQ & a stack of pallets. The little girl wanted a ride. I asked her if she had a hat cos she couldn't ride without a hat.
I'm getting good at fobbin this kid off..... LOL.
It was a good day of talking to people, if totally unproductive. Tomorrow i start EARLY & get loads done. Time's short.
Sunday, May 2, 2010
New bloke
The new bloke had a good day. They work like that, u will have a crap day or 20 & despair that u ever gonna get anywhere, then if you're lucky you get a good day where u get the feller looking like a feller. Thanks goodness.
I did this one different to usual, i used about 8 cans of expanding foam to build up a figure on an armature. I made the steel armature based on the little twiggy figure i made out of kebab stix, then i liquid nailed some polystyrene sheet pieces on to fatten it up a bit & give something for the expanding foam to stick onto. Then i built him out of puffy foam. Cool huh. I can't make dust in the studio so i set to make him out of foam, then. 99% foam with a thin coating of something on top. I seem to have gone with plaster for the thin coating & i'm happy with that.
I thought the foam might be a bit expensive to blow thru, but its 15 bucks a can & i'm sure i go thru at least 7 bags of plaster per figure at about 17 a bag... hmm yeah so well it is more expensive maybe, if i use the spare can i still got... but its much EASIER to use, OK... saves loads of time too. Just got to be patient enough to get it all carved & sorted out dead right before adding the skin of plaster, else the skin of plaster is gonna be inches thick & you'll have to cut bits off etc, & all in all, a pain in the butt.
Reckon i had a pile of puffy offcuts about the size of a shetland pony on the ground & that classily & transparently segways into the next sculpture which will be a horse made out of puffy foam. Yes i really like puffy foam. Well i did, till some bloody studio denizen tell me its horrifically toxic. Blah. Its not affected me yet 'tall.
I did this one different to usual, i used about 8 cans of expanding foam to build up a figure on an armature. I made the steel armature based on the little twiggy figure i made out of kebab stix, then i liquid nailed some polystyrene sheet pieces on to fatten it up a bit & give something for the expanding foam to stick onto. Then i built him out of puffy foam. Cool huh. I can't make dust in the studio so i set to make him out of foam, then. 99% foam with a thin coating of something on top. I seem to have gone with plaster for the thin coating & i'm happy with that.
I thought the foam might be a bit expensive to blow thru, but its 15 bucks a can & i'm sure i go thru at least 7 bags of plaster per figure at about 17 a bag... hmm yeah so well it is more expensive maybe, if i use the spare can i still got... but its much EASIER to use, OK... saves loads of time too. Just got to be patient enough to get it all carved & sorted out dead right before adding the skin of plaster, else the skin of plaster is gonna be inches thick & you'll have to cut bits off etc, & all in all, a pain in the butt.
Reckon i had a pile of puffy offcuts about the size of a shetland pony on the ground & that classily & transparently segways into the next sculpture which will be a horse made out of puffy foam. Yes i really like puffy foam. Well i did, till some bloody studio denizen tell me its horrifically toxic. Blah. Its not affected me yet 'tall.
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